Be the Worst

There is a saying in China: Better be the tail of a lion than a fox's head! There is another saying: Better be the head of a chicken than the tail of a phoenix.

 

Surround yourself with developers who are better than you. Find a more robust team where you can be the weakest member and have room to grow. In the beginning, you may not feel confident in your life, but the process of developing and learning in the workplace that makes you stronger is lovely. In this society, no one will care how beautiful and challenging your strategy is. The most important thing is the result. Have you grown and become stronger during this period of enduring learning?

Remember, the probability of being rejected or thought strange by a potential mentor is not high, and the potential payoff is enormous. Even if the person isn't interested in taking you on as a full-time apprentice, asking her out to lunch can be a valuable investment of time and money, like why dinner with Warren Buffett was auctioned off at such a high price. An early-stage businessman, or an established businessman who has achieved success in a particular field, is all vying for this opportunity. Do they care about the meal? No, they need to learn something from talking to Buffett. Such as looking at the market, investment vision, and the future development trend of business. In computer learning, the principle is the same. By talking with the people above us or the successful people, we can get the information and direction beneficial to our future development. Opportunities are for those prepared, and the accumulation of experience and insight in life will make you soar when opportunities come.

Ask lots of questions.

Tasks such as maintaining build systems, product support, responding to maintenance requirements, bug fixes, code reviews, eliminating technical debt, creating project wikis, updating documentation, acting as a sounding board for other people's ideas, and so on. Typically, you focus on the less risky edges of the system rather than the core, which often has many dependencies and a lot of complexity. Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger look at apprenticeships in different industries and find that "in the workflow, the tasks of a novitiate are often placed at the end of a branch, rather than in the middle of a series of clips of work" (Situational Learning, p. 110). These fringe tasks benefit the team and you as an apprentice, as they are often skipped in school classes and fill in the gaps. The experience still helps when you become a skilled worker because many of your mentors understand how important it is to do the tedious work. After all, if no one cleans the floor, the team can't do the glamorous work because it is Mired in a mess.

What's the most grubby task your team has been putting off for months? It should be the one that everyone complains about, and nobody wants to fix. You solve it. Don't hold your nose and force yourself to do it; See if you can solve the problem creatively in a way that exceeds people's expectations and is fun for you. Many people feel that this is a job that is not worth their time. If you don't do well, you will help the team take the blame. If you do well, the team will take the credit. But you grow as you solve what the team can't do.