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Why you want this and how to become one

10-15 minutes read

This article is part of a series that began with The Replaceable Developer. That article examines how developers can prevent their current work from hindering their professional growth.

TL;DR

Growing your skills will open doors to new challenging opportunities, which in turn can lead to making a bigger impact and, with promotions, a higher salary. The TEC model is a structured approach for achieving this. Increase your theoretical knowledge, gain more diverse experience and communicate about it, both written and verbal. Pick a new and exciting technology, apply it to some small (pet) project and share your findings with your fellow developers. Repeat this.

Why you want this and how to become one

TL;DR

Once you are replaceable, you are free to start new initiatives, explore new technologies, solve the next complex problem which will make you happy and interested to stay at your job. Your organisation has a lower risk of discontinuity and can benefit more from your expertise. To be a replaceable developer, you need to

• deal with all the relevant unshared software that you have created in solitude;
• document knowledge about relevant processes.

Challenge

Over the years, as a developer as part of an organisation, you will work on many different software projects, learn a lot about the business and processes and will have created many software artefacts (packages, libraries, applications, services, architectures, infrastructure, …).