2 Simple Habits to Make You a Better Enterprise Software Engineer

Take your software engineering career to the next level with these straightforward, actionable habits.

In my first post-collegiate job, I was thrown into a whirlwind of new technologies, emails, management, and JIRAs. I was barely keeping afloat while getting the hang of all the new skills I needed to transition from a student to a professional.

Eventually, I began to settle into the new role. I knew what to expect from daily meetings and could complete a change (with tests!) all on my own. The initial boost of new skills to learn when becoming a professional started to wear off. I started to wonder, is there all there is? Continually chasing my proverbial tail trying to be “up to date” on the latest tech?

I came to my mentor with one question: “How do I keep growing?” I fully expected him to tell me to learn a new technology or work more hours. Instead, I received 2 simple, actionable habits that had nothing to do with technology. Since then, my career trajectory has taken off like a rocket.

Over Deliver

I completed my code changes slightly ahead of schedule and with a high level of quality. I practiced the Clean Code and was always seeking feedback. My manager evaluated me positively for my performance, but not exceptionally. I felt ready to grow, but my manager didn’t seem to share that feeling. I was frustrated by the humdrum day to day work, and I was ready for more. Why didn’t my manager ask me to take on new, exciting projects? What was I missing?

My mentor explained to me the importance of over-delivering. If you want your manager to give you more responsibility, show them that you can do more work. Why should my manager trust me to handle new things without any evidence that I could? All I had shown was that I could handle my current workload. If I was ready for more, I should certainly be able to show that through my work.

Good Enough Is Not Good Enough

In school, doing “enough” was generally all you needed to get the highest marks possible. There was no reason to do anything extra because it did not contribute to your success. If anything, it slowed you down. The results graph looked like this:

However, nearly the opposite is true at work. Doing the minimum effort required to complete your tasks is the standard. There is very little reward for simply doing what is asked. The results graph looks more like this:

Not only is there no upper limit to the results you can attain at work, but extra effort begets more results, not less. A little bit of over-delivery causes a lot of extra results. Over delivering is simple — just do more than you were asked to do.

Armed with the knowledge of the impact of effort, my mentor advised me to keep the following habit: For every 4 tasks assigned to you, complete 1 extra task. By doing this, I instill in my manager and peers alike that I am efficient and effective enough to continually do more than what was asked.

Shortly after implementing this practice, my manager was excited to bestow me with new responsibilities. Obviously, I could handle not only my current tasks but I could be creative and find ways to provide additional value.

Here are a few simple ideas to provide bonus value to your team:

1. Complete an extra change from the backlog. Preferably, something high priority or that your manager has specifically asked for but no one has had time to do.
2. Make quality of life change for developers, or refactor a component that has been causing trouble.
3. Create or update documentation and training materials.
4. Create a tool or process to help your team be more productive. For example, a testing framework or build process upgrade.

Read

I was happily cruising along, regularly over-delivering, and steadily growing my responsibilities and expertise. By continuing to over-deliver, I consistently learned new incremental skills. I focused heavily on the quality of my work, which gave me incremental gains in my existing skills. As I took on new responsibilities and engaged in over-delivery, I was able to learn and master new adjacent skills.

After a few months of this, I settled into this cycle of incrementally improving my skills. I became the subject matter expert in a few technological and business domains. I helped to educate other new folks as they grew into their own roles. But what is my next step? I feel like I’m growing, but it’s still not substantially different than what I already do.

Incremental Is Not Enough

What I needed was a fundamental change. I was looking for brand-new skills and ideas that were also applicable to my daily work. What is the source of such new ideas? The answer was simple: read a book.

By reading, you can engage deeply with new ideas. No matter what you read about, there will always be cross-applicability. Choose a topic and just start reading. The best advice I received was to plan out 30 minutes of your day just to read. Block it off on your calendar and stick to it. Once you are in the habit of reading regularly, you can try incorporating a variety of genres:

1. Self-Improvement (Effective Executive by the legendary Peter Drucker)
2. Software Engineering Theory (Clean Code and Design Patterns are both classics)
3. Entrepreneurship (Zero to One is my favorite)
4. Your Industry (I’m in Finance, so I read The Incerto)
5. Technology (I’m currently working through Cloud Native Java)

By reading these books, I expanded my worldview from the immediate concerns of my job to many high-level ideas. Implementing those ideas and taking action on them has provided immeasurable value to my career. The simplest way to impress upon your boss and peers that you are going places in your career is to be a consistent source of new ideas. This heavily implies that you are not only doing your job but also thinking about your job.

The best part is, books are free from the library. Too lazy to go to the library like me? Use an app like Libby and read free books on your favorite kindle device (or phone). The impending deadline of having to return the book helps keep me on track with reading.

Success Follows Habits

Consistency was key in my career. By sticking to over-delivery and consistent reading, I was always a step or two ahead of where my manager expected me to be. My career began to take off, and in 3 short years, I’ve taken over the functional architecture of our client’s new flagship payments product. I’m certain that if you stick to it, you will crush your goals too.

1. For every 4 assigned tasks, deliver 1 extra.
2. Read daily.

And, if you like reading, here are some recommendations

21 Books Java Developers Should Read in 2020
_Hello folks, If you are Java developer and wondering what to read in the remaining of 2020, then you have come to the…_medium.com

6 Coding Books Every Programmers and Software Developers should Read
_Coding is an integral part of Programming, and we all somehow learned to code by following examples here and there…_medium.com