7 Mistakes Junior Developers Do
Tags: tips, beginners, career
Published: 2022-08-03 15:30:00

## 1 - Don't refresh yourself

We tend to believe that the longer we work, the longer we move forward, and getting our tasks done faster. It may be correct, but not necessarily.
Productivity-time graph is not linear, means we should take break-ups sometimes. The medical recommendation is to walk shortly at least every 1 hour. Most of us don’t do that, but we should.
Because actually, many good ideas and insights happen at random times, like while eating and getting shower.
So have an energy refill. From time to time stand up, get outside, look at the sun (but not directly :) ) and drink water.

## 2 - Not be aware of company business

Some engineers I know don't care about staff unrelated directly to their job. They are programmers, in every sense of the word. Because they basically just translate tasks to running code.
But if you want to step it up, you should get involved of the company business. Talk with employees from another departments like finance, to get another perspective of your company activities. Discuss more often with other engineers to understand more deeply software concepts. Do it for your personal development. 

## 3 - Don't sharpen your knife

Make some efforts to make your environment more comfortable, even a little bit.
Maybe you can debug tests with breakpoints instead of console.log? do that. You can write short script which may be helpful? Or even, you can set up your monitor for a more suitable configuration? go for it.
These things may be seem as a waste of time at first sight, but for the long term it’s mostly will save you time, indeed. 
Those are just a few examples of ‘tasks’ that you don’t have to do, and as such, many people tend to procrastinate them, because they are not urgent.

## 4 - Prevent yourself from unknown, big tasks

By doing relatively complicated tasks, you can acquire hard skills more easily. Skills like whole-system-thinking, OOP coding, and more.
Besides, it strengthens your self-confidence as well as your believe in yourself.
So don’t be afraid of such tasks, and more than that - be active and move yourself for main position in your team or your R&D department, for getting such responsibilities. 

## 5 - Underestimate task complete durations

You sometimes may think that some task should take a little time, and eventually find out it doesn't, because you had unexpected staff. But if you look at that more deeply, you see you always have such factors, like regression bugs and pull-request discussions. These factors are changing, but always exist. As said Heraclitus: ​​“The Only Constant in Life Is Change”. So assuming these staff will probably happen, help you provide more accurate estimation.
Assessing incorrectly might hurt your professional image, if repeating many times. So don’t be afraid of it too much, but take it into account. 

## 6 - Don’t learn from others

Ask questions. Ask senior engineers, junior engineers, and ask other people in your company. You can learn something new from anybody.
Shyness and sensitivity are not bad character traits. They could be positive, and contribute to emotional intelligence. But they also may slow down your professional, personal progress. So if you're shy - overcome the fear and consult with your colleagues.

## 7 - Don't appreciate life

Appreciate the beautiful things of life. Maybe it sounds like a non-issue, which has nothing to do with software, but I believe that any person, no matter what his profession, should adopt it. 
Life is too short for not being grateful. Call you parents, your friends. take a deep breath, enjoy the little things. Help someone else, because you never know what the future holds. Many people across the globe have no access to water, not to mention computers and internet like us. But you do. So be grateful for that, be grateful for everything you got.