How to Effectively Skill Up As A Developer?

Do you feel adequately skilled in the market as a software developer? Do you get lost in conversations about tech outside of your work and wonder if you are staying relevant? If your answer to these questions are Yes, you are not alone!

The software development world has one constant, and that is change!

New programming languages, tools, frameworks, environments, devices are all born regularly. By the time you master one framework, your friend is talking about a cool new framework. What is the strategy to stay relevant and skill up as a software developer?

I like to start off by sharing some of my personal experiences as a developer.

I started off my tech career as a C++ developer, few years later I was put on a team that was doing Java. A few years later, I quit my job and joined a startup. We were evaluating technologies and picked React Native to build mobile apps. Within a span of few years, I moved from C++, to Java, to JavaScript. I transitioned from a desktop developer to a mobile and web developer.

Today I am an Author of tech courses, Blogger, Speaker at conferences, Co-host of a tech podcast and a Software Consultant. So how do I do this and keep up?

Note: You can follow me on twitter @AdhithiRavi to learn more about me and keep in touch!

Don’t Live in a Bubble

When we begin our careers we are enthusiastic and all pumped up to be great. As the years pass by, we get older, get married, kids arrive, and our career just becomes a job that feeds the family. This is the cycle for most of us in any career path. It is not necessarily bad, but being a software developer, also means that tech changes and we have to skill up and stay relevant.

Don’t get sucked up within your company, over-work and miss opportunities outside of it.

There are exciting opportunities and people outside of just the company that we work for and the first step is to recognize that. It is easy to get caught up in a bubble within a company and sometimes just stepping out of the bubble and seeing what’s around can be enlightening.