Some key lessons learned while working professionally as Software Engineer
Lesson number one: This is a marathon and not a sprint! Even every sprint cycle is not a sprint… The key thing here for me was (and still is) the realisation that work should be sustainable but most importantly this is the only way to deliver great results consistently!
Lesson number two: Work-life balance for the standard 40 hours work week does and will never exist! It is pretty much a marketing trick… If you do not believe me just do the full math ;) This is why we need to promote “The sustainable work life movement” instead . (it seems like this not a thing yet, at least from the first few results Google shows me…) But my idea here is that we should strive to make our work life as sustainable over the long period of time as possible. We should really go after our personal wellbeing, which includes:
1. Being in a very good physical shape — doing any kind of sport activity regularly, actually everyday!
2. Being happy about the work we do everyday (actually being very proud of our work) and enjoying even the bad parts/things/days because we can always take something positive out of it :)
3. Making sure we use very well our time outside of work — this includes visiting our family and spending time with them, making sure we do see our friends as often as possible and doing fun things with them, doing anything else that will empower us and make us happy!
Lesson number three: Being in a good environment is crucial — working for a good company, being part of a great team, and working on an interesting and challenging project is needed if you really want to go above and beyond and become great Software Engineer :) No seriously, this is probably the greatest thing about all the companies that form the MANGU+ (Meta, Apple, Netflix, Google, Uber, and every other company like them) league!
Lesson number four: The Engineering culture is super important! Probably a book can be written about that… And we should all feel lucky because there are not one or two books about it :) But since I’ve so far read (I have not finished it yet) only one book and I really like that book I will recommend it directly. This is the very famous book about Software Engineering at Google. And we should feel extra lucky about it because thanks to the Abseil project by Google we can all read it for free at https://abseil.io/resources/swe-book :)
Lesson number five: There is no short path to become really great Software Engineer! It takes time and awful a lot of practice! While being in a good environment can help a little bit in the end this is something that depends only on us… The strive for perfection can only come within, there is no other way! And this is actually good because we all saw what it means to be a truly elite athlete today by watching the phenomenal game between Argentina and France as part of the FIFA world cup in Qatar! This game will be remembered for a very very long period of time, it was just so amazing!
