Nexton’s Post

As a software engineer, showcasing the value of your work goes beyond listing tasks and technologies. It's about highlighting the impact of your contributions, not just for your resume but for your career narrative. Here are four pivotal points to guide you: 1/ Quantify with Purpose: Struggling to pinpoint the exact impact of your projects? Focus on estimating their business value logically, utilizing accessible data to make educated estimates. 2/ Beyond Tasks: Elevate your resume by articulating not just what you did, but the business value it brought. This transition from task to impact is crucial in showcasing your strategic contribution. 3/ Teamwork Triumphs: Remember, success often stems from collective effort. Highlighting your role within a team effort underlines the importance of collaboration and the combined impact on project outcomes. 4/ Embrace Non-Financial Metrics: Impact doesn't always translate to dollars. Show how your work saved time, streamlined processes, or fortified security, emphasizing your multifaceted contributions to business success. 👉 Check out the attached presentation to explore more on maximizing your career trajectory by effectively communicating the impact of your work. Let's redefine success together!

🌟 Interview Insight: Navigating Blue vs. Green Deployment! One of the most frequent questions in tech interviews revolves around Blue vs. Green Deployment. It's not just a buzzword; it's a strategic choice that can make or break your software release process. Let’s dive in and see why this topic matters and how it can transform your deployment game! 🔵 Blue Deployment: This is your current production environment, where your live application resides, happily serving users. It’s the stable, reliable environment that everyone depends on. 🟢 Green Deployment: Think of this as your pre-production stage. The green environment is where your new, shiny version of the application is deployed. It’s the test bed that ensures everything runs smoothly before hitting live traffic. 🚀 How It Works: 1. Set Up: Your Blue environment continues serving users while the Green environment gets the new version. 2. Test and Validate: In the Green environment, you conduct thorough testing and validation. 3. Switch: Once validated, you route traffic to the Green environment, making it the new live application. 4. Fallback Plan: If something goes wrong, you can quickly switch back to the Blue environment, ensuring minimal downtime and disruption. 5. Cleanup and Cycle: After successful deployment, the Green environment becomes the new Blue, ready for the next cycle. 🛠️ Pros: - Minimal Downtime: The switch is seamless and users often experience zero downtime. - Quick Rollbacks: If the new version has issues, reverting to the Blue environment is swift and painless. - Risk Mitigation: Testing in isolation allows for catching issues before they hit production. ⚠️ Cons: - Resource Intensive: Maintaining two full environments can be costly and resource-heavy. - Complexity: Managing environment synchronisation and traffic routing adds layers of complexity. - Data Sync: Ensuring consistent data across both environments can be challenging. 💡 Why It Matters: Blue-Green Deployment is essential for applications requiring high availability and frequent updates. It’s a strategy that supports continuous delivery and reduces deployment risks. 

🌟 Pete's Golden Nugget for IT Professionals: If you can't hand it off, you can't be promoted 🌟   Hello, LinkedIn Community,   I'd like to share a golden nugget of wisdom that I believe can be a game-changer for all IT professionals out there, based on my experience in the field.   🔍 Detailed Documentation: The Key to Advancing Your IT Career When we think about IT work, be it system administration or engineering, it's easy to focus solely on technical skills. However, one often overlooked but critical aspect is the detailed documentation of the systems we design and configure. I'd like to sum up this insight with a simple yet powerful phrase that I live by: "If you can't hand it off, you can't be promoted."   📝 Why Documentation Matters:   🚀 Facilitating Collaboration: Comprehensive documentation ensures that your team can seamlessly take over your work when necessary. It's not just about what I know; it's about how well I can empower others with my knowledge. 🌐 Scaling Impact: Effective documentation allows me to scale my impact. Instead of being a bottleneck, I become an enabler, helping my organization grow and evolve. 🌱 Professional Growth: Embracing documentation showcases my commitment to excellence and professionalism. It's a clear sign that I'm ready to take on higher responsibilities and advance in my career.   In a rapidly evolving IT landscape, where collaboration and knowledge sharing are paramount, the ability to hand off work through well-documented systems is a key skill.   So, I encourage all IT professionals to take this nugget to heart, just as I have. Let's invest in documentation, not just as a task but as a strategic career move. It's a step towards becoming indispensable and accelerating your journey up the IT career ladder.   Have you experienced the benefits of comprehensive documentation in your IT career? Please share your thoughts and stories in the comments below. Let's learn from each other's experiences!   #ITProfessionals #Documentation #CareerAdvancement #TechIndustry #KnowledgeSharing

I’m a firm believer that effectively managing difficult employees in a software engineering context hinges on three core principles: fostering trust by empowering autonomy, promoting growth through challenges and constructive feedback, and ensuring a comfortable work environment with streamlined processes and minimal disruptions. Even with all of this there are still challenges. This is a really good read that offers some useful tips. In particular around active listening and empathy: > “As a manager, your role is not just to talk; it's also to listen. Active listening is a crucial skill that involves fully focusing on the speaker, understanding their message, and responding thoughtfully. It's not just about hearing the words; it's about understanding the emotions, ideas, and thoughts behind those words” #teambuilding #teamcohesion

