Cheat codes I wish I knew at 22 as a Programmer:

1. You don't need a high income to become wealthy. Instead you need Personal Finance 101.

2. You don't always get a higher salary due to technical skills. Instead learn negotiation skills.

3. You don't need to write code to solve many business problems.

4. You should invest more time in learning evergreen tech than trending tech.

5. It's better to fail fast than to avoid failures. Also you must learn from failures.

6. It's important to write tests. Customers don't care about clean code but a functional product.

7. Senior engineers don't know everything. And they too make mistakes.

8. Trust people who say "I don't know" more than the people who have all the answers.

9. It's better to go narrow & deep than wide & shallow. So be a T-shaped engineer with skills.

10. Nobody will remember you worked overtime except your family. So optimize your time at work.

11. It's more important to solve business problems than coding problems.

12. Health > Wealth. Always. So sleep more, drink plenty of water & avoid burnout.

13. Stay away from people who always complain. They drain your energy.

14. Stay away from people who gossip. They will gossip about you too.

15. Be in rooms where you're the dumbest person. And you'll learn new things.

16. You'll never be as young as you are now. So take career risks & do what you feel you're meant to do.

17. Seek feedback from the experts. Not from the ones who are booing from the cheap seats.

18. Always invest in yourself first - money, time & knowledge.

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That's it. A programmer's life is like a game.

And your journey will be different from others.

So collect experience points & explore.

Hope these cheat codes will help you in your journey.

What else would you add?

Write a comment if you need any book recommendations on these topics.

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PS - Join 74,001+ others preparing for the system design interview:

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