In the past 8 years of my career I have learned so many critical life lessons. It has been a long journey... both as a woman in tech and a self taught Developer. I came up with a list of things for you that I wish someone had told me at the start of my journey.
You are smarter than you think you are. Coding is hard and there is always tons to learn.
Don’t be afraid to ask questions, it is always better to ask than waste time being stuck.
Write your questions down before presenting them so you can articulate yourself better.
Pull requests can be brutal! Do your best to put your feelings aside. Treat pull requests as an opportunity to learn. Constructive criticism will do so much for your career. If you are having a hard time with it, remember . . . just because you have to change your code doesn’t mean that you did it wrong - you just did it a different way ( after all working code is good code - there are just more effect or clean ways to do everything).
Take time while you are at work to learn. It is OK to read a technical blog or vendor documentation - in fact most companies encourage you to because it helps your skills.
Share what you learn - even if it seems minuscule. You may be sharing something that someone is too afraid to ask about.
Complement often. When a team member does something great tell them. Point out good work you see in pull requests. It’s a brutal industry and a little bit of praise goes a really, really long way.
Every new team you work with will require you switch up your coding style a bit... or a lot. That is ok, and having to change your coding style doesn’t mean that you are not good enough.
Sometimes the loudest person in the room wins, even if their idea is not the best way to accomplish the task. Do your best to speak up when presented the opportunity. Formulate your arguments well and also understand some things are out of your control. Focus on what you can control. Work hard and stick to your integrity!
Ignore the Egos! It's just code people, I wish people would get over themselves and just drop the egos, but until that happens all you can do is learn to ignore them.
CONFIDENCE CONFIDENCE CONFIDENCE - do all that you can to improve your confidence.
Do the best job that YOU can do. Understand that everyone you work with is at different places in their career and come from different backgrounds. You have your unique talents, contributions and ideas that only YOU can bring to the table.
Imposter syndrome is real and requires constant work on self confidence
*also shared on the glitterJS blog glitter.js