Starting in a Software Development Career

In our competitive world people are expected to produce results beginning with the first day on the job. The guidance you get about what constitutes results is usually not as clear as we all wish it would be.¹ As a software professional you can improve the odds of being successful right from the start if you are prepared for your first day.

During the upcoming months I’ll publish articles about practical knowledge and useful tools needed for starting out in a software development career. As a recent computer science or software engineering graduate starting your first job after graduation—or even as an intern working through your first programming internship—you might find these articles useful.

Your professors taught you many wonderful and useful things in school. When you get to your first job there are many more things that a company assumes that you’d know, but nobody tells you about them during your school years. I’ll touch on five broad areas to help you prepare and improve your odds of success beginning with your first assignment.

The opening article will target the essential tools that cut across all roles for anyone doing knowledge work in today’s office environment. Next, I will write about the professional relationships in an office, including working on cross-functional teams.

What follows the more general knowledge worker topics are articles about some of the specific knowledge needed from computer science and from software engineering perspective.

Lastly, I will close with an article about the tools required to do a competent software development job in 2016.

📝 Series on Starting in a Software Development Career

1. Office Worker Essentials
2. Your Professional Relationship with your Colleagues
3. Computer Science Essentials for the Working Software Developer
4. Software Engineering Essentials for the Working Software Developer
5. Master Your Software Development Tools