I’ve just read “Software Craftmanship” authored by Sandro Marcuso. It gave me some thoughts on my career, few ideas that I wish I would hear earlier.

1. You are the one who controls your career

It sounds so obvious, since I started my first programming project as a hobby I always knew that I am the only one person that will be taking care of my development. I was reading books, blogs and trying to expand my knowledge through any possible resource until…

I’ve got my first programming job. The first few months were awesome, there was so much stuff to learn, and so many new things for a junior developer I’ve been at the time. After initial months of ultra-rapid growth where my head was exploding from new knowledge, I’ve hitten a plateau. The tasks became repetitive, there were fewer and fewer unexpected things for me. I realized that I am not learning anything new. But what I did at this moment?

Miraculously, instead of learning new things by myself as I’ve been doing all my life I’ve started thinking “the company is not doing anything to help me grow”. Was it really the company’s fault?

Not at all! I’ve fallen into a trap and sitted there for way too long. After a long period I realized that it’s my responsiblity to do something for my career. It’s always yours responsibility to take care of your career. You will leave your company sooner or later and growth is only yours interest.

The painful truth is:

Some programming jobs are nothing different from working in a factory, once you become an expert at solving some kind of procedure that generates value then nobody has any interest in expanding your knowledge

If you find out yourself in a spot where most of your tasks are repetitive, there is no technical challenges at your position and there are no opportunities for promotion: get the heck out of this place. I mean, first let’s do everything possible to change this situation, but if nothing changes then it’s the only option.

Don’t wait, it won’t get better.

I was rejecting this thought as telling my boss that I want to leave was extremely stressful for me, I’d been delaying it for months just because it was too scary for me, it was very bad as I’ve waited until I was completely desperate to change something.

If you feel that you have to change something then don’t let your fears delay the decision.