Being a talented developer is not enough - a lot of you think that if you’re a great developer, money, opportunities, work progression, its all going to come your way.

Going to burst that bubble for you real quick

Jump to this weeks Career Advice section and take a look at what box you’re in

• Poor, Average, Good, Exceptional

But first - answer which of the 4 you think you are, then read the career section and answer that again

JOBS

The final boss

If you don’t know RemoteOk, you’ve got to seriously question your life also be sure to follow the founder Pieter Levels on Twitter/X

This is one of the best remote job boards, it’s active, it’s constantly got new roles and new companies signing up and Pieter is awesome - honestly just binge his content and find interviews of him on Youtube

Think you’ll be plenty inspired

As usual, find the company on LinkedIn - reach out to their founders, devs, and HR

CAREER ADVICE

Some boxes you don’t want to be in

If you’re in the first 2 boxes 2025 needs to be the year you get the @#$% out of them

It goes without saying, the first two boxes suck to be in

The third is where you should be by default - and you have to be honest with yourself here, only about 30% of all devs i’ve ever met (have met hundreds) fall into the blue bucket and about 5% fall into the green one

So how do we get to blue and green buckets?

1. Ask for feedback - tangibly act on it

Most people get feedback - get pissed off by it - but will say “thank you for the feedback, it was great, i’ll definitely work on it” - then continue to not work on it and bitch to coworkers or friends about it

You should visibly improve on the advice offered in the feedback

Not including enough test coverage in your code? Not documenting and commenting on your code? Not taking ownership of features and delivery?

Don’t just start doing those things, also highlight it to your team and managers - Show them how much your test coverage has increased since the feedback 3 months ago, show them how your code is nicely commented and documented - explain how you took charge of a feature and deliverable

You have to show your managers and team that the feedback was not just all talk

2. Communicate and deliver the best updates

How often have you or a teammate said “yeah everything is running great, no blockers” and then literally the next day, the outcome has not been delivered?

How many of you have heard from business or a stakeholder an outcome or feature, only to then be completely taken by surprise, when the delivered outcome does not meet expectations or does but isn’t actually needed at all?

This is all because of sucky communication 

You’re scared to deliver bad news (more on that later) and you don’t communicate details at all - “yeah we have a dependency with X” or “still working on the database issue” or “we are on track, everything’s good”

No one knows what that really means

1. give meaningful context

2. communicate more often - if you are asked for a status update, you’ve lost, you should update so well and frequently, that they have no need to ask for updates

3. have actionable items - if you’ve left a meeting or just joined, what do you need to do, by when, who needs to know about it etc

3. Get ahead of bad news

This really - I deal with it all the time, and its crazy that it still happens at a professional and senior level

It grinds my gears that you are so afraid of telling me something isn’t going well, that you keep it to yourself, till it eventually comes up… only acceptable at Junior level… otherwise… not at all acceptable

Managers, bosses, companies, hate surprises - mostly because they are almost always negative

• deadline was missed

• feature is buggy

• client’s unhappy

This is why communication (point 2) is so important, these would not have been surprises if you had great and meaningful communication.

But if you do have bad news - get it out early, get it out proactively (i.e. have some ideas on how to resolve it and the capacity to do so), when you do take on resolving the issue, keep everyone updated regularly.

4. Anticipate needs and requirements

Most of us live in a Jira ticket world - a ticket is opened, assigned and worked on

Very few look up and around them to see;

• what information are we constantly missing?

• what are common problems we’ve been facing?

• what are we currently doing thats slowing us down?

Find answers to these questions, recommend solutions to them, implement them and communicate them

5. Make me look good

When I look good, you look good

Find out what your managers are doing, what their goals and responsibilities are and what outcomes they are measured on - help them meet those

It’s basic, but you often overlook it, because you are so focused on

1. making yourself look good

2. making yourself not look bad

But when you help your boss look good, they know they have to keep you around and look after you so that you can keep helping them to look good

INTERVIEW ADVICE

Honestly just read the above but also

Have some stories for the above 5 points

1. Talk about a time when you notable improved performance based on feedback, have a reference available to back up the story

2. Share stories of how you are a thoughtful communicator and give context and specificity to the work done

3. Explain how you shared bad news and share how you handle situations where there is an undesirable outcome

4. Talk through how you solved problems that were helpful and beneficial but not originally scoped or thought of

5. Share stories of how you made others look good

It’s so easy to interview well when you are a good or great candidate - its difficult otherwise

Btw, if you’ve made it this far and you haven’t dropped yourself to one box below where you first thought you started or at the least to the bottom of the current box - i’ve got some bad news for you ;))

THATS A WRAP

Before you go: Here’s 3 ways I can help you

1. LinkedIn - I’m always hiring - but only 2 to 4 people a month - connect with me on and send me your CV - currently, I only hire people with 7 or more years of experience - if you have less, but are EXCEPTIONAL, i’ll make exceptions

2. Youtube - i’m always making content to help you out, subscribe and binge

3. Free Career Advice - i’m going to be giving away CV feedback for early subscribers for free, I usually charge $100 for a resume roast - i’ll make a recording and send you feedback - just reply back to this email with your CV - its totally free for first 10 people