HOW TO BE A GREAT DEVELOPER ED FINKLER CTO - Graph Story [email protected] @funkatron funkatron.com

THIS IS A TEXT ADVENTURE

20 YEARS OF WEB DEV LONE WOLF & TEAMS REMOTE AND OFFICE $$$ & ACADEMIA PHP PYTHON JS DEVOPS

HAVE FREQUENTLY BEEN CALLED A “WEBMASTER”

TECH SKILLS ARE OVERRATED

•PRACTICE EMPATHY •PRACTICE HUMILITY •ALWAYS BE LEARNING •AVOID TRIBALISM •BETTER YOUR COMMUNITY

PRACTICE EMPATHY •Empathy is the ability to understand how a person feels, and why they may feel that way. •Empathy is your most important skill. •Empathy makes you more likely to get what you need.

PRACTICE EMPATHY •Practice it with everyone you interact with, and everyone who interacts with your work. •Always keep two groups in mind: the users and the rest of your team.

PRACTICE EMPATHY •Solve the user’s problems, not yours. •To solve their problems, must empathize with them.

PRACTICE EMPATHY •Make choices with teammates in mind. •Anticipate questions and confusion. •Think weeks, months, years ahead.

PRACTICE EMPATHY •Don’t assume people know what you know.

PRACTICE HUMILITY •Humility goes hand in hand with empathy. •You’ll always be learning and improving. Accept and own-up to mistakes. •The less you fear being wrong, the more confident you can be.

PRACTICE HUMILITY •You’re wrong about many things. •So is everyone else. •Allow others to practice humility.

ALWAYS BE LEARNING •Be liberal in learning about new technologies and approaches. Be conservative in using them. •Any technology can be the right choice depending on the needs of the project and strengths of the team.

ALWAYS BE LEARNING •Set aside a little time each week to learn about new tech. •At conferences, try to catch one or two talks about technologies you don’t know much about.

AVOID TRIBALISM •Refuse to participate in tribalism. •View absolute statements with extreme skepticism. •Build communities with what we have in common. Embrace diversity. Help people feel safe.

AVOID TRIBALISM •Dismissing a technology without a sound, reasonable argument is prone to error. •Be extremely careful about participating in X vs Y arguments.

AVOID TRIBALISM •Reserve your loyalty for people. Not brands. Not companies. Not technologies. •Fashion-driven development will fail you.

BETTER YOUR COMMUNITY •Make people’s lives better with your skills. •Make the community around you better. You don’t need to go to some Magic City of Tech Genius to do important work.

BETTER YOUR COMMUNITY •Share what you learn with the people around you. Ask them to share what they have learned with you.

BUT I’M A SUPERVISOR! •Values of a hierarchical org distribute from the top down. •Great developers need a great org to support them. •Leadership has a huge influence on the quality of life of employees.

BUT I’M A SUPERVISOR! •Your job is to support and empower the people you supervise. •You aren’t more important than them. You just have a different job. •A huge part of your job is making sure your team members feel, and are, understood.

BUT I’M A SUPERVISOR! •A lot of the people you lead are scared, burned out, struggling. •You must promote mental wellness. OSMIHELP.ORG •Listen, understand, help, empower.

Q+A ED FINKLER [email protected] @funkatron funkatron.com http://www.kreativekorp.com/software/fonts/c64.shtml