15 years in IT-related roles, mostly a mix of programming, data monkeying and IT support, mostly for non-profits. 1. Find mentorship. Don't be shy of pair prog

15 years in IT-related roles, mostly a mix of programming, data monkeying and IT support, mostly for non-profits. 1. Find mentorship. Don't be shy of pair programming and code reviews. If you're not getting either (or not getting productive comments that you can learn from) at your job, find a way to get them somewhere else, outside work or at a new job. I was bad at CS at university and dropped out just as the bubble burst. With a lousy CV in a lousy job market, I took the only jobs I could get. I worked as the lone programmer, or in teams where the only other programmer was way too busy to talk to me, or worked on something completely separate, or was just a grumpy sod. Even at university the demonstrators didn't generally talk you through how to improve your code; they would read it silently, hand it the corner case you hadn't handled, then walk away without a word. There's a place for that, but there's a place for "hey, have you thought about..." or comments about style or design patterns too. Meanwhile, the people with good degrees and connections took jobs with mentorship and pair programming. They started out a lot better than me already and they grew and grew, while I'm one of those "one year of experience 15 times" people, hiding in the corner hoping nobody finds out how bad I really am. 2. Be open to new technologies as much as you can: you need to stay used to learning new things as they come along, and you also never know which of the new things is the one that people will still want on your CV in 5 years' time.