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by bsder
1717 days ago
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That's a bad "extra". My advice to junior engineers is "take one step extra". Write that test that you should have written. Cover that one edge case you know you blew off. Write that cleaner error message that you should have done in the first place. Pick off a single "FIXME" in the code. Write that comment explaining "why" you just wrote the code this way. The "one step" is the important part. Everybody can take "one step" with just a little effort. But "one step" compounds. Eventually, that "one step extra" becomes your normal and the next "one step" is a little further. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Suddenly, your "one step" is stacked on "10 steps" that are now habitual. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Suddenly your stackup is now "20 steps". Etc. And, suddenly, a couple years later, you find that you are much better at what you do than practically everybody around you. |
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Yep. This is exactly the right way to go. Another great extra: One of the best devs I've ever worked with would find one bug at the end of the day, every day, and kill it. He'd pick based on how much time he had. One developer, killing one bug every day kills over 260 in a year. Oh, and as the bugs die, development accelerates because so much less time is spent on working around bugs.
If you work in an organization that doesn't value and promote those that do extra, find somewhere that does. Work doesn't have to suck... especially developing software.