Jay Donnell - Sr Director of Software Engineering

Junior to Senior with David Guttman

Talking Points:

• Early Career Paths
• Problem Solving
• New Job Nervousness
• Learning From Failure
• The Empathy Element
• Developing Communication Skills
• Demand for Junior Developers

Quotable Quotes:

• “In reality [ choosing your first job ] isn’t an existential crisis.” - JD
• “You are constantly faced with problems that you don’t know that answers to and that’s normal.” - JD
• “Write [ your problem ] down formally, write out the steps that you took to solve the problem. … If you think you’ve done enough to solve it and you still can’t, then reach out to others.” - JD
• “Don’t be afraid of failure and don’t be afraid to jump into something that’s a stretch.” - JD
• “If you find yourself making the mistake, again and again, you’re probably doing something wrong.” - JD
• “Don’t fear making mistakes, just make sure that you learn from them and don’t repeat them.” - JD
• “[ As a manager ] you become more of a people person than a tech person.” - JD
• “Communication, Communication, Communication.” - JD
• “You can be the deepest expert in a topic, but if you can’t effectively transfer that knowledge out to the rest of the human organization, it’s not adding the value it could add.” - JD
• “Ultimately, it’s all trial and error with things you want to get better at.” - JD
• “When you’re online learning programming, you’re seeing some of the best programmers in the world. And they do not apply to the jobs that you’re applying to.” - JD

Notes:
Jay’s Twitter
twitter.com/djdonnell
Jay’s LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/jaydonnell
Junior to Senior Community
community.juniortosenior.io