4 Proven Strategies for Advancing Your Career as a Junior Software Developer

I started my frontend development career in July 2020 as a Junior Developer with little to no coding experience. I knew what a div was and that was about it… genuinely.

When I started, I was already on an apprenticeship scheme at Vodafone. Without already being in the company, I would have never got the development role with the experience I had. So I was very lucky in that respect.

But, that did mean I had a lot of catching up to do. I went from aligning divs to working on large-scale enterprise applications in a very short period of time. I had many moments where I thought everyone around me was some sort of coding wizard and I’d never be as good as them.

Thankfully that phase passed sooner rather than later. I managed to learn my way around the codebase and eventually dropped the “Junior” in my title and got promoted at the start of 2022.

Today I want to share some strategies I used to advance my career which I believe will be helpful for any software development role.

1) Identify what you need to learn and improve upon

I know this one sounds obvious and simple but it’s the most important. If you don’t know what you need to learn or need to improve on how will you ever actually improve?

You may be great at A but your organisation might also be expecting you to be great at B. If you only ever focus on A you’ll never get better at B.

The challenge here is knowing what is expected of you. In my previous role before software development, I had no career path. I was in a role and had responsibilities but no guidance or structure of how I could advance my career.

When I moved into development, I was amazed that I got given a Trello-style board with all the skills and competencies I needed to display for a certain role. This was a clear-as-day expectation of me and told me exactly what I needed to learn. A roadmap to a promotion!

I used that to identify areas of improvement. I went through every skill and used the coloured labels to visually mark skills where I thought I was lacking.

I was fortunate that my team had put the effort into creating this. It gave me direction on where to focus my learning and without it, my motivation to learn and improve definitely wouldn’t have been as high.

As I said, I was fortunate and realised that not every organisation will have the time to create a development plan like this. However, some organisations like Monzo have open-sourced their progression frameworks for the benefit of others. There’s also progression.fyi - an open-source collection of career frameworks from some of the “world’s best companies”.

There’s nothing stopping you from using these resources and creating your own board (or something similar) to guide your learning.

2) Develop a plan for your learning

Once you’ve identified your areas for improvement, you need to go away and actually improve in those areas. This is the “doing” part.

I recommend having a set time each week to focus solely on learning. Agree with your team or manager on a time when you can spend 1-2 undistracted hours a week on learning activities.

At Vodafone, we use Friday afternoons from 2-4 pm as learning time. Developers can use it to focus on anything of their choosing as long as it’s beneficial in terms of personal development.

Having this set time every week helps you get in a rhythm instead of doing odd bits here and there.

As part of your plan, you should agree on a target date for your promotion with your manager. It doesn’t have to be an exact date but just a rough idea. For example, in my case, this was Jan/Feb 2022. I discussed with my manager the timeframe they thought I could get promoted and then set that as my deadline.

A key benefit of having a deadline is that it keeps you accountable. Parkinson’s law states that “work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion”. If you’re just learning for the sake of learning with no real goal or completion date in mind it that time will just expand. Even though I was interested in learning about new things, once I’d set the deadline the motivation to learn was even higher.

Secondly, agreeing on the date with your manager makes them aware of it. If you just turn around one day, out of the blue, and request a promotion and pay rise - they’ll probably be quite surprised. You will be much more likely to get the promotion if your manager is already on-board and knows it’s something you’ve been working towards.

3) Record your achievements

Do you know that feeling when your performance review comes around and you forget everything you’ve achieved since the last one? And then you spend ages looking through messages, emails and PRs to try and remember? I certainly do.

Whether your performance reviews are weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually, there’s a slim chance you’ll remember all the good things you’ve achieved. The solution to this is pretty simple but, in my experience, not many people seem to do it. Simply write down your achievements as and when they happen.

In one of A Life Engineered’s videos, he recommended keeping a “brag document”. It’s an ongoing list of all your achievements which you can easily access to add them when they occur. Writing them down as soon as possible ensures they’re still fresh in your mind and you can add all the necessary details.

Now imagine you had this document going into those performance reviews. How beneficial would it be to have every achievement in detail right there?

When I was a Junior, I used the Trello-style board to record everything. Each card (or tile) on the board allowed adding attachments, links and comments. Every time I achieved something, I would find the relevant card on the board and add it to it. It could be in the form of a written description, a screenshot of some feedback or a link to a PR.

It can be a lot simpler than that though. All you need is a medium - be it a Notion page, Word document or old-school pen and paper - where you can write what you achieved and the date you achieved it on.

Not only is this massively beneficial for your performance reviews, it’s also beneficial for your self-belief.

A lot of Junior Developers doubt their abilities and imposter syndrome among them is pretty common. Often, developers feel they are not good enough compared to others in their team or organisation. I found that every time I’d go to write in the document, I’d be reminded of all the things I had achieved and it would reassure me I was doing a good job.

4) Network and seek mentorship

Networking and seeking mentorship can be important social strategies for advancing your career. The ease of this can depend on the size of your organisation, but building relationships with other developers means you can learn from their experience.

I am fortunate that there are many skilled developers at my organisation, meaning there’s a wealth of knowledge accessible by just talking to people. From others, I have learnt technical skills, received useful advice on my career, and have been opened up to new opportunities outside my team.

Most of my networking has been within my organisation, but there are many opportunities to connect with others in the industry through events and online communities.

When I was first learning to code, I was very active on social media and shared my learning journey. This helped me connect with other developers and received valuable advice from people in the position I was aiming for.

Seeking out a mentor can also be beneficial for career advancement. A mentor is normally someone with experience who can provide guidance and support in your career. They can help you identify your strengths and weaknesses, provide advice on how to overcome challenges, and offer support and encouragement.

My mentor was someone who had recently been through the promotion process and had experience and knowledge that I could benefit from. We would have monthly sessions where we discuss what I had learnt or achieved over the past month and discuss any questions or challenges I faced.

Obviously, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to career progression and the process for getting a promotion will differ in different organisations. But, I can ensure implementing any one of these strategies will only be beneficial for your software development career.