Always Be Writing About What You Do at Work
06 Dec 2024 #writingWriting about what you do at work is better than simply claiming on your CV that you did something.
What you could write about
Write about what you’re doing and what you’re learning at work. For example, write about:
- Challenges you’re facing while solving a problem.
- Lessons you’re learning from every project.
- Checklist you use to review pull requests.
- Most common code review comments you give.
- Difficult situations you have overcome.
I wrote my first post to document an alternative for a coding task I had. For my 2022 Advent of Posts, I took a lot of inspiration from what I was doing at work at that time.
Anything that takes you more than 20 minutes to figure out becomes a post. I call those posts: “Today I learned” posts. That’s the easiest way to start writing.
You don’t have to show real code
There are always alternatives to avoid disclosing real code.
99% of the time, we’re not doing top-secret rocket science. But companies don’t want the world to know how they’re doing CRUD applications.
You can share isolated coding blocks and use different business domains to represent examples and coding issues. Using movies, posts, and reservations is a good alternative.
Instead of saying “trust me, I know how to do that,” you could say “I’ve done it and here’s where I wrote about it.”
Street-Smart Coding covers writing as a coder, along with 29 more lessons to help you level up your coding skills.