1. Setting Realistic Career Goals
Developers often overestimate what they can accomplish in a single year while underestimating a three-year horizon. Focusing on a maximum of one or two goals at a time prevents burnout and failure.
Hear it at 0:24 →Engineering video
0:55 · 5 March 2023
Trying To Do Too Much As A Developer? Watch This!
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Transcript
So I'm talking to this front end dev and he's been like writing code for the last three years and he tells me Dragosh. So in the next year, yeah, I want to double my salary, I want to get a promotion to senior developer. I want to also master the front end in depth. I want to go full stack, I want to get into the cloud. And I would also like to improve my software architecture skills. And by the way, my next company needs to be a big company with a big brand, because I'm sick of startups.
And I'm like just to set the right expectations, even if you were to push yourself like crazy and do all the right things by the book, I think you'd still fail to achieve all that. Not because you're a bad developer, but because it's simply too much. You're overestimating what you can get done in a year and underestimating what you can get done in three years. Pick one or maximum two of these goals and get them done instead.
Then focus on the next and then on the next. Because the only way to achieve more is by doing less. So focus or pay the price of failure.