I Wrote Your Software Engineering Goals For 2025, So You Don’t Have To
Regardless of the level you’re at, there is always something you can do to grow, so what will it be this year?
You know that yearly goal-setting exercise at work most of us loathe? If you do, maybe you shouldn’t. Loathe it, that is. Any goal you set for the quarter, half-year, or the entire upcoming year should help you advance your career. Yes, it’s usually coupled with company goals, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be smart — pun intended — about it. I’m not even going to preach about setting acronymic SMART goals, but rather just using opportunities to your advantage. Conventional wisdom may suggest that goals should be measurable, while I think the outcome of your goals should make you feel happy. Does that make me a hippie software engineer? Fine, so be it. But we spend a 3rd of our days working, we may as well make the most of that time.
Define YOUR next level
To grow, you need to understand where you’re at. Often, engineers make the mistake of comparing themselves to other engineers. In fairness, this is not just a software engineering tendency. This is a human tendency. But I’d argue it’s the wrong one. You tend to compare yourself to another engineer, either because you admire…