We, as engineers, often feel that if we ask a question, or ask for an opinion/guidance we might give an impression that we don't have control of what we are doing, or even worse, we don't understand how to accomplish a given task. But that is not true at all. Communication is key and shows that you are mature, humble, and eager to learn with others. Trust me, companies do not want a cocky 10x developer that does not communicate with colleagues and does everything on their own. In the end, what matters for a company to succeed, is the revenue. That's only accomplished with the TEAM winning, not you. People need people. That's human nature. #teamculture #business #softwareengineering #softwaredevelopment

"Because I said so!" Have you uttered those words? Did you blurt those words to your kids, when trying to rush out the door on a cold morning and they are challenging your request for them to wear a winter coat instead of their favorite hoody when it's 29 degrees out? Maybe you've uttered those words to a co-worker, when you were hustling to get a project done. Recently, I had conversation with a junior developer, who had become demoralized by his product manager, when receiving this response. He genuinely wanted to implement the best solution for the customer. He just wanted to understand the underlying 'why' of the request being made, instead of blindly implementing a solution. In both scenarios, we are robbing ourselves, our kids, and our co-workers of the opportunity to learn, think for themselves, and feel the sense of accomplishment that comes from contributing to a solution. We are robbing ourselves of our own opportunity to clarify, deepen our understanding, and quite possibly, change our perspective of a situation. In our fast paced world, communication and teamwork is key to success. Pausing to listen and give context creates a safe environment for learning and nurturing curiosity, key ingredients to innovation. So the next time you feel the urge to cut the corner and retort in a way the ends the conversation and collaboration, don't. Pause, participate in the conversation, because I said so ;-)

Some of the best products that have been built required builders to: 1. Run 100s of interviews (most often getting a 50/50 polarized viewpoint from user - half of them love it and half of them hate it) 2. Run onboarding and customer success themselves.. onboarding users to the product and meet daily/weekly to see when/if they are getting value 3. Personally be the first line of response to incoming support requests This allows the builder to deeply empathize with the users, understand and identify how the primary use case is faring and what new use cases are emerging and most importantly, develop deep instinct about the problem area. So why does this not work in a larger company? We end up hiring on the basis of ratios - for 10 engineers we need a PM.. for 100 engineers, we need 10 PMs. Every additional PM brings in more creativity and more products, for which we need more PMs.. And so this happens: 1. Customer research goes to a central research team (builders are not as close to the problem area anymore) 2. Onboarding goes to established customer success functions (builders are not close to solution and how effective it is anymore) 3. Customer service becomes the first line of defense for support (builders are not close to edge cases or intended/unintended uses of the product anymore) Going forward, we'll start seeing different company structures: 1. Leaner teams with larger ratios (1:20 product management: engineering, 1:10 design:engineering) 2. More ICs, fewer managers 3. More cross functional builder teams (product + ops + cs + support) reporting to a GM The TLDR is that the PM function needs to go back to its roots - do first hand research, personally onboard customers and be deeply involved in support calls. Some of this is already happening, but its going to be happening more often going forward. #redefinePM #backtobasics

Software engineering is WORKING WITH PEOPLE a lot - no one warned me upfront😆. Four years ago, when I started the process of a career change into software engineering, I didn't have a clue what the job really was about. I had some images of programming, in my head, for sure. But I thought the job was like this: 1. get some requirements 2. do programming stuff 3. repeat Well, even on my first day on the job I actually thought that the majority of my work would be sitting and coding. Before that, I had spent over 6 years in retail consultative sales and I was ready for a bit less communication with other human beings, to be honest :D Imagine my surprise when I spent about 3!!! hours in meetings on my first day (it was planning and retrospective I guess so really I was just a bit "lucky") The fact is that our work is a LOT about communication. In software engineering, clear and effective communication is as crucial as your technical level. In this article, I explain 3 common communication mistakes, that will cost you. https://lnkd.in/eDyeCX9G

In the last 10 years, I’ve mentored some great engineers. Early on, one big struggle they faced was not knowing the right way to communicate. You see, we do tend to overcomplicate work communication. Engineers get so focused on conveying technical information that we forget one major thing. → Building strong work relationships. Treat your colleagues as people. Often, it happens that our comms feels like to others that they’re: - just for delivering your projects  - resources that allow you to ask endless questions.  - competitors you need to beat for your promotion Whenever you’re interacting at work, think about this: Would you speak to others the same way if you met them outside the office? You're not doing it right if you’re just communicating to get what you want. Always focus on building relationships. Connect with others on a human level. Then, look to exchange value with others. With good relationships, your colleagues will be: - will be happy to help.  - working harder to help you deliver projects. And your leaders will notice you more. But really, the best part? You’ll have honest and good people to support you on your journey. You don’t want superficial relationships that feel like transactions. Instead, build a relationship like that you’d greet the other person with a smile if they ever cross paths with you outside of work. Or better yet? Be happy walking together :) – P.S: If you're a senior engineer, tech lead, or a new manager and looking to transition to more senior roles, I'm starting a paid course (Only 3 seats left) DM me for more details, or please fill out this form: https://lnkd.in/gZ7VcqMD