Habitually Good

Actually this post should be titled “6 obvious tips…”, but through experience I have found that there is nothing obvious in the world and common sense is not quite so common; and also, there is a certain benefit in sometimes stating the obvious. Another thing to point out is that these tips are for the India software industry scenario (since that is where my experience lies).

A little bit about me before I begin. I work as a Team Leader at Nagarro Software. During my tenure with Nagarro I have been involved in leading several projects, managing teams, hiring, training, and mentoring. The tips below come as a result of observation at my organization and discussion with friends in other IT companies.

1. Be Passionate. Most Indian software companies will teach/train you enough to enable you to do your job. But to rise to the next level you have to be fired from within. If you are passionate, you will feel the need for excelling at your work; you will not just want to write that piece of code so that it merely works, you will want to write it so that it works well, without any bugs, and exceeds expectations. You will take pride in your work and that alone will make you stand out from the rest.
2. Learning never stops. The so called tools of the trade in this industry keep evolving. Your work is not limited between 9 and 6. You need to keep up with new and upcoming technologies. You need to keep going back to reinforcing your basics. Continuous training keeps you sharp. Read blogs, technical articles, code samples, etc.
3. Find what excites you. So, you are in the software industry because that is the hot thing these days. But have you got what it takes? Are you a good coder? Do you feel a glow inside when you sit down in front of a computer and start writing code? Or do you feel stressed out and lost? You need to learn what is it that you can do best? Maybe you have to make a choice between being an excellent Quality Engineer and being a mediocre Developer. How about a Business Analyst? Make sure that you are passionate (tip 1) about what you are doing.
4. Teach to learn. I have never learned from books what I learned while trying to impart my knowledge with others. Participate in discussion forums. Try to help our fellow developers who are trying to solve problems you already know answers to. In the process, you will learn much more.
5. Manage distractions. The coffee break can wait if you are in the middle of a tough problem solving session. It is not impolite to not answer each and every Yahoo message that you get on your messenger (although, it might help if you set your status to Busy). Learn to maintain an aura of closeness when you don’t want to be disturbed; this way co-workers will not stop by for idle chitchat. You see, whenever you leave something that you are doing in the middle, chances are that when you resume, you might forget about something important (leave a little bug, forget to handle a certain condition, forgot to send out that email). Break your work into small tasks and try to avoid breaks in the middle of a task.
6. Try to stick to your job. In the Indian IT scenario, people change jobs rather too frequently. The problem with this approach is that you don’t get a chance to develop a well rounded set of abilities. A new employer is likely to give you the kind of work that you have already done in the past and have experience with. However, an employer that you have been with for some time is more likely to let you try something new based purely on your past performance. This allows you to expand your skill-set and your experience at handling different kind of roles. So, don’t go about changing jobs too often.

Dear readers, what do you think should be success tips for the software industry?

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