Here’s the thing… You could have been exactly where you want to be right now. You could have gotten the perfect job. You could have started that business you always wanted to start. You could have gotten those 6-pack abs. You could have even met the love of your life. There has only been one thing standing in your way, ...

I’m often surprised how many software developers neglect to do any salary negotiations at all or make a single attempt at negotiating their salary and then give up and take whatever is offered. Negotiating your salary is important—not just because the dollars will add up over time and you could end up leaving a lot of money on the table—but, ...

One of the most difficult things about becoming a software developer, is the experience paradox of needing to have a job to get experience and needing to have experience in order to get a job. This problem is of course not relegated to the field of software development, but many new software developers often struggle with getting that first job–especially ...

For quite some time now I’ve been putting together, in my mind, what I think are the four distinct levels that software developers can go through in trying to gain their “freedom.” For most of my software development career, when I worked for a company, as an employee, I had the dream of someday being free. I wanted to be ...

When I first started out my career as a software developer, I didn’t have a degree. I took my first real job when I was on summer break from my first year of college. By the time the summer was up and it was time to enroll back in school, I found that the salary I was making from that ...

I get quite a few emails that basically say “how do I become a good / great software developer?” These kinds of emails generally tick me off, because I feel like when you ask this kind of question, you are looking for some magical potion you can take that will suddenly make you into a super developer. I suspect that ...

Yes, that’s right. I am writing a blog post today about Scrum and Scrum Masters. No, I haven’t lost my mind. I just realized that out of everything I’ve written about Agile and Scrum, I never talked about what makes a good Scrum Master. I’ve both been a Scrum Master and I’ve worked on a team with Scrum Masters and ...

My daughter is learning how to read right now.  As I was thinking about this blog post, I just walked past my wife and her working on some very basic reading skills.  It is quite a bit of work to teach her everything she needs to know to read and write the English language. In fact, it will be years ...

Just because you’re a software developer doesn’t mean that you don’t have to worry about branding. In fact, if you really want to boost your career, you’ll actively manage it by creating your own personal brand. In this post and I am going to help you create your own personal brand by first giving you a clear picture of what ...