The top career advice for future software engineers. This question originally appeared on Quora. What are the top 1. Answer below by author and Quora user Gayle Laakmann Mc. Dowell. First, let me explain what awesome careers look like. They dont look like nice linear graphs, where youre moving up a little bit each month. Heck, even so so careers dont look like that. You dont move up every month. Best Job Sites For Software Engineers' title='Best Job Sites For Software Engineers' />College is a great investment if you choose the right school. Find your best college with MONEYs rankings that combine educational quality, affordability, and. Search millions of jobs and get the inside scoop on companies with employee reviews, personalized salary tools, and more. Hiring Post a job for free. How to Become a Software Engineer. As technology evolves and becomes a bigger part of everyday life, so too does the need for technology professionals. You get a bit better at your career every month, but you move up in big steps. Image Quora. Great careers look more like this They have some periods of slower growth and some turning points, where your career shoots up. Image Quora. The color changes Those are career changes software development to product management, sales to cofounder, etc. Best Job Sites For Software Engineers' title='Best Job Sites For Software Engineers' />They also have some setbacks. Because you know what Being great requires taking some risks. And taking enough risks means youll fail a bit, too. So with that said. Coding. Code. A lot. Schools are great at theory, but not so much at practical stuff. Science/images/Major-new-design/software-developer-1.png' alt='Best Job Sites For Software Engineers' title='Best Job Sites For Software Engineers' />This is especially true at the top universities. Professors are academics and are often actually hostile to more practical forms of education. Post Free Ads in India Top classified site India provides best free local business advertising portal, where you can post jobs everything. Visit without. The best way to be a great coder is to just practice a lot. It doesnt matter so much what you code open source, i. Phone apps, etc. as long as youre coding and pushing yourself. Be language agnostic. Language is just a tool. Its valuable to know a language deeply, but its also valuable to be learning new things. The best developers tend not to identify as a developer. Career choices. Prestige helps. Having a strong name on your resume helps open doors and show competence. If you can get a name like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Dropbox, etc., do it. But dont stay long. See the next tip. Leave the big companies quickly. If you want to build your career at a big company, then by all means, stay and build your career there. But if thats not what you want, leave quickly. One or two years post college at a company like Google is great. Not so much. You will continue to learn, but there are diminishing returns of sticking around. Unless you want to be a big company person. If you want an A career, come to San Francisco bay area. I love Seattle and began my career there, but I have to be honest there are so many more opportunities in tech in the bay area. You will limit yourself as an engineer or product managertech business role if you live elsewhere. If you dont want an A career, dont come to the bay area. It is extremely expensive here. Seriously. Thats worth it if you want a ton of career options. But if you just want a cushy career, there are more affordable cities with enough tech like Seattle. A good software engineer can buy a nice house in Seattle. Its a stretch in the bay area. If you dont want to be a developer forever, then move on quickly. There is a lot of value in getting really deep technical expertise. But it doesnt matter that much whether you spent two years as a developer or seven years. Within a few years of college graduation, make a choice. Do you want to be an engineer for the next 1. If you dont, start trying to move on now. More time as an engineer wont help you that much. Quit quickly. If I look at my friends who have switched jobs, almost all of them were thinking about quitting for the last six to 1. Some stayed for two or three years after they started saying that they wanted to quit. Theyve wasted so much time because of a resistance to change. If youre thinking about quitting, take action now. Start applying elsewhere or possibly just quit outright. You probably wont be very successful if youre unhappy anyway, and there is a big opportunity cost in staying. Dealing with others. Integrity matters. If you try to cheat and cut corners, itll haunt you. Do the right thing in life. Its not only the good thing to do, but its also the smart thing to do. People will trust and like you more. More doors will open and those doors might just be the breakthrough moments in your career. Be helpful. When possible, help people who ask for help. The people who ask you for help right now will be much more likely to help you in the future. That help might be introducing you to their friends who can help you more directly. So even if you dont see how that person will be helpful, you dont know who their buddies are or will be. Make friends. You actually cant really be successful by yourself. If youre an entrepreneur, you need employees and business connections. If youre an employee, you need a job. Either way, its friends who will be key to opening up these opportunities. Its friends, distant and close ones, who form the important part of your network, not that one person you met at a meetup and never talked to again. Being awesome. Realize no, internalize that weve all got impostor syndrome. Even the most successful entrepreneurs and engineers with very few exceptions feel like they just got lucky and arent nearly as good as people think, and that one day soon theyre going to get caught. Truly internalizing just how widespread impostor syndrome is can help you realize that feeling like youre a fraud doesnt mean that you are. Start stuff. Show initiative. Good things come to those who dont wait. Seek out new opportunities. Trucks For Sale In Ohio. Start stuff a hackathon, a club, a project, a company, a new running group, whatever. You will learn so much from doing this and it will open doors. Take risks. Seize opportunities. When you notice that little flicker of opportunity, seize it. Run with it. See where it goes. Dont walk away just because you dont know exactly where its going to go. Bias toward yes. A great career hinges on the breakthrough moments. The problem is that you often cant identify those in advance. You dont know where that coffee meeting that you dont see the point of is going to lead. You wont know that, two months down the line, that person will end up introducing you to a guy who needs some advice and winds up as your business partner. Maintain a strong bias towards saying yes. This response has been abridged. View the full answer here. More Q A on Quora the best answer to any question. Ask a question, get a great answer. Learn from the experts and get insider knowledge. Mashable Job Board Listings. The Mashable Job Board connects job seekers across the U. S. with unique career opportunities in the digital space. While we publish a wide range of job listings, we have selected a few job opportunities from the past several weeks to help get you started.