Developer's Guide: How to Get Involved at Work?

Recently, a software engineer Jason Tu shared an article on his blog about how developers can be more engaged at work.

Another day at work, clocking in and clocking in, you will have a vague sense of dissatisfaction. You might be thinking: "
What if I could do something meaningful and make me care? "But you don't have the energy. At the end of the day, you just have an overwhelming sense of boredom.

Jason Tu said frankly: Like most developers, he has had this feeling many times in his career. But getting rid of this inertia is not insurmountable. Therefore, Jason Tu shared 4 suggestions, hoping to help developers rekindle their motivation to programming and put them into work.

make time to be curious

Any developer loves good questions, but the motivation to solve them depends on your curiosity about the problem. In other words, how much do you want to know the answer to this question?

Jason Tu suggests that the best way to find these questions (the ones you desperately want an answer to) is to take the time to be curious. Schedule a 30-minute period for yourself to think about and jot down questions (not necessarily work-related) that spark your curiosity as a developer. For example: Why is there no sound in the web application? How does the program work when swiping the subway card? What's the story behind Slack huddles? Who came up with the idea to join jazz? What are NFTs?

In this way, by stimulating your brain with curiosity and using questions, you are taking the first step out of your routine.

Imagine you are the CEO

You can ask interesting questions like: If you want to start a business from scratch, what do you need? If you were a founder, how would you like your company to work? How to make money?

It's important to think about these questions from a CEO's mind, because it connects the bigger picture of the company's operations to the individual roles, which will allow you to get the right perspective on your work and put more energy into it.

Plan your career as a series of questions

You can frame your career as a series of questions you want to answer. Jason Tu For past roles, you might be asking yourself these questions: How do I become a front-end/JavaScript expert when I'm at Mediamorph? What's it like to work in the games industry when I'm at Zynga? When I'm at Jet. com, what is it like to work in high-traffic consumer services? When I work at Segment: How do I drive business decisions with data? When I work as a freelancer: How do I turn my software engineering skills into a business? In my current professional role, what are the questions I'd like to answer? Maybe "How can I demonstrate leadership as a practicing software engineer?" or "How do I build systems in an uncertain startup environment?".

Asking these questions can develop your sense of professional belonging and assess whether your current professional role is right for you and just for you.

try new things

Sometimes, asking questions about your work doesn't solve the problem. Matt Cutts once advocated learning something non-computer related in a TED talk: pick an activity you've always wanted to try. Try it for 30 days and you may find that exploring new things raises all kinds of interesting questions. For example: how to bake zero-calorie bread? How to say Japanese? Because choosing new things provides new perspectives and inspiration. Think about how something new is similar or different from your work.

Reference link: https://jasont.co/ennui/