Things you need to learn to Become A Senior Angular Developer

Hello for those who are interested in becoming a senior Angular developer! The labor market in the field of IT is on the rise, even despite the crisis because of pandemic. Nowadays, especially senior developers are needed in many companies. Constant demand in the market, high salaries, really difficult and serious tasks, respect from the colleagues in the industry – the constant attributes of seniors. What do you need to do to become a senior? What skills do you need to have? How can you become the best in your work and be proud of it? I have gathered some experience from several senior developers about our today’s topic and some other issues and provided you with 5 qualities and 20 most useful tips that will help you to become a senior developer.

What qualities differentiate a junior developer from a senior one?

• Ability to see the system “from above” and have a wide view of the project. Any project is designed to solve some business goals, and a sure sign of a senior developer will be made in such a way, so that he can see not only modules and classes  in the system, but also business processes and people involved in them, – system users. This is an important thing to do when planning a project architecture.
• High level of responsibility. Responsibility is manifested not only in the quality of their tasks, but also in the willingness to take responsibility for the whole project: to see possible problems and bugs, to optimize the system, and if not to do it yourself, then better to tell about the occuring problems for managers and suggest possible solutions.
• Ability to convey your opinion. Often, a senior developer writes not only the code, but also performs the duties of a team member. In addition, he or she often has the task of monitoring and training other developers, introducing the particularities of the project to the newcomers, conducting a code review and the like. All this requires certain good communication skills and the ability to convey your point of view. It is not enough to know the right decision, you need to be able to justify it and explain it to the team.
• Knowledge of technology stack. It is simply necessary to monitor the development of your technology stack in the constantly changing IT environment. It is necessary to follow updates, new functionality and versions, to be aware of the optimal solutions to typical tasks, to use them competently in your code and to recommend them to the team.
• General erudition and creativity. This primarily applies, of course, to technical erudition: knowledge of languages, technologies, the ability to deploy projects or customize the work environment. However, the senior developer, and any developer in general, must remember that for the car there is no such thing as convenience or beauty, technology in general is forced to adapt to human limitations and imperfections. The ability to see atypical solutions, to bring your experience from the real world, turn your work into a hobby that brings enjoyment, hobby or just a habit of learning something new, in the implementation of the solution that is being developed, helps a lot in the sphere of software development.

What do you need to do to grow to a senior developer?

1. Write code. Too much code: some things only come with experience. A big plus will be the diversity, and the more different projects – the better. It will be useful to participate in large projects, invaluable experience will bring work with high-load systems. It should be noted that in food companies, where the team has been working on one project for years, you do not need to be aware of many different things, you need to know the project itself and its variety of tasks, but know it very well. In large companies there are always a variety of tasks and the opportunity to try yourself in what you have not done before, here is a useful knowledge of different languages and platforms. Everyone, of course, has their own opinion, but diversity is a big plus, because it allows you to learn something new while staying in the same team.
2. Work in a strong team. You can only grow professionally when you are following someone who is smarter and more experienced, and much better in his job. Motivation not to let down those who appreciate you is included. It is necessary to communicate within the team. If you are spinning in your thoughts, you will not be able to get new ideas and points of view, to quickly find the most effective solutions. It is necessary to discuss tasks and problems, to ask and to study.
3. Accumulate ready-made solutions. The more ready-made solutions you have for various problems and tasks, the more valuable you are as a specialist and, as the result, the faster you work.
4. Always see the challenge in the tasks you are accomplishing. A professional is not someone who does only interesting work, but someone who can make any work interesting for himself.
5. Teach. Teaching perfectly helps to put material in the head, to find gaps in your knowledge. By answering students’ questions, you come to thoughts that are unlikely to come to your mind just during your work. The need to argue one’s position also develops the communication skills very well that are so necessary in effective teamwork.
6. Have reference resources. If you have a source of reference resources, then you can use them while developing an app or a website. It is impossible to know and remember absolutely everything, but it is not necessary if you know where to find the information you need. Having accumulated resources (books, sites, forums) with good materials on various technologies, you will be able to accelerate the work.
7. Stay up-to-date in the world of IT. Languages ??and technologies are constantly changing, new versions of frameworks are being released, new approaches are emerging. A good developer must “swim in it” and be aware of all the latest developments. There are different ways to do this – to participate in conferences, pass certifications and workshops, communicate with people, read thematic forums. Each of them has its advantages and disadvantages, but the essence does not change: you need to know about all the latest changes.
8. Don’t be afraid to experiment. New ideas and approaches need to be tested in practice – this is the only way to understand what they are worth. To build something, you need to break something ten times. The same approach works in software engineering.
9. Know the hot keys and do your best with the keyboard. Well, in general – optimize your workflows. This also includes the ten-finger method of printing. You just start doing things faster, increasing your productivity.
10.  It is good to deal with tools. IDE, debugger and teamwork will be a great help to increase efficiency!
11.  Learn English. This is useful for any developer, but for seniors it is a must-have, including spoken language skills. There are many reasons for this: from the fact that most of the interesting articles, conferences and books are published in English, to the fact that the letters and specifications on your project can only be in this language, and customers may come mostly from Europe and America.
12.  Be flexible. A senior developer must remember that everything changes and be prepared to change his own opinion. If you were right a year ago, that doesn’t mean you’re right now. You have to admit your mistakes. Often people do not do this out of arrogance and fear of losing credibility, which I consider to be wrong. You need to be able not only to correct the consequences of your mistake, but also to admit that you were wrong.
13.  Relax. If you do one thing all the time, you burn out quickly. Conversely, if you are distracted, you work more efficiently when you return. This can be applied to any programmer. It is very useful for a developer to travel: it not only broadens the horizons, but also helps to look at familiar things and issues from a different angle. It is very cool to go in for sports. In general, any hobby is useful.
14.  Not only to take, but also to give. And not only because it’s a great feature of character itself, but also with a very selfish purpose – to check how good and useful your code is for other people. This can be an account with an open source code on GitHub or answers and recommendations on thematic sites like Stack Overflow.

And finally – what not to do:

• Stop at what has been achieved. Even if you have achieved a lot.
• Be afraid to make a mistake. Unfortunately, except in obvious cases, senior developers learn only from their own mistakes.
• Write code at home! Let the brain rest.

Conclusion

So, I hope that you are now motivated enough to improve your hard and soft skills and already on your way to become a senior developer. Follow these tips and recommendations and think positively. Good luck!