How To Grow As a Junior Developer To Senior | 5 Tips

Today, I want to talk about what it takes to actually move past being a junior developer up to the senior level.

We all strive to do this one day.

What does it take?
What practices should you start now to achieve this?
What skills do you need?

In this video, I'll give you 5 tips for you to help you navigate from your junior developer position up to a mid to senior level.

Tune in!

Timestamps
00:00 Intro
01:16 1 Time
02:53 2 Soft skills
06:01 3 Technical skills
07:50 4 Decision making
08:55 5 Interaction
09:47 Outro

Video resources

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** My Coding Blueprints **
Both FREE in the Travis Media Community

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LET'S CONNECT!

#juniordeveloper #seniordeveloper #juniortosenior #softwaredevelopment

** Some of the links in this description may be affiliate links that I may get a little cut of. Thank you.

[aipujols]

Great video, Thanks!

Conclusion from the final part:
1. Be patient with the time in the trenches
2. Develop your soft skills
3. Develop your technical skills
4. Become a decision maker
5. Practice interacting with others on the team.

[calebmatteis]

This was a great video!!!! I'm in that phase of wanting to rush the process of being a mid-developer. Great insight!!

[CamilleO]

Thank you Travis as always!❤ Someone told me "Smile will put you way ahead of the competition". Soft skills aren't emphasized enough, thanks for doing it!!

[SreeOne]

Excellent, Crisp, clean, usable talk to take from point A to Point B. Good job expert. Thank you.

[Bol_imla]

Thanks a lot for this coding insight..Am still new to programming and now learning JavaScript .Am energized by this video

[StanleySI]

You are a great lecturer. I like pauses in your speech and how you present your logic.

[artanme]

I tried to explain why I used mongoDB once and I panic, started shaking and thought I was gonna faint! For me soft skills are the hardest

[roy]

Something that is really important to keep in mind when moving onto the "decision making" phase as a jr developer looking to take on more sr roles: Do it in a way that does not outshine those above you. I hate that this is a thing, but people get jealous and threatened when an inexperienced upstart begins trying to call the shots. There are ways to sound confident and capable, but also subtly so, with humility. Do not overrule anyone who is more senior than you, and when you make suggestions, word them as just that: suggestions (taking on the structure of "here are some ideas rolling around in my head, but what are your thoughts?" so they always have room to provide input on your ideas). Be participative and eager to contribute, and don't shy away from suggesting ideas, but tread very carefully if your eagerness ever puts you at a crossroads against your seniors. It's unfortunately the game we have to play, but if you participate by uplifting other people's ideas while contributing your own, and at the same time making sure you think hard before you disagree with your seniors or do anything that outperforms them, and I think your path to seniordom will be less rocky.

[mbtyezn]

Great videos .I could relate to almost all of the thing you said as jr.developer.

[tomswan]

As softskill and in written explanations i use following technique:

I use the technique from novels/history, I start with the action and only after involving the reader I start explaining backgrounds. Means not like Dickens where he explains first the weather, the way, the hills and gets to action only after 5 pages.
Like I start first with conclusions and then details and how I got from some assumptions to the conclusions.


Means i formulate everything to reach the conclusions, then rewrite it with the practical things in the beginning and then the boring details step by step.^^

[Adrian-rlyv]

Great video.

For all of these tips though, I think you kinda need a base line level of technical knowledge to pull off any of them effectively. For example, you can interact with your colleagues and ask them "How's your work? What've you been up to? Are you stuck at something?" But without a certain level of knowledge, once they answer your questions, you would have no idea what they're really talking about, and how to follow up, and the convo would be over. Same with decision making and soft skills. You need knowledge to even start speaking up and saying things that do matter. I myself am far from a "good talker", but I find that when I do have the relevant knowledge and experience, it becomes much easier for me to just speak up what I know and what I think - I don't have to fake any particular emotion or try to come up with something to say when I don't have anything to say.

Which is why, I totally agree with the idea that you really need to possess firm fundamentals, and to acquire a breadth of knowledge. Even though the idea is try to improve upon all these areas at the same time, I think a good starting point would still be to first work on your techincal knowledge.

[iYB]

I always love your content as a software engineer myself, it has been like more than 2 years since me wanting to start a YouTube channel myself but I'm still in doubt. or should I say procrastinating.

[buchtech]

Please what are your recommendations for books on soft skills or communication

[Gvue]

Coding is not enough. You’re soft skills will go a long way. You can be a JavaScript/Python/C/C++/Java god, but without the soft skills… You’re not going to go far.

[ProgramistaSchrodingera]

I want to ask you about the "promotion ladder" in IT, from your perspective, how long after being a junior can you become a mid, then mid -> senior, then an architect? One year for each position is a good way?
We discuss our information bubble, so I'm reaching for the opinion of an outside "expert" ;)

[mohamadawad]

Hi thanks for valuable tips, how old was you when you started coding?, because i want to do same as you did but i feel like i am over age

[tomswan]

I think in this vid you're explaining some stuff but in my opinion it's far from reality, or in my team it's done differently because of some prerequisites. If I will have time will return and explain in more detail.^^

[aleksdeveloper]

Senior developers if not lead developers, are the real problem the software industry has become so impossible to get your feet into.
Your video will not make sense because you might have 4 years in a project then after you switch job you understand you are a junior again.
It has nothing to do with time, it has everything to do with the process. Soft skills are not needed at all.
Technical skills are also not needed because once you switch job and project, you will soon realize you will not be able to understand most of the stuff.
Also decision making and interaction those are not a problem at all, in fact I have met seniors who rarely interacted and did most of the job.

The only skill you need, is to learn how to read someone else's code.
Everything else is not that important, because probably someone else has already been hired in the company and has been working for years there, so you just need to read their code.

Just try to start with small open source projects.