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by dglass 1547 days ago
Shameless plug, but I think you should take a look at my book Junior to Senior that is soon to be published by Holloway[0]. Like other commenters have mentioned, the best way for junior devs to sharpen their technical skills is to just put in the work. Lean on your senior engineers to help the juniors develop the good skills and kick the bad habits.

Not enough managers push their junior devs to work on developing their soft skills early on, so they're left figuring these things out later in their career, but those are some of the most important things that will help them grow into an effective engineer.

Here are the general topics my book covers:

1. Choosing a career path (IC vs. Manager, generalist vs. specialist)

2. Qualities of a senior engineer

3. How to deal with imposter feelings

4. Working with your manager

5. What to do when you make mistakes

6. How to ask good questions

7. How to read unfamiliar code

8. Adding value

9. Managing risk

10. Delivering results

11. How to communicate effectively

12. Work life balance

13. How to ask for a promotion to a senior role

I also started a substack newsletter to cover these topics are more. [1]

[0]: https://www.holloway.com/b/junior-to-senior [1]: https://newsletter.beginner.dev/

1 comments

I have to admit, you're hitting all the points I'd love to learn about. Any idea of the release date, price, and if there will be a print copy?
Unfortunately we don't have a definite release date yet. The manuscript is complete so we're about to bring in an editor and get the book ready for publication. Pricing hasn't been finalized but if I had to guess it would be around $30 USD or possibly a little higher. There's an email list you can sign up for on the link in my original comment if you'd like to be notified when the book is available.

Initially it will be published on the web, but eventually the plan is to release a print copy as well.