Growing in your first years in IT
Sample guide. Edit or replace it with your own material.
Your first two or three years shape your career more than any single course or certificate. These habits make the biggest difference.
1. Get good at the basics of the job
- Read code before writing it. Understand how the existing system works before you change it.
- Learn your tools well: the debugger, Git, your IDE, logs, and the build system.
- Write things down. Keep notes on how things work and how you fixed problems. They save time and make good material for your next interview.
2. Make your work easy to trust
- Ask clarifying questions before starting a task, not after finishing it.
- Give short updates without being asked: what’s done, what’s next, and anything blocking you.
- When you’re stuck for more than a reasonable time, ask for help and show what you have tried.
- Test your own changes before review, and keep pull requests small and focused.
3. Learn on purpose
- Pick one skill at a time that matters for your current role (for example SQL, cloud basics, testing, or system design) and practise it on real work.
- Ask for feedback regularly: “What should I do differently?” is more useful than “Was it okay?”
- Find a mentor or a senior colleague you can learn from, inside or outside your team.
4. Keep a record of your impact
Every month, write down two or three things you did and their result, with numbers where possible (“cut the report build time from 10 minutes to 2”). This helps in performance reviews, promotions, and your next resume.
5. Planning your next move
- Stay or switch? Consider what you are still learning, not only salary. A role where you grow quickly is often worth more in the long run.
- Specialist or generalist? Early on, a broad base helps. Over time, depth in one area (backend, data, cloud, testing, security…) makes you easier to hire.
- Before you switch, update your resume with real results, and practise interviews again. The skills fade if you haven’t interviewed for a while.
Practice
- Start your “impact log” today with what you did last month.
- Choose one skill to focus on for the next 90 days and write down how you’ll practise it.