Software developer competency

Most developers will have gained solid fundamental knowledge from a degree program or online course, but the best software developers are excellent self-learners. Curious by nature, they find the balance between learning and doing, constantly applying their knowledge to practice.

Software development is ALL about solving problems! What Are the Seven Core Competencies? Continually brings fresh ideas to the table Is versatile and enjoys a fast-paced environment Has strong leadership qualities Is a savvy problem solver Is a lover of technology Is naturally curious and a lifelong learner Employs strong analysis skills Talented engineers well-versed in software and programming are helping change the face of manufacturing each and every day through system integrations with real-time reporting, monitoring, remote management and more.

Jillian Vanarsdall. Related posts. These cases require an engineer's creativity, resourcefulness, and outside-the-box thinking to produce a novel and innovative solution to a tightly constrained problem. See the following article for ideas on how to identify creative and resourceful software engineers. Have you ever noticed a problem, and then fixed it without being asked? Or observed an opportunity, and then capitalized on it? This is common behavior for the most productive software developers.

They are continually improving things when they notice ways to make them better. They don't wait for instructions, they are just natural "fixers. See the following article for ideas on how to identify software engineers who take initiative. Technology changes incredibly fast. Competitors are continually bringing new products to market. The technical landscape changes monthly. The best developers are continually evolving their skills. They learn knew technologies, they embrace new development processes, and they don't become too emotionally invested in any particular process or technology.

They are passionate about continually evolving whenever it presents an opportunity to become more efficient. What is an engineer's ability to learn new things? Do they have the capacity for logic and abstract thought? Do they possess the ability to think through a problem and come to a logical solution? Are they able to draw meaningful conclusions by analyzing data? These are all critical skills for engineering excellence.

To maintain a high level of performance as a software engineer, one needs to be highly motivated. The relevant technologies are constantly changing, and it requires signicant effort to stay up-to-date. Some of the most successful engineers are the ones who are intrinsically motivated by the challenges of solving difficult software problems.

This challenge is often the impetus to learn about new technologies that may provide solutions to existing problems. See the following article for ideas on how to identify motivated engineers. Do you love your job? Are you excited by the prospect of a new challenge? Are you energized by problems that you encounter in your daily work?

How does your passion and energy affect your productivity? Just like any profession, software engineers who love their job have a tendency to be more productive at it. While it is not always the work it may be the organization or the manager , a lack of passion may be a signal that it is time for a professional change.

See the following article for ideas on how to identify passionate and energetic software engineers. Skills are important, but competencies are more so. When hiring software engineers, remember that skills and experience provide a snapshot of productivity, but competencies are going to be a better indicator of career trajectory and potential.

Attention all leaders of software teams! Are you interested in discovering a consistent framework for evaluating software engineering talent?

The most important responsibility for a leader of a software development team is to hire the right talent. Hiring the right team will make you look good, regardless of whether you have any faults and weakness. However, if you lack the ability to properly assess engineering talent, it is highly likely that you will fail.

This book will help you conduct a complete talent assessment of interviewees without focusing too heavily on a candidate's skills and knowledge and will help you to:. Also, a junior can write simple, select statements to retrieve information from the database. Programming languages. Junior developers are usually familiar with one programming language. They will pick it right away and implement a semi-stable solution that solves most of the problems in certain use cases.

Juniors have professional experience with about three platforms. Their knowledge of platform internals is only skin-deep.

They are aware of alternatives to popular and standard tools. Day-to-day duties. Juniors usually get the least complex tasks, those with little impact on the final product. Independent work. Certainly, juniors need close supervision.

They need strong mentoring to grow their skills. Working in a team, a junior must stay engaged and absorb from the team as much knowledge as possible. The problem with juniors is that they are code-focused, rather than development-focused. This prevents them from getting the big picture. Junior devs with generally more than three years of experience can leverage their skills out to become mid-level specialists. The Dreyfus Model describes the middle developer as Competent.

At this stage, they can also do a decent job of troubleshooting and debugging. Competent programmers are highly initiative and resourceful. They pursue leadership roles on the team and can mentor novices. However, competent devs still lack the experience to prioritize the focus of their attention while working on the project, and they are barely able to reflect on their mistakes. In terms of the seven stages of expertise, we can consider the middle developer a Journeyman.

They work on honing their skills and enhancing productivity. Journeymen are competent enough to be the source of Software-Engineering advice. After using IDEs for quite a while, a middle dev has memorized the shortcut keys for most frequent operations, really speeding up the work. Middles are tech-savvy with frameworks which helps them write clearer and shorter code. Mid-levels are good at managing databases.

They can design normalized DB schemas while taking into account the queries that will be issued. Middle devs are well-versed in using database views, stored procedures, triggers, and user-defined data types UDT. They are adept in the object-relational mapping technique ORM used for converting data between incompatible type systems.

In order to speed up the query process, they apply knowledge of index syntax to create custom clustered and non-clustered indexes. A mid-level developer understands functional programming and knows when and how to apply functional concepts in any language. Platforms and tools. Middles have already worked with more than four platforms and possess a deep understanding of how the platform functions including code execution.

They are very comfortable with their package manager tools. Mid-level software engineers are not commonly entrusted with highly complicated tasks that may require an in-depth level of engineering knowledge.

Meanwhile, they may be tasked with designing a piece of the application to be prepared for the further transition to a senior developer. They are already capable of turning tickets into solutions, providing estimates on tasks, and assisting in decomposing larger sections of work. Mid-levels can deliver work with less supervision while being assigned to relatively routine tasks.

Middles actively collaborate with team members, including designers, business analysts, and architects. Middle developers have deepened their understanding of development cycle scenarios which allows them to practice Agile methods more accurately.

They see the results of the occurring problems and learn how to avoid them in the future. A lot of mid-level devs fall under the Dunning-Kruger effect , which hampers their further career growth. This psychological phenomenon describes what a dangerous thing a little knowledge can actually be. Being self-assured, developers may tend to overestimate their skills, which impedes their progress.