How good are you at your job? How good will you need to be to get the job you want? What’s missing from your developer toolbox?

Are you a junior developer who feels like a senior, or vice versa? How will your current job title translate to a new employer? Are you on the path to mastery, or to technical stagnation? Most importantly, what is it that you don’t know you don’t know?

Things change quickly in tech. You might have been well-qualified last year, but what with one thing and another, a few new things might have slipped past you this year. If the latest job vacancies are asking for things you don’t have, or you’re finding yourself struggling in interviews, maybe it’s time for your annual developer skills check.

Your regular tune-up

This is your chance to have a relaxed, friendly conversation with an expert who can help you assess your strengths, weaknesses, and current challenges. This is surprisingly hard to do by yourself: something you don’t yet know always seems intimidating and difficult, while once you do know it, it hardly seems worth mentioning. Making an accurate assessment of your own value as a developer, then, is a bit like trying to look at the back of your own head.

As a tech career mentor with many years of experience, I can give you a welcome confidence boost by identifying the skills and experience that you have already, and help you figure out how to sell those to employers or clients. Never underestimate the power of getting a professional writer to add a touch of pizzazz to your resume!

I’ll also give you critical feedback on your code and language knowledge, and help pinpoint where your skills need a bit of a boost. Better than that, I’ll help you develop a focused study plan to master the troublesome topics. And, in a world saturated with sketchy, low-value instructional content, I can guide you to the best resources for learning your craft fast and effectively.

If you’re unsure where your career is going, or where you want it to go, we can talk about that too. I’ll give you actionable advice about your options, whether you should stay in your current job or go elsewhere, and how to crush the technical interviews once you get them. Whether your future lies in management, senior/staff engineering, or working independently, it won’t happen unless you do something about it now—and I can help.

About me

I’m an experienced software engineering teacher, mentor, and career advisor, as well as the author of Code For Your Life, a much-praised book on surviving and thriving in tech. I’ve been, variously, an IT person, programmer, devops engineer, infrastructure consultant, technical writer, and more. I’ve worked everywhere, done everything, made every mistake imaginable, and for the last 15 years I’ve built and run a successful independent business helping people just like you.

How it works

Use the ‘Purchase’ button above to buy your session. I’ll contact you by email to say hello, talk a little more about what you need and what I can do to help. Then we’ll arrange a video call for your session at a convenient time for you.

If you enjoy your first session and would like more, you can book further sessions at any time, but with no obligation.

What you get

You’ll receive a one-hour introductory skills checkup session with me, and the option to continue with further sessions if you want to. You’ll also get access to the Bitfield Institute of Technology’s student Slack community, where you can share tips, questions, and discussions about software, infrastructure, and tech with other people of all levels of experience.

If your career goals include software engineering in Go, you’ll also have the opportunity to work toward a prestigious BIT Certificate, giving you an employer-friendly record of your learning achievements to add to your resumé.

If you have questions about mentoring or would like further details about what’s involved, contact me for more information—I’ll be happy to chat.