What Does it Mean to be a Professional Web Developer?
Being a professional means more than wearing a fancy suit…
What is a Professional?
A professional is a someone who works within a specific profession or who earns a living from a particular activity.
What Makes a Professional?
Being a true professional is a lot more than just being paid for the job you’re doing.
Professionals are known to have standards and have specific qualities that make them stand out.
Here are six traits of a true professional and what they mean:
Specialised Knowledge
Professionals will always have specialised knowledge in their area of work. They’re the expert; the person people go to when they need help.
They keep their skills up-to-date and adapt when the industry evolves.
Competency
Professionals are competent. They get the job done, they get it done on time and get it done correctly.
They don’t make excuses and focus only on finding solutions.
Honesty and Integrity
Professionals have a code of ethics they follow. All the work they complete is of a high-standard.
They know their skill set and are honest about their abilities.
If a job is out-with their scope or skill set, they speak up.
Accountability
Professionals are accountable. They can be left to their own accord and be trusted to get the job done and meet upcoming deadlines.
If things do wrong, professionals admit fault and never make excuses or blame others.
Self-regulation
Professionals understand that pressure comes with the job and they don’t get overwhelmed when things become complicated.
They keep their emotions in check and take the time to understand the needs and feelings of their customers, clients and colleagues alike.
They understand their strengths and work to these while also developing any areas they feel they might have a weakness in.
Looking the Part
A professional sticks to the dress code and dresses appropriately for their area of work.
This videos goes into detail about the 6 traits of a true professional
How can we Apply these Traits as a Web Developer?
Specialised Knowledge
As web developers, we should aim to have a significant amount of knowledge and experience in our specialised area of work — be it front-end, back-end, or full-stack.
Keeping our skills up to date as a web developer can be a tricky endeavour.
The web is continuously evolving, and there’s a new “revolutionary” JavaScript framework released every week, or so it seems.
It helps to keep on top of this forever changing landscape by keeping yourself up to date with the latest web development news.
An excellent site for this is CSS-tricks and the subreddit /r/webdev.
A great site to learn more about web development and to ensure your skills are current is Udemy.
Courses on the latest technologies are great, but one crucial thing to remember is that frameworks come and go, but the fundamentals will stay the same.
If you know the fundamentals (HTML, CSS, JS) inside and out, you’ll be able to pick up the frameworks and technologies as many of them are built on top of these underlying technologies.
Competency
Being a competent web developer is probably the essential trait on this list.
If we aren’t competent in our profession, we’ll fail to meet deadlines or worse — not get the job done.
Of course, web development is a vast field and it’s impossible to know all the answers unless you’re some sort of web development prodigy — which not many of us are, unfortunately.
However, what separates the good developers from the not so good developers isn’t remembering all the syntax.
A good developer has the underlying knowledge and intuition to find the answers to the questions they don’t know.
Developers should keep the documentation for technologies they’re working with close and utilise the vast array of resources available on the web such as W3C and StackOverflow (of course, don’t just copy and paste code until you can understand exactly how it works).
Honesty and Integrity
It’s essential to be up front-up and honest with our skills. If we don’t know the technologies or if the project is out with our expertise, we should let people know.
Failing to be honest about your skillset can lead to sticky situations where the job fails to be completed or if you do somehow manage to complete it — it’s a buggy mess and needs re-written, costing the employer time and money.
Honesty includes keeping your CV factual and not adding framework “x” or framework “y” to buff up your CV.
When interview time comes, you could end up completely lost and making a fool of yourself.
It’s important to be proud of the work you produce and to make sure it’s to the best of your ability.
When working within teams, things can quickly get out of control if conventions and best-practices aren’t followed.
There’s a great saying that will keep you right:
“Always code as if the person who ends up maintaining your code is a violent psychopath who knows where you live”
Accountability
Murphy’s law states: “If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong.”
This is especially true within web development and programming in general.
There are going to be bugs no matter how competent a programmer you are.
When these bugs do occur, it’s essential to admit fault and aim to fix these mistakes.
Deadlines are also a big part of web development, and we must do our best to manage these deadlines.
Suppose you feel like you aren’t going to meet the deadline?
Let people know well in advance if possible to guide their expectations. You don’t want to surprise them at the last minute, when the work is due!
Self-regulation
Web Development is an enriching field to work within, but like any job, things can get stressful and difficult, especially as deadlines begin to creep up.
Failure to manage this stress can often lead to burnout.
To help prevent burnout, it’s essential to look after yourself physically and mentally.
Maintain a good diet and exercise plan, have extra-curricular hobbies that don’t involve web development, and allow yourself optimal rest.
When programming, sometimes you’ll get stuck on something you just can’t solve at that specific moment.
Being stuck can cause stress and that dreaded feeling of imposter syndrome,
It’s essential to manage expectations and know your limits.
Take a small break by stepping away from the computer and come back to it once you’ve given your mind some much needed rest.
A great technique for when you do get stuck is Rubber Duck Debugging
Looking the Part
Luckily as web developers, we don’t always have to adhere to strict dress-codes.
Ultimately, if you have to visit the office or attend meetings with clients you should wear the appropriate attire.
If you work from home, like many of us are right now — even better! Wear whatever you want, or nothing at all.
Conclusion
As you can see, many traits and values separate a professional web developer from a non-professional web developer.
Learning these traits can help us become better developers, valued employees, and generally happier within ourselves and where we’re at in our careers.
Are there any other traits you think are essential? Let me know.
