Become 10x More Confident As A Developer In 3 Simple Steps

The #1 thing the Junior developers lack is not experience, is confidence. 

Take away all my programming knowledge. But, give me the confidence I have now, and I will get to Senior at least 3x faster.

Why?

Because confidence enables everything else. 

The more confident you are, the more assertive you become during a technical interview. 

You are more likely to stick with problems until you figure them out. Instead of jumping on to the next shiny object. 

More confidence means you will keep your head cool in stressful situations (like live coding interviews). Including the fact that you negotiate harder.

Sure, Dragos, but how do I become more confident? Keep on reading, my friend. 

1. Get Confidence Out Of Thin Air

First of all, confidence comes from competence. It is easy to trust yourself when you know what you are doing. 

You might not be confident in passing a technical interview. But I bet you are pretty confident when brushing your teeth.

“Sure, but getting as good at technical interviews as I am at brushing my teeth will take me years. How can I be confident when I don’t have the skills yet?”

That’s the million-dollar question.

Because even if you get good at technical interviews, in software, there will always be something you don’t know. Something you want to learn. 

The answer is clarity.

Yes, by simply “knowing what you don’t know,” you will automatically become more confident.

You might not have the skills yet. But at least you know the “what” behind them. In scientific terms, you know the cause that will generate the effect.

Now, you can chill out and focus on execution. By execution, I mean getting things done. 

Despite the title of this article, confidence doesn’t come out of thin air. It comes from clarity and action. I will address the “action” part later in this article.

Senior Dev Tip: When you lack the skills, look for clarity, and confidence will follow. 

🚨P.S. Are you looking to fast-track to the Senior level with quality resources, feedback, and accountability? Click here to join our Free Community - The Senior Dev Academy. 🚨

2. Stay Focused In A Distracted World

Okay, to gain confidence, you need clarity. But clarity is hard because the world is noisier than ever. There are thousands of videos, articles, and newsletters full of shiny objects. 

How do I make the difference between the good and the bad?

Before you take someone’s advice, look at the person behind the advice.

Here’s one thing I observed during my years as a software developer. People with “skin in the game” give better advice. 

Skin in the game means the person who gives you the advice is accountable for the advice they give. If you could sue every “tech influencer” that gave you advice based on the quality of the advice they gave you.

How many of them would still be there?

My guess is probably 1 in 10. Or maybe 1 in 100. 

It doesn’t matter. Your job is to find those unicorns and ignore the rest. The rest are not accountable for the advice they give. 

Now, they say that “fundamentals” are essential. But none of them can define what those fundamentals are. 

Yesterday, they said Rust was important. None of them could code in Rust. 

Tomorrow, they will say development is over because AI is around the corner—just because they can’t code anymore.

Meanwhile, you spend your evenings following mindless advice. Wondering why you’ve been coding for years, but things didn’t click yet. 

The moral of the story?

Only listen to people with skin in the game. The rest is, pardon my French, clowns with a microphone. 

P.S. I just heard such an influencer telling people that to find jobs in the current economy, they need to do “side projects.” Wasn’t this the case 10 years ago? Most people with side projects can’t find jobs because they don’t have experience. Cloning GitHub repos won’t solve that.

The thing is, they can say whatever.

As long as they can package their advice in a nice title and thumbnail, the masses will click. The algorithms will push their videos. And you will be tricked into thinking that kind of stuff works.

In reality, tech Twitter is to software development is what porn is to sex. Entertainment at best. Very far from the real world. 

If you want to find out your technical gaps and how to fix them, take a look at this FREE Technical Assessment I’ve put together for you. It only takes about 10 minutes to complete, and it will give you complete clarity in your next steps as a developer.

🌟 Senior Dev Tip: Only take advice from people with “skin in the game”. In software development, those are usually people that are still hands-on. They still code and build everyday. Not just focus on getting attention with shinny videos.

3. Execute At Full Throttle

ADHD is getting a lot of attention these days. But most developers don’t have an attention deficit disorder. They have an execution disorder. 

Developers don’t make it to Senior because they quit too soon. 

They don't understand that the process is the goal. No matter how solid your plan is, it will take time to make it happen.

For the last four years, I’ve had calls with almost 1000 developers worldwide. Occasionally, someone asks me, so Dragos, how do you get to Senior developer?

My answer? 

Do you have 8 hours to chat? Or maybe 16?

Because the answer is complex, my friend. We are talking frontend, backend and cloud knowledge with all their ramifications.

Senior Developer means reaching a level of expertise most developers won’t ever get too in their lifetime. You can't achieve that in a few days. Maybe a few months with the right mentorship and guidance. 

Along the way, there will be many days when you will be working extremely hard, but nothing seems to happen. Despite your hard work, you will feel like you are not making any progress.

Persisting in those moments makes the difference between winners and losers. 

One more thing about confidence… There is no faster way to get you motivated and confident in yourself than taking action on your goals.

That’s the secret of success nobody wants to talk about. Not cold showers, meditation, journaling or any “magic trick”. Actually getting stuff done. 

Unfortunately, this is what most of us suck at. Particularly developers. We are champions of procrastination. It gets even trickier because in software development, you can procrastinate “productively”.

You tell yourself, “I am not wasting time. I am watching YouTube tutorials.”

On what? Kubernetes? When you don’t even know basic HTTP caching? Wasting time doing the wrong things is still wasting time. That’s why, after hundreds of hours “watching” tutorials, developers still feel unconfident. 

Either they watched the wrong thing. Or worse, they watched the right thing, but they only did the watching. My friend, it is the doing that gets you results. 

🌟 Senior Dev Tip:If you followed step 1 and 2 of this article, you will already know pretty well what to execute. Now is the time  Focus on doing, rather than watching or consuming.

Okay.

Now you know the three pillars of confidence when you don’t have the competence. Clarity, Focus and Action. Time to get going. Remember, every second matters!

As for me, I will see you in the next one! 

Take care, 

Dragos

🚨P.S. Are you looking to fast-track to the Senior level with quality resources, feedback, and accountability? Click here to join our Free Community - The Senior Dev Academy