Trust is the foundation of an effective software team. A team that is empowered and trusted is more likely to speak up and address pervasive technical issues that could threaten disaster for a company. 

Quitting a job can be a delicate time, there’s definitely a right way and a wrong way to go about it. However, it can be an opportunity to strengthen relationships with your employer, by providing feedback and helping them to understand your reasoning to leave.

Debugging is an art. An art that is honed and crafted over many years and after finding many bugs – you develop a six sense to where problems might originate or how they might be fixed. However, some bugs are just too damn hard to fix quickly – in which case you’ll need the scientific method.

Being in control of your emotions and your reactions to situations is crucial as a team member and as a leader.

As software developers we don’t take a lot of interest in our own “emotions” and we often neglect how much they have the ability to improve or detriment our careers.

Throughout my career I have found metaphors to be an incredible tool. Good use of metaphors shows how you are someone who can communicate strongly, especially when it comes to big, complicated issues. In fact I’ve even talked about my top 3 metaphors before.

We often grow from the situations that make us uncomfortable. There was one situation, in the New Hampshire wilderness that definitely taught me a valuable lesson in monitoring how you respond to stress when leading a group.

If there’s one thing I’ve seen across every leader that I’ve worked with over the years, it is that they are calm under pressure. The world might seem to be crumbling around them, but they hold it together for the sake of the team. Most leaders don’t become calm under pressure by chance, they achieve it through deliberate practice and by having a process.

Asking questions is incredibly important as a skill – knowing when and how to ask questions can really drive your development and not knowing how and when asking is important can leave you missing out on so many opportunities.

As software developers – our world is increasingly complex with each line of code. As technology progresses, we’re given more tools and more jargon. Our language can quickly separate us from the others that work around us, and isolate those that don’t really understand. It’s a developers job to try and make their work and their communication as simple as possible. One way to achieve simpler communication is through metaphors.