Code for yourself, Not for others
This is the time when a candidate got selection in premier colleges, they feel extremely happy and why not? They should be. They got their selections after huge competitions with thousand candidates. Since everybody over there is from different background they were curious to know about each other. They live together, eat together study together and what not?
When in colleges, they don’t even think to get job less than a MNC company. In other words their motto is to get a big package job that suits them after they complete their college. Very few of them move towards entrepreneurship.
OK. They got better college, better Job then what next?
This is the first time they think — I am unbeatable. They can’t even think that real life is starting now. College time was just a honeymoon period, nothing else. They get training for corporates and start working on live projects. They learn to code in corporate style, new ethics and etiquettes in office.
They work hard to improve their coding, got good appraisals even some times 100%. This remain continued for two or three years.
After two or three years a slowdown comes in their career. There is a reason of slowdown here — They got saturated of their knowledge. They think, they know everything and this is the problem.
When I had two years of experience and one of my colleague was of three years. He thought — he knows everything. He once said to me in hindi “Ab to life sukoon se gujregi, teen saal ho gaye ab jyada padhna nahi padega (in English: Its been three years and I don’t need to read more. Life will be relaxed now.)”. After some months he was fired by the company. The reason of firing was his performance which was continuously decreasing.
I wrote the above story to let the readers know that never get saturated. You never know everything all the time. May be you are the best but not the person who knows everything.
After eight years in this industry, when I am meeting with my junior colleague, I always warn them for one thing i.e., Knowledge saturation. I suggested them to come out of it as per my knowledge and it worked. Below are some points I always suggest when I do monthly 1:1 meeting with them.
# Code for Yourself, not for others
“Coding for yourself and not for others” doesn’t mean that don’t work for your client. Let me clarify this — First of all, this phrase is derived from my long experience in the software service industry and I follow this. Some more experienced person may or may not agree with me but I am telling this on the basis of my experience. The phrase means that if you are coding, do it for yourself, be selfish and do it to improve yourself. Improving everyday will not let you saturate with your knowledge. You will always be curious to know something new, some new concepts etc. I tried it with myself once and improved. I always tell my junior colleague to do this.
# Read Books
Reading books are always best option to know something new. Whether it is kindle version, hardcopy or PDF version. You should read at least one book per quarter.
Reading book is always beneficial as you always get a new idea and you will always be curious to learn something new.
Sometimes, I have seen that many people are not habitual to read books, they can start by reading some interesting novels and can slowly move to technical or other books. For example: I was not very habitual to read books, I preferred to watch videos rather than books. My manager told me to read the books and I started reading “Thinking Fast and Slow”. I started with only one page per day but after I finished that, I made book reading as ritual. I used to travel at least two hour in Delhi metro per day including to and fro journey to my office and I spend that time reading hard covered book.
# Curious about new technology but Don’t over jump
Sometimes I have seen that some developers started jumping from this technology to that technology. That is dangerous, let me tell you. Jumping too much is not beneficial. Just stick to one technology, learn basics, Apply your concepts making some proof of concepts, move towards advanced and then move towards other technology.
I started working on PHP, in very beginning my core concepts were not clear but I started reading sometimes C++ then Java then C# then jumped towards Python. What happened? Nothing! My PHP concepts was already at lower points and my hands in other languages didn’t move beyond college level programmers. Then I realized, don’t jump too much.
After that I started focusing on PHP, then started crawling towards other languages with very slow pace and this benefited me a lot.
The complete article is written on the basis of my experience. Some points may not fit to some circumstances but at least you can try.
Do read: Leadership is not about title but action
Let me know your experiences in comment. Cheers!!!
Originally published at www.spokenbyyou.com on October 25, 2017.
