A Bunch of 'Year Ones'

A more junior colleague recently asked me: "If you had to give one piece of [professional] advice, what would it be?" Without hesitation, I said: avoid repeating year one. Funny thing, I think about this answer a lot.

When I stepped into my first development role in 2005, I thought I had made it. This was it, I was set for life now. Convinced that school (read: endless learning) was behind me, I set off on this adventure with no idea how monumental a thing I was starting. Like any new hire, I struggled at first… production ready code is not the same thing as a graded software lab.

After my first year in the role, I thought I was kind of a big deal. I was well on my way to becoming a team lead. A short while later, I was a "Lead Developer". Oh man, this was aces. I stayed in this role for a handful of "year ones". I probably wouldn't have left except for an economic downturn relieving me of the role.

In my next second role, I wasn't a team lead but I was decent at my job. During that time, I had some exposure to the company's software architect. The work he was doing was blowing my mind. Design Patterns? Coding Best Practices? I was a "senior developer" so there was no way these concepts should be alien, let alone hard for me. I pretended to wrap my head around what I saw as the holy grail of software development. If I could just master these "pattern" things, I could be a something greater than senior. It never dawned on me that I was just starting to scratch the surface of my craft.

This was a pretty common pattern for me. Learn enough to do my job but never really understand anything with greater depth. Several years later, a long time colleague, mentor, and friend approached me at a social event and convinced me to come work with him again. This would mark the beginning of a new chapter in my life.

Up until that point in my story, I had been a simple coder. I wrote fairly fragile applications and crossed my fingers at every production push. Everything I had understood up to this point made me think that this was how our world worked. I had unintentionally sheltered myself from the great leaders of our profession. We were solidly in the information age and yet, I was not drinking from the collective firehose. Looking back on myself, I was junior. I repeated year one, over and over again.

So, this is my advice: do not repeat year one. It's the advice I wish I could go back and knock into the stubborn head of a younger self. Our craft is beautiful. Our craft is magic. Our craft is also vast and to fully embrace it is to embrace a lifetime of learning. To embrace it is to push the boundaries of our collective human intelligence. There is no end to the things you can learn. There is no end to the things you will learn. Never assume you know everything.

I encourage you to read books, listen to podcasts, attend conferences, listen to audiobooks, take free or paid courses, ask questions. Network and find mentors. No more year ones.

This article originally appeared on LinkedIn: A Bunch of 'Year Ones'