Programmers shouldn’t just write code.

I think a lot of people have a mistake in the programmer community, that is, as a coder, it is ok to quietly knock on the code every day, silently do a good job in technology, do not have to think about other things, think that everything will be easy. But before it’s all over, it’s middle-aged anxiety. When I was in my thirties, I found that there were more and more young and more able to work overtime in my company, which brought about anxiety in career development. At the same time, there were both parents and children, and the salary was also gradually encountered career bottleneck, which aggravated the anxiety of life and finance.

I recently went back to my previous book, Soft Skills: A Survival Guide Beyond Code, for a new understanding.

As a programmer, our career and life should not only focus on code and technology.

A truly good programmer should not only be a technical genius, but also be able to go beyond coding itself. He should be able to take control of his career, achieve his life goals, and enjoy life.

How to take control of your career? Run yourself as a business

To take control of your career, change your mindset.

Do not think of yourself as a technical worker, only know according to the needs of the company to complete the assigned technical work. Some articles talk about taking on a boss/entrepreneur mentality. It’s a bit chicken soup, but it’s true.

What should we really do?

In fact, only need to seriously responsible for their own good, responsible for their own is equivalent to the work, responsible for the enterprise.

How do you take yourself seriously? Run yourself as a business.

You can pretend that you are a “small business” and that the company you are working for is not hiring you, but is working with you as a “small business” who is paying you for software development services.

Under the premise of this assumption, you should how to run their own “small business”, certainly first of all, still need their own hard, technical ability to pass. You have to do a solid job of fulfilling each requirement, even better than the requirement requires.

But technical ability alone may not be able to complete the commercial contract. You also need to improve your technical skills to gain recognition, and you need to promote and market yourself by telling people that you are good at it. More blogging, more speaking, more training.

At the same time, you’d better be a small business with expertise or something that other small businesses don’t have. For example, if you are more focused on e-commerce, you are more likely to get an offer from an e-commerce company.

When you run yourself as a business, you approach your work differently, and you grow and reward more.

Get out and socialize a little bit

Programmers tend not to be social, preferring “to be a quiet boy who codes.”

In fact, this is a major taboo in the career development of programmers. Most programmers, because they have been dealing with computers for a long time, have become just too reluctant to deal with people, or not good at dealing with people, because computers are very direct, either 0 or 1, and dealing with people requires a lot of social skills.

But just because of this reason, we need to make up our own shortcomings. After all, we are social animals, and we cannot do anything without communication with people. Especially in the workplace, we need a lot of cooperation and cooperation to do the work well and run the “small business” well.

Another very important reason is that if others are not good at it, but you are good at it, this is exactly your advantage. As mentioned above, to operate as an enterprise, an enterprise must have its own advantages, and it also needs to keep going out and socialize with the outside world to do well.

Marketing yourself

This point is actually closely related to the above two points. As programmers, we are so bad at promoting ourselves and marketing ourselves. It was all quiet work. But if we are too low-key and never advertise ourselves, our talents and abilities will not be known easily. A truly good programmer should have the ability to market himself. For example, as an enterprise, if it does not publicize its products and market its products, how will others know its products are good? Although good wine needs no bush, it’s better to be a programmer.

So how do you market yourself as a programmer?

The main service provided by programmers is technology development service, and the self-marketing of programmers is the marketing of their own technology development service ability. There are at least a few ideas to consider, such as writing a technical blog post, giving a public technical talk, and conducting internal or external technical training. Each of these methods can increase the visibility and influence of the programmer, and it can also be used as a marketing tool.

Set your own career goals

Another problem that people often make is that they don’t have a career goal. Project code after code, but rarely planning their own career goals, the future development path want to be a technical manager? Or are you planning to be a technical architect? Or as a technical consultant?

Anyway, rarely to think, rarely to set such career goals.

If there is no big career goal three or five years from now, there will be no small career goal in the near future. A person without a goal is like a car with no destination. It will either stop tiredly or hit everywhere and fail to achieve.

Second, how to go beyond coding itself to achieve life goals and enjoy life? Develop a second interest

Programmers must have a second interest, a second interest besides coding. This second interest is best developed into a second career, or a second income.

Everyone talks about after-sleep income, which is income generated in other ways than working eight hours, and it’s not proportional to the time invested.

We usually work for how much money, this income is actually proportional to the time investment, a point stop time investment, income stopped.

But “after-sleep income” requires that, after investing in something, it will continue to generate income of its own, even while we sleep, not in proportion to the time we invest.

For example, many programmers rely on writing columns and books. If they write well, many people will reward them and buy their books. The amount of time he takes to write an article is fixed, a one-time investment, but the income generated by the article and book can be continuous and continuous as long as there are people reading and buying it.

Therefore, encourage programmers to find their second interests, and preferably generate after-sleep income from them.

Finance and investment

Investment and finance are also “after-sleep income”, and programmers are among the high-income groups. But not everyone is good with money.

That’s the thing about money. If you don’t manage it, money won’t care about you.

Therefore, it is strongly recommended that programmers learn the knowledge of investment and financial management, so that their income can help us make money, to achieve “income after sleep”, to achieve wealth freedom.

fitness

Programmer group due to long-term overtime, 996 is also common. So many people’s health is not ideal.

We advocate more exercise and more fitness, the body is the capital of the revolution.

Micro habits

Microhabits are important, and this is another word THAT I learned recently and benefited from.

A lot of people, whether it’s exercise or learning English, have a big goal, a big resolution, and then try to spend a big chunk of their time doing it. But it turns out, it’s hard to keep up.

In fact, there is a more simple and easy to adhere to the method, is micro habits, whether you want to learn English or want to exercise, just spend 10-15 minutes every day, recite a few words, do a few push-ups. In the long run it can have a very big effect.

We do not think that the short time spent every day will feel no effect, to believe in the power of time, time will bring change, and this micro habit because of the short time, so it is generally easy to stick to it, you can try.

Note: Faith and purpose must always be in the heart of the programmer.