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What's Next?

Naren
June 14, 2020

What's Next?

Lessons learnt from personal experience and books on taking next steps in software career to become a software craftsperson.

Naren

June 14, 2020
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  1. Naren
    @DudeWhoCode
    What's Next?

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  2. Narendran
    Independent Software Engineer
    @DudeWhoCode

    [email protected]

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  3. Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer
    "The most important step a person can
    take is not the first one. It's the next one.
    Always the next step"

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  4. Career Capital
    • The skills and value you accumulate over time

    • You need to find your career capital and start accumulating it brick by brick

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  5. Investment
    • You need to start investing in order to gain something from career capital

    • Invest your time and energy to accumulate valuable skills

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  6. Skills should look like splash of paint on wall

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  7. Python
    Go Postgres
    Clojure
    Team work
    Start breadth first & eventually increase the depth
    Redis
    * Tech stacks shown here are for illustration purposes only, don't push it into your next project just because you saw it on internet
    * Blockchain
    Empathy

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  8. Increasing the odds
    • Luck is another word for increasing the odds of success

    • Combine your skills/values to create/explore new opportunities to increase
    your odds of success

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  9. Permutations
    3! = 6
    7! = 5040

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  10. Power of Compounding
    • Your career capital compounds

    • Your network compounds

    • Your coding skills compound

    • Stay calm and be patient

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  11. Learn how to learn
    • Everything you learn becomes a shortcut for understanding something else

    • The more you know, the more you can know

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  12. Adjacent Possible
    • The space beyond the boundaries of cutting edge where opportunities open
    up and big ideas tend to happen

    • You get to the cutting edge by gaining more career capital

    • You open up more adjacent possibles by combining your skills

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  13. Systems over Goals
    • Follow a system than having a fixed goal

    • Goals are for future and future is always uncertain

    • Create a system that aligns with your personal energy

    • System helps you to form habits

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  14. Systems vs Goals
    • Finance

    • Increasing asset to X amount is a goal. Investing and saving every month upfront
    is a system

    • Fitness

    • Increasing muscle mass or reducing fat to X% is a goal. Eating healthy and
    showing up to workout is a system

    • Career

    • Getting a job in dream startup is a goal. Showing up regularly to code and learn
    new stuff is a system

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  15. Make it your identity
    • Finance

    • I am going to save money I am an investor

    • Fitness

    • I am going to workout I am a weight lifter or amateur athlete

    • Career

    • I am going to work for FAANG I am a software craftsperson

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  16. Craftsperson mindset
    • A craftsperson asks what value they can offer to the work before asking what
    the work can offer them

    • A craftsperson follows best practices and picks the right tools

    • A craftsperson cares for their work

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  17. Deliberate

    Practice
    Immediate

    Feedback
    Stretch

    Your

    Ability
    Becoming a Craftsperson

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  18. Gains
    • Once you accumulate your career capital, you start trading your capital for
    gains

    • Ex. Getting more freedom/autonomy by giving the value from accumulated
    career capital

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  19. Embrace boredom
    • Dress up and show up

    • Fall in love with boredom

    • Motivation is scarce it's like ignition to the engine, to show up and repeat is
    the work of pistons, you need to embrace boredom

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  20. Small bets
    • Use the streak of small wins to get big wins

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  21. Stay fit for the job
    • Both your physical health and mental health is important

    • If you feel like sh*t while writing code, your code might end up being sh*t

    • Take enough breaks

    • Burnouts are nasty

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  22. Sometimes things won't work out
    • You are always replaceable by your employer

    • Be prepared and have a runway

    • If you can't shine somewhere, you can always shine elsewhere

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  23. There is no one size fits all approach.
    Keep experimenting and fail forward.

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  24. References
    • So good they can't ignore you

    (Book by Carl Newport)

    • How I failed at everything and still win big

    (Book by Scott Adams)

    • My personal experiments and failures

    (No, I don't have a book)

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  25. @DudeWhoCode
    [email protected]
    Thank you.

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