7 Career Advice Tips from a Software Engineer at EDF

Published in

EDF Data and Tech

7 min readMar 20, 2024

My path into software development has been a meandering one… I didn’t leave school knowing exactly what I wanted to do in life, quite the opposite, all I knew was that I wanted to move away from my home town and that I’d need to find a job to make it happen. A lot of my early career decisions were spontaneous and poorly considered; I worked in a pub whilst studying for my A-levels (having an hour some evenings to do your coursework is far from ideal), I picked my degree based on where I wanted to go on holiday at the time and the fact that I liked reading (English Literature and American Studies 🧐). I chose my University based on which city had the best music venues. My first job post-degree? The first one that gave me an offer.

For the past five years I’ve been working as a software engineer. I think it’s important to mention my “not so great” career choices, it’s evidence that anyone can become a software developer regardless of the path you set out on early in life — if you’re curious, driven and have a good support network, you can make it.

As a developer, I’ve worked in industries like e-commerce, banking, the third sector, and everything in-between. Throughout each of my job roles I’ve learnt something new about myself, what I’m looking for in the company I work for, and how to get the most out of a day at work. Here’s a few nuggets of wisdom I’ve picked up along the way, hopefully one or two may be of use to you.

It’s never too late to switch career

If you’re reading this, it’s likely you currently work as a software engineer (& probably at EDF) but on the off chance you don’t and software is something you’re interested in, my advice is to give it a try. I did exactly that over half a decade ago, I started dabbling with HTML and CSS in my spare time whilst working in a call centre and from there realised it was something I enjoyed. I attended a 2 day Django Girls workshop and after spending a weekend with so many passionate women who were motivated by their jobs and wanted more women to join them in the industry, I knew it was a job I wanted too.

I applied for a full-stack coding bootcamp, was fortunate enough to make it onto the course and from there the rest is history!

I think there’s a legacy perception (based on some of the job specs you see floating around) that you need to have a degree in Computer Science to be a great developer… this is not the case. Some of the most talented people I’ve worked with are from bootcamps or self taught. If you’re curious about how to get into software development put some time aside for self learning and see if it’s something you enjoy. There’s a wealth of knowledge out there to help you start your journey, from YouTube tutorials to local tech meetups.

Anyone can be a software engineer as long as you’re motivated and curious.

Work out what drives you

Some people are content to have their job be just that, a job. For me, I find I’m hyper-aware of how much of my life is going into my work and so I want it to have greater meaning. This is probably not the healthiest attitude to have (and explains my exceptionally long CV…) but if managed correctly, it can lead to some good results!

There’s a very quick exercise you can do to work out what motivates you:

Ask yourself the question “what parts of your current job do you enjoy?” and write down the answer. If you’ve worked in a few roles, do this with those jobs too. Once you have your list, see if you have any recurrent entries. If so, you have probably identified your number one motivator.

Maybe you have “mentoring” on your list, but are currently working in a small team without the opportunity to do this. Can you advertise your skills to see if there is anyone on another team that is looking for a mentor? Maybe you could set up your own mentoring scheme? Work within the confines of your job but try to make it so your days are littered with tasks that give you energy rather than sap it.

This is the key to longevity, if you can increase your motivators and you have a company that supports you, there’s a high chance you’ll want to stick around.

Ask the question

At the beginning of my career in tech I spent a lot of time avoiding asking questions for fear of being seen as “stupid” — this was a mistake. One of the things I love most about software engineering is how creative you can be with how you solve a problem. There are a multitude of ways to build something, by asking questions to people who are more experienced than you, you can draw off your own research and their knowledge to design the best solution — but only if you ask the question.

There’s another layer to this one, if you find you’re working in a job that doesn’t align with your motivators, ask your manager or your tech lead for work that aligns with what drives you. The same goes for if there are things in work that you’re unhappy with, if you don’t ask for change, nobody will know that’s what you’re craving.

Help build your team

To build a high functioning team you need to work with people that you trust; in my experience this happens most organically when there is some informality around the work that you do. That means making time for informal chats by grabbing a coffee (perhaps a virtual one if you’re remote), it also means spending time pair programming or talking technical decisions through. It’s highly likely that if you work at EDF, your team will be made up of lovely engineers — so reach out and have a chat!

What’s the cringe saying? “There’s no I in team”… well, it’s kind of true. It’s not one person’s responsibility to build a team, it’s a group effort. If you notice a team mate has gone quiet, give them a message to check in. It’s a tiny effort on your side but could be the catalyst that starts off a great working relationship.

Set boundaries

This is a difficult one to keep on top of, and one I consistently find I need to work at. To keep the work / life balance scales on an even keel, try some of the following:

Delete Slack from your phone — is it really that important that you respond to a message within a second of it coming through, or could you wait until you’ve made yourself a brew to reply? The answer is obvious but it’s so easy to forget, if the employees that made the app are encouraged to switch off, you should be doing so too.

Let your colleagues know your work hours — if meetings keep getting put in outside your working hours, let your team know and offer an alternative slot. Only you can protect your time.

Say no/ be aware of your capacity — if your workload is getting too much and you’re being asked to take on additional pieces of work, feel free to say no. You are one person. You can only do so much. If you work in a team, reach out to one of your colleagues and ask if they can help you by picking the task up instead.

Switch off distractions

I’ve found when writing code during the day it can be difficult to hit a flow state, or even to just maintain concentration levels for long enough to work something out. You have emails pinging into your inbox every 5 minutes, Slack going off, Teams too, not to mention the occasional impromptu huddle — every channel of communication is in use and this can make actually getting the work done fairly difficult.

Here are a few tricks I use when I need to get my head down and work something out:

Set your status on Slack to “away” — this is one of my favourites to use when I have something time critical that needs doing. For me it’s like a switch in my brain, if I’m “offline” then people aren’t expecting a response straight away.
Pause your notifications — especially useful for if you’re in a meeting that requires absolute focus.
Block out your calendar — if you find your calendar is filling up with meetings and you’re unable to say no to them, start blocking out “focus time”, this will allow you the space and time you need to get your ticket finished.
Leave your phone in a different room or switch it to “sleep mode”. One less notification generating machine to battle against can’t be a bad thing! I use the app “Forest” to lockdown my phone, you can still force access to it but to do so, you have to kill a (virtual) tree, it’s a great deterrent.

Stay curious

New technology is everywhere and though it would be impossible to keep up with it all, it’s always good to keep an eye out to see what’s on the horizon.

At EDF, we have a wealth of AWS Game Days to attend. These events are excellent opportunities to visit services within the AWS ecosystem that you might not encounter in your day to day job.

We’re in the process of building some exciting Communities of Practice, these forums are a great place to expand your knowledge on topics you might not be overly familiar with. If you can, put some time aside to drop into a couple and see if any spark your interest.