Tips to succeed as a programmer (Facebook engineering Notes)

Timeless advice for any software engineer!<p>The one thing to add (related to 1 and 3) is:<p><pre><code> *do not focus completely on the technology. learn what's around it also*. </code></pre> I once worked for a company where 1 week/month the managers would work in 1 department (as regular team members). With the hands-on feedback, they would improve the process/team/business. Needless to say, that company was making profits in the 2008-2009 "dark-age period".<p>The main lesson for me is that software is the business where you learn about &#38; improve other businesses. The value is that you get to understand better the world (business) around you. That way you can avoid building "innovative products" that no one needs.

Counterpoint: patio11's <a href="http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/" rel="nofollow">http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pro...</a>.

<i>1. Look for jobs that will let you program. ...  You want your job title to be ‘software developer,’ ‘software engineer,’ ‘programmer,’ ‘coder</i><p>Followed by<p><i>Goranka Bjedov is a capacity engineer </i><p>Hmm.

I love how I can just read the bullet points and glean 90%-95% of what the post is about. So many blogs waste words.

Reading code always worried me. That was always my biggest deficit in school - I couldn't just pick up someone else's code and dive in, it took a lot of effort to understand anything more than the most basic code.<p>Of course, now I'm not in a programming job, so I can only imagine I've gotten worse.

in fact, these are valuable lessons for any position. Specially, the last one.<p>1. Look for jobs that will let you &#60;do whatever you want to do&#62;. 2. Don’t give up on becoming &#60;whatever you want to become&#62;. 3. Learn how to take charge of your career.

Crisp and to the point. Likes it.

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