Month: January 2026

Listening properly – Senior Developer part 1

January 2, 2026 /

Skill

Learning to listen properly is a fundamental skill when you want to get things done.

Why you need this skill

If you don’t have this skill, if you hear the “wrong” things when planning your work, you will create the wrong things. This is a waste of everybody’s time. It is very frustrating and causes conflict.

Sometimes a company has a culture where people approach gathering understanding in an adversarial way; instead of gathering facts they start pulling together debating points.

Not hearing what your customer wants means you can end up having fruitless, circular arguments about who said what. Someone might even get fired. It’s far better to have structured discussions about who needs what.

Solution

The solution to this is to start thinking like you were taking an order in a restaurant. You may never have noticed this, but usually the person taking your order repeats it back to you and makes sure that nothing has been missed.

So, when you think you have understood, stop and confirm that you have understood by repeating back what you heard in your own language. Keep doing this until you confirm that you have understood.

Another thing to remember is that people have different ways of learning and understanding things. Some use words, some are visual, some use other channels. So when you document things it’s a bad idea to just use words. Use pictures too. They don’t have to be drawn really well – but map from and to states, look at how things change over time by using time lines.

Images and the use of colours are far less ambiguous than words when describing complicated problems. Even complex algorithms can often be described using pictures.

Upside

When you do this there is far less chance of doing things over again, rework. Also less ambiguity means more productivity. Of course, the big benefit is no-one will get fired.

Actions

Develop the habit of repeating things back to your customers to check you’ve understood what they asked for.

Make sure meeting agendas include this feedback.

Change any document templates used to describe customer needs so that they use diagrams as well as words, model changes in state visually, where possible capture requirements using as much information as possible.

Follow up with your customer. Make small changes and keep checking.

Becoming a senior developer part 0

January 2, 2026 /

A long time ago I wrote a short pamphlet 3 key skills you need to master to become a senior developer. This is the introduction to that pamphlet, the other parts will follow over the next few weeks.

At the beginning of your career you want to progress to the next stage. You start either as a junior developer, sometimes a graduate, and then magically transition to being a developer without much change to your approach.

The next step in the chain is senior developer. One of the questions I used to see the most on Quora is how do I become a senior developer?

So, what makes you senior?

  • You can tackle difficult problems.
  • You can pull a team together.
  • You can talk to customers in their language.
  • You can create good quality solutions quickly and accurately.
  • You can manage customer expectations and keep them satisfied.

If you look carefully at this short list one thing stands out. While technical skills are a still requirement here, the underlying theme is one of using those skills while making sure what you deliver fits the needs of your customers properly.

These are often called soft skills. While they are a bit more abstract than understanding syntax, or which algorithm to pick, or how to reformat some CSS to look like the design, they can still be learned. They are not that soft, either, but very practical when you look more widely.  Seniority means having that wider view.

In the next part of this series I will look into these things in more detail.