Thoughts about working in Tech
After working in the tech field for many years, i have gathered some thoughts.
Always be learning new stuff
Tech is an ever evolving field, always pushing forward for good and bad. Whether it is software updates, new tools and new paradigms, things are changing constantly, it is overwhelming. Regardless it is always a good idea to at least know what is out there and apply it in projects. Furthermore if you have a long term job with a specific set of tools that could make your acquired skill straight up useless in today’s job market, therefore always try to push outside your comfort zone even in non-tech activities.
You get paid to solve problems, not to know tech stacks
Don’t get me wrong, knowing your stack is important but those are just tools to resolve your actual problems. What is more important is cultivating your problem solving and critical thinking skills, those skills will carry over to any programming language. Of course this is in addition to knowing your computer science basics.
AI is here to stay…at least for use in Tech
I think AI is an overhyped and unethical mess that is very useful for programming, other fields not sure. The fact that you can generate, debug and modify code with a few clicks is extremely useful. Of course you have to disregard the common issues generated code like inconsistent code quality, security flaws and hallucinations. In addition if you overuse it too much AI could dull your thinking overtime, there is a right way to use AI after all. Regardless of all that you should at least know how to run modern AI tools since they are useful and the market is making it a required skill, c’est la vie!
Everything sucks, but that is allright.
It doesn’t matter how prestigious your shiny job is (E.g FANG companies), eventually it is revealed as the shambling corpse that it is. Common issues are non-existent or poor documentation, obsolete tech stacks, no backup processes, poor communication between areas, unreasonable workloads, Etc. You should be aware of these issues going on so that you can identify them quickly and hopefully resolve some of them with some discussions with your management. With that said even though everything sucks that is kinda the job, like the famous saying goes eat problems for breakfast!
Review, execute and validate your backup process.
Everyone assumes when starting a new job that the backup process is a well defined process with no flaws, wrong! In a new job investigation, assumptions kill. The first thing to do on a new job is actually define the existing backup process, executing it and most importantly validate your backup by importing it in a test environment. You do not want to know your backups are FUBAR when you get an angry call from management at 3AM.
Most people don’t communicate well
If you have ever worked with a ticketing System like Jira you might have noticed some requests are…special. They don’t define the context, what is wrong or the priority. You can try to decipher what is written but if you have any doubts it is better to contact the requester directly for more information, better safe than sorry.
Cover your ass
A superior person in your organization might order you make a change that is straight up wrong and will cause major issues later on, you must make your case for why that decision is wrong but eventually you have to follow orders. Just make sure that everything is documented by email or other document, talk is cheap evidence is everything. You certainly do not want to take the fall for something that is not your fault.