Forbidden Career Advice for Software Developers
The Stuff No One Tells You
I want to offer you some politically incorrect career advice.
The stuff that took me years to figure out that the gurus on LinkedIn won’t ever tell you because, and listen closely here:
They don’t get it.
They’re writing for the college grads trying to break into Google. Not the father of a newborn trying to switch careers.
I came into tech as an extreme outsider. It wasn’t just that I didn’t have a CS degree. A year before I landed my first coding job I had an intervention (yes, that kind of intervention). I didn’t even own a computer as an adult. Between me and you, I don’t like video games either.
Don’t judge me.
Fast forward 7 years from that intervention and I’d become an engineering manager and landed multiple roles at start ups in the SF Bay Area.
Unfortunately, even though you might be smarter than me, you’re probably trying to plan your career using an outdated playbook.
Let’s get into it.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions
Most career advice you read online is nicely packaged fluff that sounds amazing but is usually written by people who either:
- Never really worked as developers (this is shockingly common)
- Work in massive tech orgs with clear structure
- Have a very traditional background (CS degree and/or coding in teen years)
This doesn’t make their advice bad at all. It’s just unlikely to work for career changers and those of us outside Big Tech.
I’ve made too many mistakes over the years to count and learned a hell of a lot by going from crime to coding in my 30’s.
Here’s what I wish someone had told me:
Be Likable && Be Undeniable
(It’s ok to be a personality hire first… and a technical hire second)
At a junior level, you’re not competing technically with mid-level and senior engineers. You’re competing on communication, clarity, adaptability, and energy.
In other words: it is completely fine to be a “personality hire.” In fact, that’s what you should be striving for.
Being a personality hire basically means you have potential and you’re “likable.”
What people actually mean by “likable” is:
- Can you explain your thinking clearly?
- Can you accept feedback without shutting down?
- Can you communicate technical decisions like a human being?
- Do you make the room calmer, and easier to work in?
Too many people who are genuinely nice completely fall apart when the interview starts. They clam up. They ramble. They get defensive.
This kills offers faster than any technical weakness ever will.
If you want to improve this fast:
- Record yourself explaining a technical concept.
- Watching it back will hurt your feelings — but it will fix your communication.
- Put yourself on camera often.
- Nervous on video === nervous in interviews.
- Learn the language of developers.
- Read 1 or 2 books about software (Clean Code and Phoenix Project are 2 of my favorites). Learn common design patterns. If you come from a non-traditional path, this is how you close the credibility gap.
Likability can be enough when you first start. Then you must be good at the thing.
Be undeniable in your talent not only for your career but for yourself.
Prove to yourself this isn’t a fluke.
That means taking the assignments no one wants, learning the boring systems no one touches, and becoming the person who quietly unblocks the rest of the team.
Your first job is for validation and learning, not coasting.
The Highest Paying Skill You Don’t Have Yet
(learning how to interview > learning how to code)
This is an unfair reality in tech:
Interviewing is the single highest-leverage skill you will ever develop as a software engineer.
Interviewing creates optionality.
It gives you confidence.
It makes you layoff-resilient.
It increases your income more directly than anything else.
And the sooner you accept this, the faster you’ll rise.
Your pass rate will be low.
That’s normal.
Interviewing is a volume game.
The reason I got good interviews wasn’t because I was “naturally talented” — it was because I did dozens of mock interviews on Pramp.com and studied my ass off.
I read the system design books from Alex Xu, built common data structures from scratch and learned when to apply them. I recommend AlgoExpert but have heard great things about NeetCode as well.
Learning is hard but the mock interviews are what made the biggest difference. This prepared me for “game time.”
I’ve personally seen people earn $10k… $20k… even $50k more simply by being slightly better at interviewing.
Personally, I increased my salary 400% by getting better at interviewing. Seriously.
You can check out that story here.
Small improvements create massive opportunities.
Here’s something you’re not going to like:
You should be interviewing every six months even when you have a job. That’s how you know:
- If you’re underpaid
- If you’re overpaid
- If your skills translate in today’s market
- If you’re actually “safe” in a downturn
- If you still have options when you need them
The best time to interview is when you already have a job.
The worst time is after you’ve been laid off.
Become an Influencer
(literally and figuratively)
Yes, I mean this literally — and figuratively.
I can’t believe I’m writing this but… I became a tech influencer.
I love to write and I also have a business to run.
I didn’t expect it, but it opened up ridiculous amounts of opportunity: selling products, building my business, monetizing my content, and becoming highly discoverable on LinkedIn.
It also has downsides.
Some recruiters have ghosted me the second they saw I owned a business or because of things I wrote.
Writing online has been 99% upside however. Consider putting yourself out there and sharing what you’re learning. Be anti-cringe.
I have some templates you can grab if you want to give it a shot.
But here’s the part you need to understand:
You don’t HAVE to become a social media creator.
But you should aim to have influence wherever you work.
Influence starts small:
- Ask questions in meetings.
- Volunteer to run something small like an epic.
- Shadow the people doing the critical work.
- Emulate the best people on the team — copy their habits and style.
- Improve processes, culture, documentation, onboarding if you’re more junior and technical projects are outside your depth.
- Lead postmortems or stand-ups.
This is how you build actual leadership practice without the title.
This is how you become someone others trust.
A title without influence just makes you a manager nobody respects.
Influence first.
Title later.
And once you have influence, loyalty becomes a tool, not an obligation.
Loyalty is Overrated
(and resume driven development is ok)
Early in your career, job-hop.
It’s the fastest way to lift your salary trajectory.
But eventually you need to stay somewhere long enough to see how your decisions play out. That’s how you grow.
It’s also a hell of a lot easier to get promoted from within and then take that title with you to the next job.
Here’s my personal rule:
You can leave after you’ve delivered something impactful enough to write about.
A measurable outcome.
A big improvement.
A cultural shift.
A feature with real results.
Get 2 of those, and you can leave — even if it’s been 9 months.
Impact is impact.
Resume-driven development isn’t necessarily bad — in fact it’s a great way to guide your decisions towards which projects you want to tackle.
If you do this ethically it’s a win for you and the team.
Lastly, it’s OK to be Average:
(why chase what you don’t want?)
I wrote this article assuming fast career trajectory and increased salary are goals of yours.
The steps I suggested will be stressful. You will need to consider if it’s worth it.
Being average was my original goal when I started coding and honestly, that’s not a terrible goal.
Average developers keep the machine running. They build the features, fix the bugs and don’t necessarily want to play politics or build side projects on the weekends.
Perhaps your passion is outside coding.
However — if you DO want to rise up the ranks faster, have more optionality and more money, then playing it safe will not work.
In this case, playing it “safe” is the riskiest thing you can do.
What works in real life and what sounds good in a LinkedIn post are often violently opposed.
Good luck in whatever path you decide to take.
If you’re serious about actually making a career pivot and not just thinking about it or watching more tutorials, but truly building the skills and the mindset that make you employable then join Parsity and learn how to do exactly that.
