Are there any Italian devs here? Or anyone who wants to move to italy? 😂

I built startupjobsitalia com a couple months ago to help early Italian startups and founders find local talent. I moved to Italy from Norway in 2022 and noticed that there wasn't a dedicated site for this like they have in the Nordics!

It was a good way to learn Next.js, OAuth, and Supabase, but it'd be way cooler if Italians could actually get some value out of it🤞🏻

To all new devs:
- Your language of choice is fine.
- There is no superior way to indent, yours is fine.
- Your IDE is fine.
- Your OS is fine.

Unless you work in my team, of course.

!rant

After over 20 years as a Software Engineer, Architect, and Manager, I want to pass along some unsolicited advice to junior developers either because I grew through it, or I've had to deal with developers who behaved poorly:

1) Your ego will hurt you FAR more than your junior coding skills. Nobody expects you to be the best early in your career, so don't act like you are.

2) Working independently is a must. It's okay to ask questions, but ask sparingly. Remember, mid and senior level guys need to focus just as much as you do, so before interrupting them, exhaust your resources (Google, Stack Overflow, books, etc..)

3) Working code != good code. You are an author. Write your code so that it can be read. Accept criticism that may seem trivial such as renaming a variable or method. If someone is suggesting it, it's because they didn't know what it did without further investigation.

4) Ask for peer reviews and LISTEN to the critique. Even after 20+ years, I send my code to more junior developers and often get good corrections sent back. (remember the ego thing from tip #1?) Even if they have no critiques for me, sometimes they will see a technique I used and learn from that. Peer reviews are win-win-win.

5) When in doubt, do NOT BS your way out. Refer to someone who knows, or offer to get back to them. Often times, persons other than engineers will take what you said as gospel. If that later turns out to be wrong, a bunch of people will have to get involved to clean up the expectations.

6) Slow down in order to speed up. Always start a task by thinking about the very high level use cases, then slowly work through your logic to achieve that. Rushing to complete, even for senior engineers, usually means less-than-ideal code that somebody will have to maintain.

7) Write documentation, always! Even if your company doesn't take documentation seriously, other engineers will remember how well documented your code is, and they will appreciate you for it/think of you next time that sweet job opens up.

8) Good code is important, but good impressions are better. I have code that is the most embarrassing crap ever still in production to this day. People don't think of me as "that shitty developer who wrote that ugly ass code that one time a decade ago," They think of me as "that developer who was fun to work with and busted his ass." Because of that, I've never been unemployed for more than a day. It's critical to have a good network and good references.

9) Don't shy away from the unknown. It's easy to hope somebody else picks up that task that you don't understand, but you wont learn it if they do. The daunting, unknown tasks are the most rewarding to complete (and trust me, other devs will notice.)

10) Learning is up to you. I can't tell you the number of engineers I passed on hiring because their answer to what they know about PHP7 was: "Nothing. I haven't learned it yet because my current company is still using PHP5." This is YOUR craft. It's not up to your employer to keep you relevant in the job market, it's up to YOU. You don't always need to be a pro at the latest and greatest, but at least read the changelog. Stay abreast of current technology, security threats, etc...

These are just a few quick tips from my experience. Others may chime in with theirs, and some may dispute mine. I wish you all fruitful careers!

My client wants a jpg image with a transparent background !!!!!!!

BOOM HOTFIX !!

Finally fixed the issues that nobody could fix, went trough 4 different senior developers, finally done it..

Now what am I going to do with the 2h i have left on the planning for that ticket.

Im going home today on time
Im going home today on time

F* 2h over time again

So I have this massive fight with a PM, yelling at eachother for 5 min. Once out of our system we sorted it out, no hard feelings

I wish we had more pm's like him

I hate ot when your client has access to new relic and they panic and start creating critical issues when the linux db server is is 80% memory..

After a 2h conference call the client said he was going to contact a 3rd party dba because he didn't believe it was normal.

@dfox

On Desktop, when i comment or rant, please focus the textfield.

The number of times I almost had to buy a new pc because it almost learned to fly. Just because when you are ranting to vent, you don't want to get even ansier because you have been typing tin air this whole time.

Back when I used be a junior fresh out of school, my senior used to say, when releasing a first version or a major version of any software, app or website always implement easy to fix bugs.

End users or clients, especially the ones that tasked you with the creation of it, will look for a bug until they find one, if it isn't one you will spent hours trying to figure it out, instead give them one.
You know how to fix it and the client is satisfied they found one.

To this day, i still do that, although mostly not even aware of it. Eg: I know that's a bug but i'll fix that when (not if, when) they complain about it.

I even find myself telling the juniors, i develop with, giving them similar if not the same advice.

And that is what experience means, skill is something they teach you in school.
Experience is what makes you a senior or a junior, not your level of skill or the amount of keywords on your Linked In profile.

My mom always supported my decisions and usually when I'm coding at home she'll sit next to me and see me code. She always say that Sublime is pretty with the theme I have.