Improve thyself
Do you know the Dunning–Kruger effect? Especially the mount stupid, this is when your colleague (because you don’t do this (of course you do) ) thinks he knows a lot about a subject, and he talks BS.
You can do something about this situation! You can improve yourself. Read, learn, listen, etc. You are in a job, where you need to be a lifelong learner. Let’s face it, technology is improving day by day and you need to follow it. As Uncle bob says in The Clean Coder:
“Your career is your responsibility. It is not your employer’s responsibility to make sure you are marketable. It is not your employer’s responsibility to train you, or to send you to conferences, or to buy you books. These things are your responsibility.” [The clean coder: the code of conduct for professional programmers; 2011, Pearson Education; Chapter 1, pg. 16.]
To be honest I agree, even though I am from an eastern European country where salaries are not at the same levels as in the west. So getting to a conference means about 1 to 3-times a month’s salary. (I don’t want to get into money, but then please collect money for this.)
How?
There are many resources which you can learn from. Let’s face it, you are sitting in front of the world’s biggest library.
Read
The most basic way to learn is by reading. I personally like books. I like when someone has time and space to explain their thoughts and there were situations when I got a chance to understand things about something totally different, e.g. once I was reading about Prometheus and I understood a lot about Docker. There are many books that are useful in any part of IT. E.g. Clean code is considered a fundamental book if you write code and GOF is useful in the microsystems’ world too.
There are some blogs also which can be useful too. Getting a medium account is also a great idea because you can form your own ideas and these are essential.
Listen or watch
Oh, so you don’t have time or patience to read? Or just hate reading. That happens. You can listen to podcasts where people are talking about IT stuff. But there are conferences, in the past-covid era you can watch them online too, and there are some recordings too. Pre-covid I attended many meetups, which I hope I can get back.
Write
Once one of the tutors at the university said: “If you can explain it to your grandma on a Saturday at noon in front of the chicken soup you know it.“
So write it down. It doesn’t have to be public, but if it’s public, it can look good in your cv as a reference. (Also, if you do it publicly, please make sure about the validity of the data.) Blog, microblog, or just build your notion or obsidian vault. Either way, you will profit from it.
Practice
Practice makes the master. I’ve heard this proverb sooooo many times in my childhood. So practice. If you don’t practice, you will forget. Get a project for fun, the easiest, cheapest, and go ahead and do it.
If you can’t figure out anything, go to codewars.com and collect points. Implement the exercises, implement in many languages. Just write code. (Sometimes if I have an empty half an hour I go to codewars and I implement something there in python because I feel that is the most comfortable language for me. And nowadays I try again in c++ too, which I used the most when I attended university. It’s quite challenging because the two languages need a completely different view.)
Relax
After doing a great job, don’t forget to relax!
“I think the real issue is that creativity breeds creativity.” [The clean coder: the code of conduct for professional programmers; 2011, Pearson Education; Chapter 4, pg. 65. ]
- says Uncle Bob. And well, he is right. Try yourself in other fields. Math, science fiction, RPG, board games, or other things. These fields help you to understand correlations, and some of them are there for you to practice communication. And also, let’s face it. Sometimes you just deserve some relaxation too.
All in all,
Work on yourself, and your professionalism, because your job does not equal your career. Your employer is nothing to do with your career. (Nevertheless, if they contribute, happily take it and consider yourself a lucky person. 🙂 )
