what do you need to be a great developer
Tags: development, career, networking, programming
Published: 2019-10-11 14:47:46

---
title: what do you need to be a great developer
published: true
description: The soft skills that will help you go farther, faster in your career
cover_image: https://thepracticaldev.s3.amazonaws.com/i/mwokg7zklo7neg9m37ef.png
tags: development, career, networking, programming
---



Learn how to be perseverant. No matter how smart you are, there will be problems that you will be stuck on and will spend days working on, banging your head against the wall trying to fix. Learning how to stay focused on problems will keep you moving towards finding a solution. This skill will take you much farther than any one programming language or library ever could.

Learn how to be perseverant.

Learn how to network. Companies get tons of applications when they post jobs, especially for junior developer roles. Learn how to form connections with people online and offline. This skill will grow your career prospects exponentially. When you network with people and get them to put in recommendations for you at their company, your one step ahead of the competition.

This skill will grow your career prospects exponentially

It’s increasingly harder to draw the attention of HR or whoever is looking at job applications. When there are 200 people applying for the same job you’d be lucky if they spent a whopping two minutes looking over your resume AND cover letter. When your application is supplemented by a recommendation from an existing company employee you become more than some words on a page.

You’re the person that jeff from dev ops helps on twitter from time to time work on open source projects. The person that Jess struck up a conversation with on Medium. Networking will open many more doors than just mass applying to jobs.
When there are 200 people applying for the same job you’d be lucky if they spent a whopping two minutes looking over your resume AND cover letter.

The last thing you need. The most important factor in whether you’ll be able to grow and flourish in the tech sector. A growth mindset. Make yourself believe that no matter what new technologies that you are faced with, no matter what library or operating system you are asked to work with. You can know with a reasonable amount of time learning it. You can do it.

It is going to be difficult. A lot of times it may seem impossible. But if you put the time and effort into learning how to build something. Then you can. Your growth is dependent on the effort you put into growing.
So from someone who began teaching themselves how to program their sophomore year in college. Who graduated with a degree in literature and a second job out of college was as a software engineer at an investment firm. Whose first job out of college was as a janitor in front of google. I promise you, if you put in the time and effort you can do it.

It is hard, it is difficult, sometimes things may even seem hopeless. But know that you can do it. if you persevere, network and believe that you can improve with effort and determination then I guarantee you. One day soon, you’ll become a great developer.

Follow me on twitter, lets talk tech.

@eli_izell

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