There’s a lot of advice that can be helpful. Don’t stop at tweet-sized bullet points on this. Seek active mentorship and sponsorship on a regular basis. https://twitter.com/ellearmageddon/status/1294097943306280961

Here are some tidbits though:
- Learn at least one programming language really well
- Learn 2 others moderately well. It will allow you to stay flexible
- Get good at self-education. Books, blogs, tinkering, etc. You will have to do most of the work to sharpen your own skills.

- Get some experience building new things and shipping them. Don’t get stuck maintaining some old thing forever.
- Get some experience maintaining an old thing. Don’t be a person that can only work on things you fully understand already. Be adaptable.

- Don’t just write code. Solve people’s problems. In fact if you can do it without writing code, that’s even better.
- Pay attention to conversations about things that are not code. Learn how money gets made. That’s how you get paid.

- Learn what other people’s jobs are. Help them be more awesome at their jobs. They will get you promoted.
- Learn to recognize when other people are undermining you. They will keep you from getting promoted.

- Learn to recognize when an opportunity is being presented to you. It’s not always obvious.
- Say yes to opportunities that further your career. Even if you might not like it. Nothing has to last forever, but you can’t always do what you like.

- Learn the right way to say no to opportunities. Yes there is a right way and a wrong way.
- Learn when it’s time to move on from a job. Try to do it for the right reasons.

- Be resourceful. Find ways to tell people “yes” instead of “no”.
- Be helpful. Be collaborative. Learn to compromise. Try not to say “I told you so” too often.
- Do not be a pushover. You do not gain respect by doing everything people ask you to do.

- Check your email
- Respond to your email
- Do what you said you were gonna do in the email
- Learn who goes on the email and who definitely does not go on the email
- Make sure you are a person that goes on the email in order for things to happen

I guess I got away from the technical stuff. (But the other stuff is the really important stuff)
- Learn to recognize when you wrote some amazing code. Make sure other people know about it.
- Learn to recognize when the code you wrote is not amazing. Let other people help fix it.

- Sharing credit is great. Dont take credit for other people’s work
- Let your boss(es) take credit for your work most of the time. This is in exchange for promotions
- Learn what it looks like when other people are trying to take credit for your work. Don’t let them

Like I said, find mentors/sponsors. A big part of their job is just reminding you of this stuff every six months or so. You’re gonna forget and do shit to sabotage yourself because that’s what we humans do. Be gentle with yourself. Most screwups are both survivable and fixable.