The original article is very tongue-in-cheek, which was fun (thanks Julie Zhuo!). That said, when I started writing my take for developers, I just couldn’t keep the same tone. It felt wrong to simply point out all the annoying habits of developers I’ve run across in my career. There’s something useless in the prevalent cynicism that exists in today’s snark-driven hipsterism, but that’s another post entirely and I don’t fault Julie for it. “How to Be That Designer” is a wonderfully written article that’s light-hearted and fun to read.
How to Be That Developer
How to be an awesome developer that people want to work with.
Be actively interested in things
Development is problem solving. The only way to get better at problem solving and improve your skill set is to continue to do it all day, every day. The only you can do that (and not die of boredom) is to preserve a spirit of generosity in how you approach things in your profession.
Your approach to new ideas helps shape what you take away from opportunities to grow in the industry. Striking a balance between cynicism and getting scatterbrained is an important way enable yourself to identify how valuable things truly are.
I get barraged with “new” things constantly. This industry changes so often and so quickly, no one can stay on top of it all the time. There’s so much out there that, at times, it makes you want to swear everything off and cling to the handful of topics/technologies you already know and use. The tendency exists to defend the things you have expertise in like they’re the last bastion of reason in this God-forsaken lawless world.
Resist the temptation to be a luddite.
If you shut everything out, you may find some short-term solace in your immediate sphere of expertise, but you’ll soon be outdated, uninformed and useless. It’s true, not everything you read about is worth your time, but maintaining a balanced perspective is the only way those life-changing ideas can be absorbed.
In short, stay open & skeptical.
Find something that interests you
Okay. Now that you’ve got your balanced perspective sorted out, it’s time to act on it. Find something you can dig into. It may be a project you’ve volunteered for at work, or a side project, or a hobby. If all your projects just SUCK, try and find an interesting aspect hidden inside it.
Use Backbone for the first time in a boring landing page. Test out a CSS pre-processor on your new marketing website you’ve been stuck with. Explore SVG’s in that email template your boss handed to you. Something is out there, and it’s your job to find it.
Don’t be an asshole
Shocking, I know. People don’t like assholes. And there’s a surprising amount of them that fill their days working in application development.
Although everyone in my office is amazingly nice, helpful and kind, I’m just lucky like that. I’ve been at plenty of places where middling developers attempt to show their prowess by being snarky, glib, or crafting opportunities for flame wars about useless bullshit. It happens everywhere, I imagine, but there’s something about a developer’s stereotypical introversion and “book smarts” that results in an overabundance of self-righteous, narcissistic assholes.
This is all-the-more reason the set yourself apart from the herd and make an effort to be affable, kind, and genuine all day, every day.
I’d love to hear from you! Are you surrounded by assholes? Let me know what you think @glen_elkins.
