Hi, I again advise my good friend what to do with his career journey today. Again, it seems to me that I am becoming more and more of a Coach and Mentor to people than just a software creator and technical expert. I want to write about the career advisor role I sometimes got with some of my friends. The thing is that when I was at the beginning of my career, I was looking for inspiration. I talked to many people about it. What do you mean by something in the software industry, IT field, and companies I worked for? That all questions in my mind helped me a lot. All those conversations improved my focus and helped me turn dreams into a vision and actions into results. So, what am I constantly asking my friends and sometimes also some professionals who are looking for good bits of advice? Before I explain this, I want to start with the purpose of the questions. Many people look at the software engineering field as easy money. In fact, programmers can earn quite good salaries. But is money a good motivation to become a coder? In short, no! If you want to make a lot of money and want to be happy with your salary and focus only on that, you can very quickly and easily be demotivated. You cannot increase your salary infinitely, am I right? I remember each time my salary grow up. But you can very quickly get used to that. And your motivation will dramatically slow down. So, the real question is, why do you want to be the best software expert? To be rich? To be famous? To have many followers on social media? Again, no! It does not get you there. In fact, you can always find someone smarter than you. Who can learn new things quicker and at last bit you in the recruitment process to the most exciting job you dream about.
To become the best expert in your field, you should love what you do daily. People say that I have a lot of passion for what I am doing, and it is totally the truth. But the only things that keep me. going is that I love what I do. So, I often advise people to forget about money motivation; that does not move you there even a single step further. Now, let me go back to the subject. Career advice to become an expert in the software industry. How to achieve that? The honest answer is that I am not sure because I always feel like an amateur, even with my expertise. The more I learn I see much more I do not know. However, one thing allows me to keep doing what I like. I do not care about opinions about myself by others. The specifics of our country’s citizens are that we are very jealous people. That was clear to me at a very young age I was. So the best advice for me was one I obtained during a conversation with one good friend some time ago. Do not care about other people’s opinions. Keep doing what you love. Because in our country, the great sickness is jealousy, which protects you against it. I know the only small group of people who are truly friends and like what I do. Even for those who do not understand all the technical aspects of my work, I present here publicly from time to time. But if that not makes you a self-centric person? A bit, to be honest, but the good emotional barrier is not a bad thing at all. The last thing is that every journey starts from the first step. Every good software comes with the first empty editor page or a template. So if you really want to write code. Open your favorite IDE, and write a code, line by line, class by class, until you finish. And for God’s sake, forget the stupid motivation from money and other people.
Now I want to write something about the most crucial and important skill that every employer wants. It is not the technical expertise. It is not any hard and soft skill you can find in the job posts. Their significant one is their problem-solving skills. Software Industry has many of them; some are small, others very critical, and all have to be solved; if you are good at problem-solving, you probably can be hired by most companies on the planet. But how to develop this one, you probably wonder. I think the most important is a lot of experience with people and communication. The right communication is to tell people what they want but needs to improve their work. And that is the high-order bit, which makes you very valuable and smart. There is one more thing, if you really want to be very good at problem-solving, keep solving the most difficult problems at your work, focus on them, and the valuable skill will come to you. I remember that for 2 years, I worked on a team that only troubleshoots the customers’ issues, giving me a good background. The last important thing is that problems very often need to be solved the best you can, not the best in the world, and that shows your value in the team and company. So if you avoid difficult issues in your product, you probably do not go very far, but if you do not, the great future comes to you.
p ;).