Avoiding Career Traps in Software Development

"Your career is a pie-eating contest where the reward is more pie."

This quote I heard a while back really stuck with me. As software developers, the possibilities for how we can provide value to our employers are incredibly broad. It's an amazing privilege, but it's equally true that we can easily fill our days with meaningless busywork or unfulfilling and repetitive tasks.

Of course, every job has moments of hard or undesirable work. Some amount of administrative tasks is unavoidable. And as a valuable team member, you want to be generous with your time, offering to do some heavy lifting or support tasks that others need a break from.

But it can't be only that. There have to be moments of inspiration and success. There has to be room for your own curiosity and interests. And you can't leave it up to your employer to guide you towards those things.

So be aware that when you volunteer for an undesirable task—say, optimizing AdSense integration on your content—you suddenly become the domain expert for that area. Every bug and new roadmap item related to that will be assigned to you. The time you spend on these tasks is time you can't spend expanding your skills and taking on work that could be more interesting and fulfilling.

It's a difficult balance, but you do need to be a little bit selfish sometimes. You want to demonstrate your expertise to get ahead, but you also want to make sure that is the kind of expertise you want to be known for. Don't be afraid to say no, be proactive about seeking out work that interests you, and hopefully, the pie you get served will more often than not be the pie you want to be eating.