Personality Traits of Successful (and Happy) Full Stack Developers
Could web development be the right career for you? Starting down a new path in your career or your studies can feel like a big risk — how do you know that this new field would be the right fit for you? Take it from us, if you feel like these personality traits fit you, then web development could be perfect for you.
A sense of vision and inspiration
Full stack development often needs you to take a holistic approach to problems and a larger perspective on your projects. Often, web development clients will tell you what they want their website to look like, or a problem that their site is having and it’s up to you to come up with both the solution and how to implement it.
If you are able to come up with a strong vision in your head, and if you can imagine all parts of a project at once, you’ll more easily be able to come up with the ‘magic’ solution that impresses your clients and coworkers. You’ll also be able to keep your main goals in mind as you develop your skillset and your career.
A curious mind and a love of learning
As a constantly developing field, being a web developer requires you to keep on top of trends, learn new elements and conventions within a programming language for the back end as well as new design principles for the front end.
Learning full languages and keeping on top of industry developments isn’t something that you can do all in one week, or month, or even year. Having an internal motivation, an enjoyment of learning for learning’s sake, will help keep you motivated and make you realize the progress that you’re making.
Independent and self-motivated
Often times, and especially when you’re working with clients that don’t have the same level of technical know-how that you will, there won’t be as much external feedback on your projects beyond “oh this works” and “this doesn’t work”.
Being able to motivate yourself over the hills and valleys of the web development process, being able to set your own goals and know your own workflow is crucial to maintaining a long and successful career.
A desire to change the world
Some of the most ambitious projects being worked on today are done through the medium of web development. As a field, there is a technological revolution taking place every day, and it’s one that anyone can be a part of if they have the right skills and contribute to the right projects.
While not every developer needs to feel like they’re on the very cutting edge of new technology and styles, by working on any coding projects at all, you are contributing to a community that is pushing the world forward as much or more than any other in the world.
A growth mindset and a lot of patience
Building a skillset from the ground up can be a really difficult task, especially in a field as technical as web development. Unlike a lot of other potential career paths, the skills required to be a coder are not ones that you come across naturally over the course of your life, they are ones that you need to deliberately seek out for yourself.
Every coder starts out knowing absolutely nothing about computers. Communication, leadership, teamwork, these kinds of skills you can develop naturally over the course of your life, but learning to sit at a computer and develop websites and programs is something that you need to have the motivation to set time aside every day for.
That being said, once you have developed the skills, you are putting yourself in a league with some of the brightest innovators out there in the world today.
Do you possess these qualities? A career in full stack development may be a perfect fit for you.
