Typical rake on the way of a programmer from Junior to Senior

A young programmer who has just graduated or has not even graduated from a university is ready to turn mountains, study, study and study again, and his near future seems like this:



But more experienced comrades know that in fact, a rake and a path have long been carefully laid out on his way from Junior to Senior it looks something like this:



Let's recall some typical rakes on which we all (well, or most) stepped on ourselves without noticing. Of course, for experienced developers, a lot will seem obvious captainhood, but such traps can easily lead to the dark side of the force for young specialists.

1. The orchestra man

Symptoms :
A small company, recruiting programmers with no work experience. A giant list of “telephone support, networking, testing, business analysis, user training ..., what programming? And yes ... of course, and programming. ”

What is the rake :
In the best case, programming will deceive you just in the list of your duties and it’s not included, or it’s included on the principle if you really want in your personal time you can give us something for free.
Why at best? Because at worst, you will write the code with your left heel, right heel compressing the network, holding the phone in your left hand, trying to understand the problem of the dissatisfied customer, and taking notes with the right hand of the client's desires. This situation is very characteristic of a small company, which is trying to do everything in a row at the expense of small resources. The eternal time pressure, the principle of fig-two and in the product, the scatter from drawing pages on the web, to the administration of sites. The problem is that learning to program correctly when you work as a human orchestra is very difficult, and not usually with anyone.

Pros :
After such work, any other will seem calm and unhurried.

Recipe :
If possible, look for organizations where they do not try to combine the roles of a programmer and a loader. In extreme cases, learn all that you can and look for a new job.

2. We have everything in Greece

Symptoms :
A large firm, down to the bloody Enterprise. At the interview, they tell you for a long time about their wonderful core, how many inventions they have. You can quickly understand that the company has everything of its own: ORM, collections, framework, integration, platform, everything is naturally closed and proprietary.

What is the rake : At
first, you play with interest in someone else's code, add it and understand other people's ideas. It takes a year, two, five, you decide to change jobs, come for an interview and all the questions “do you know the open framework A or library B” answer “no, we all had our own”, in the end, the darkened interviewer begins to ask you basic questions about collections, but you understand that even the collections you had your own ...

Pros:
You will learn the rich experience of cycling for a variety of tasks, sometimes it can be useful ...

Recipe :
Participate in open-source projects using popular technologies and frameworks. Always try to update knowledge of modern technologies and frameworks of your language.

3. Copper pipes and star disease

Symptoms :
A couple of months have passed at work and you were transferred from junior to midal for your heroic merit in coding, a couple of months have already been called senior, then leading programmers, etc.

What is the rake :
Take a look around. Is it true that you are such a genius or the leadership of your company, according to the old Russian tradition, replaces the normal salary with orders and ranks? The problem is that you cannot become a senior in a year, since one of its most important qualities is professional intuition, the ability to find a middle ground between patterns and simplicity, between commenting on everything in a row or vice versa, completely rejecting comments, according to the precepts of a clean code. This is tantamount to becoming a great surgeon a year after graduation.
On the one hand, this is not a big problem, but a person usually rarely includes common sense and really begins to believe that he knows everything and knows how. He is strongly offended by the minuses of the code review and is very surprised if his other companies do not want to take senior.

Pros :
Self-confidence is wonderful, especially when it will be substantiated.

Recipe :
Self-criticism, self-criticism and self-criticism again ...

4. The swamp

Symptoms : A
state or semi-state company or a company in which the main activity is not related to IT. There are no technical interviews about hiring or they are obviously held by a weak specialist ... or an old man who is trying to ask about programming languages ​​that have disappeared along with punch cards.

What is the rake :
In such companies there are no people to learn from, the bosses often don’t understand what and how to do, the production process is built “ask the accountants there, they need to make some kind of program”, often programmers and eneykeyschiki understand the manual - it's almost the same thing, and often developers are forced to make presentations and reinstall the OS. Development methodology? No, they didn’t hear ...

Pros :
Even the most average junior in such a swamp can feel like a cool specialist, since all the more or less good specialists have long escaped from there (if ever they were at all), in addition, this very junior can try to develop the application immediately in all roles, from business analytics to the tester.

Cons :
Learning something in such a company is very difficult, simply because there is nobody.

Recipe :
Generally, change jobs, but if it’s impossible ... Learn yourself anywhere and anything.

5. Freelance

Symptoms :
You are a Junior developer who is going to constantly work only in freelance.

What is the rake :
Freelance can be useful if you have already gained experience and become a specialist, when a Junior developer starts with freelance, then brain freelance starts, he doesn’t have examples of senior developers, and by and large the customer doesn’t give a damn about the code he sees it is written, as a rule, by the same Junior freelancers that he himself. Short orders / projects form the development model "here to dust, here to make a patch, get money and forget forever."

Pros :
As an extra income, there is nothing wrong with freelance, just as if you have 5 years of industrial programming behind your back.

Minuses: It’s
very easy for a young developer to get used to the tyap and the product, which will then be difficult to unlearn. Yes, and real employers are very skeptical of experience in freelance, especially if experience is only in freelance ... there will generally be doubts about how much a person is able to work in a team in principle.

Recipe :
Do not go completely into freelance at the beginning of a career or constantly study materials for writing the right code.

6. Horizontal and diagonal growth

Symptoms :
Your boss comes to you and speaks. "And let you become a business analyst / project manager / designer / technical writer, etc." Hurray! - you scream in your soul, because you have been taught that raising is always good.

What is the rake :
If you translate the boss’s speech in Google translate from diplomatic into Russian, then it sounds like “let’s stop being a programmer, throw out all the years of experience and a diploma and start learning from scratch a new profession”? If it seems to you that programming is like a bike it is impossible to unlearn it and you can combine the functions of a manager and a programmer, you are mistaken, in six months or a year without programming your level will drop very much. If it seems to you that the manager does not need to be able to do anything, just lead - you are mistaken. In general, a manager is a completely separate profession, almost not related to programming itself, you can be an excellent project manager and not be able to program at all. Even combining the work of a programmer and team lead without losing one of the specializations is already difficult,

Pros :
If a new profession is what you have been dreaming of all your life - go ahead! If you are tired of the old role and you have lost motivation - go ahead!

Cons :
You may lose the experience of a past profession and not be able to quickly learn the skills of a new profession. Actually, as soon as you become a manager, you will cease to be a programmer and it is not a fact that you will be able to become a really good leader.

Recipe :
Either do not go to managers or if you are offered something you cannot refuse, do open source / your personal commercial projects to maintain programming skills.

7. Loss of motivation for development

Symptoms :
You work from call to call, you think that you already know everything and there’s nothing to learn, you are completely satisfied with your current job.

What is the rake :
The programmer is like a bicycle, as soon as he stops, he falls. Having ceased to develop, the programmer inevitably begins to degrade, turning into a robot for writing code. The problem is usually that he himself, as a rule, does not notice this, he seems to be working and working, copying his old ideas from project to project. Here the criterion is simple, if during the year you have not studied / created any new technology / library / language / framework, then you have something wrong with self-development.

Pros :
You are in a comfort zone, there is money, there is stable work, you are doing well.

Cons :
You hit the time machine and ended up in the era of Brezhnev's stagnation.

Recipe :
Decide if this is really what you need, if not, change it - change your job, open your own business, launch open source projects, and eventually become a manager.

...

N. ...

And here everyone can write their favorite rake in the comments. And yes! All with FRIDAY!