Improving as Developers

IMPROVING AS DEVELOPERS Belén Albeza @ladybenko belenalbeza.com

A BIT ABOUT MYSELF… • 8 years of experience in the industry, in UK and in Spain • Game development for mobile and Facebook • Front-end, back-end, a bit of devops… • R&D and tiger team • DevRel at Mozilla • First joined a developers community at 14 yo.

BEING A FRONT-END DEV TODAY • LOTS of shiny new stuff every day • New frameworks, new tools, new API’s, new CSS properties… • LOTS of meet ups and conferences to go to • LOTS of pressure to “contribute to the community” • Do you have projects on Github? • Do you contribute to open source? • Do you write technical articles?

WHO IS OVERWHELMED?

IN THIS TALK • We’ll see which myths & beliefs are holding us back • How we can improve our performance, and learn effectively during our career • How we can make our teammates and colleagues better

MYTHS & BELIEFS

PASSION

ARE WE SURE “PASSION” IS WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR? • “Passion” tells nothing about a person’s talent, skills, or performance • “Passion” is sometimes used as an excuse to get advantage of people • Remember that we can be passionate and still have a life outside software • Let’s look for professionalism!

“ Professionalism is about knowing your job, doing it well, and being proud of it […] 
 Passion is no guarantee of talent or even basic competence. Ability, pride, discipline, integrity, dedication, organization, communication, and social skills are much more useful to an employer than passion is.

• Ernest Adams 
 Passion versus Professionalism (Gamasutra)

OUR HEROES

BAD ROLE MODELS • Questionable ethics / behaviour • Being a genius doesn’t excuse bad actions • It’s naïve to assume their beliefs / actions don’t affect their code or the communities they lead

WHO CAN BE A GOOD ROLE MODEL FOR US? • A person we can relate to (similar background, circumstances, characteristics…) • Someone whose core values we respect • Ideally: someone we can hang out with

MERITOCRACY 
 & OPEN SOURCE

“ “Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.”

• S. Levy 
 Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution

THE MYTH OF MERITOCRACY • It does not exist neither in our society, nor in tech • Read Toby Morris’ On a Plate comic 
 http://thewireless.co.nz/articles/the-pencilsword-on-a-plate

THE PROBLEM WITH OPEN-SOURCE • On paper it’s great… • …on practice, a lot of people get excluded • Lack of time and energy due to family care or housework • Lack of resources / space at home • A lot of people just can’t afford to work for free • Read Ashe Dryden’s " The Ethics of Unpaid Labor and the OSS Community"

WHY TALK ABOUT THIS?

WE ARE LOSING A LOT OF PEOPLE AND WE NEED THEM

Source: Women in tech: the facts (2016 update) 


IMPROVING OURSELVES

IF WE BURN OUT, WE’LL STOP DEVELOPING

INCREASING OUR PERFORMANCE • Sleep affects our learning, our performance, our decision-making, our stress levels, our health , etc 1 . • Exercise is crucial for health, energy and stress management • Meditation to handle stress and improve focus (apps: Headspace, Calm) • Try to be happy and fulfilled outside of work • Other activities can make us better devs (creative hobbies, sports, etc.) 1. Watch "What happens to your body and brain if you don't get sleep"

LEARNING

LEARNING: WITHIN THE COMPANY • Both the company and the employee benefit from training. • It’s easier to get your company to provide you training for things that are related to your current job. • i.e. “React” training if you are a front-end dev, or attending Google I/O if you develop for Android. • There’s a lot to learn in a 40h work week. Learn from your colleagues. Read their code. Try new things. Do your best.

LEARNING: ON YOUR FREE TIME • Can you squeeze some time from your day? (read on your commute, don’t watch TV…) • There are times when you just won’t have the time… and that’s OK. • Sacrificing things that are important to you is not sustainable in the long term… so reserve this for special moments: • Landing your first job • Switching sectors • Learn a critical skill for a promotion you want

LEARN EFFECTIVELY • Maximise your learning hours. Have a learning plan and don’t go blindly. • Enrol in a class / workshop. • Ask an expert for resource recommendations, which topics to learn and in which order. • You can repeat the plan for similar tech (i.e. create the same video game when learning different game engines). • If you can afford it, don’t be afraid of spending money on this. • Teach what you learn to consolidate it.

SIDE PROJECTS & MOTIVATION • Side projects are wonderful for learning new tech. • …but they are much more useful, career-wise, if we ship them. • Ways to keep your motivation high enough to finish it: • Mini-projects (ex: hackathons or game jams) • Break a long project in small milestones… than can be shipped on their own • Dog fooding

WHAT TO LEARN?

TRANSVERSAL SKILLS • English ! • Abstract thinking • Time management • Focus • Public speaking • Reading & writing • Professionalism

“EVERGREEN” TECH & TOOLS • Version control • Text editor (vim key bindings ftw) • UNIX tools: pipes, cat, grep, sed… • Scripts and automation • Debugging tools

“ETERNAL” CONCEPTS • Regular expressions • Programming paradigms: functional programming, OOP, pattern matching, polymorphism, etc. • Concepts / methodologies: SOLID, design patterns, data structures, algorithms, etc. • Concurrency

IMPROVING OTHERS

MAKE YOUR TEAMMATES BETTER • Your contribution to the team is not just your code… it’s also how you

affect other’s code as well. • If you are a senior developer, this is your job too . • Provide constructive feedback (be extra nice, some people have trouble separating their ego from their code). • Answer questions and be nice – don’t make your team fear or hate you. • Learn from each other: pair programming, code reviews, discuss together how to approach a problem, etc.

PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY • Read “High-performing teams need psychological safety” article • Study at Google on team performance saw that psychological safety

was the common factor of their highest performing teams. • In psychological safe teams, people are able to share ideas and execute them without fear of negative consequences, and they feel respected and accepted. • Don’t be the one who makes your team unsafe

YOU ARE NOT YOUR CODE • And others are not their code. • Don’t diminish yourself (or others) because of a mistake. What is important is learning from it. • Code is ideas, and we should be able to discuss ideas without personal attacks.

“SOFT SKILLS” ARE HARD! • So called “soft skills” are usually dismissed because we are bad at them or we don’t like them • They are crucial for your career • Learn to communicate, to speak, to give feedback, to lead, to handle conflicts, to be a team player, to be empathic… • … and you can keep them from job to job :)

THANKS!