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Advice to young software developers

For young (or less young) software developers who wish to establish their career in software development, some criteria when selecting a company:

  • the manager of your future team or the leader of your future project is an experienced developer, who still codes for more than 50% of their time. In every team or project, one can find several experienced developers
  • the company has defined a career ladder for developers
  • the developer career ladder formally defines several levels, admission criteria for each level, how the ladder compares to the manager career ladder, and how to  go from one to the other
  • developers have full and direct access to the Internet
  • developers choose their preferred computer and OS
  • agility is part of the company culture. Consequently, there are no "agile coaches", and no "agile method" is enforced. The word "agile" is not even used
  • part-time or full-time remote work is common practice
  • the company is active in the field of open source software
  • and let us not forget the Joel test