Ris Adams

Starting a new job is like deploying to a new environment — you need to understand the architecture, learn the existing systems, and integrate smoothly without breaking anything. Your first 90 days set the trajectory for your entire tenure, so approach them strategically.

Success in a new role isn't just about proving your technical skills. It's about understanding the system you're joining: the people, processes, culture, and unwritten rules that determine how work actually gets done. Master these elements, and you'll not only survive your probationary period — you'll position yourself for rapid advancement.

Career advancement in tech isn't about grinding 80-hour weeks or hoping someone notices your hard work. It's about strategic positioning, consistent execution, and building systems that compound over time. The developers who advance fastest understand that career growth follows the same principles as good software architecture: it's modular, scalable, and built on solid foundations.

Most career advice focuses on dramatic gestures — the big project, the perfect presentation, the game-changing idea. But sustainable career growth comes from optimizing the fundamentals and creating repeatable processes that demonstrate your value consistently.

Your LinkedIn profile photo is more than just a picture — it's the visual API for your professional brand. Recruiters spend an average of 6-8 seconds scanning a LinkedIn profile, and your photo is often the first element that determines whether they'll invest time reading further.

The data is clear: profiles with photos receive 14x more views than those without. But having any photo isn't enough. In tech, where first impressions often happen digitally, your headshot needs to communicate competence, approachability, and cultural fit in milliseconds.

Your profile photo is working 24/7 to represent you in conversations you're not part of. Make sure it's telling the right story.

Tech teams spend more time together than most marriages. When you're debugging critical production issues at 2 AM or collaborating on complex architectural decisions, professional relationships inevitably become personal. The question isn't whether you'll develop friendships at work — it's how to manage them strategically.

Workplace friendships in tech are particularly complex because of the collaborative nature of software development, the importance of psychological safety in high-performing teams, and the reality that today's colleague could be tomorrow's manager, direct report, or startup co-founder.

The goal isn't to maintain artificial professional distance. It's to build authentic relationships that enhance both your work effectiveness and career trajectory.

That Harvard study about orange sneakers? It misses the point entirely. Authenticity in tech isn't about performative rebellion or quirky fashion choices. It's about recognizing that your different way of thinking — shaped by your background, experiences, and perspective — is exactly what makes you valuable.

I've watched countless developers try to fit into some imaginary mold of what a "real programmer" should look like. They code-switch their personalities, hide their interests, and suppress the very qualities that could set them apart. Meanwhile, the most successful people I know in tech are the ones who figured out how to be genuinely themselves while delivering exceptional work.

Your unconventional background isn't a bug to fix. It's a feature to leverage.

Phone interviews in tech aren't just preliminary screening calls anymore — they're often the make-or-break moment that determines whether you get to the technical interview stage. With remote work becoming standard, many companies have gotten really good at evaluating candidates over audio calls, and frankly, some prefer it because it forces focus on what you're actually saying rather than how you look.

I've been on both sides of hundreds of these calls, and here's what I've learned: the developers who excel at phone interviews aren't necessarily the most technically brilliant ones. They're the ones who understand that this is a different medium with different rules, and they optimize accordingly.

Your goal isn't just to not screw up. It's to make the interviewer excited to talk to you again.

Remote work isn't just about working from home — it's about building systems that let you do your best work regardless of location. After years of remote development work and managing distributed teams, I've learned that the developers who thrive remotely aren't necessarily the most disciplined ones. They're the ones who understand that focus is a skill you can optimize, just like any other part of your development workflow.

The challenge isn't avoiding all distractions. It's building an environment and routine that consistently puts you in a state where deep work happens naturally. When you're debugging a complex issue or designing system architecture, you need sustained focus. Here's how to create the conditions for that kind of work.

If you're a developer with ADHD, you've probably heard all the standard advice: "just focus better," "try harder to pay attention," "use a planner." That advice misses the point entirely. ADHD isn't a focus problem — it's a attention regulation difference that, when understood and managed strategically, can actually be a significant advantage in technical work.

I've worked with countless developers who have ADHD, and the most successful ones aren't the ones who try to force themselves into neurotypical productivity frameworks. They're the ones who build systems that work with their brains, not against them. They leverage their hyperfocus for complex problem-solving, use their pattern recognition for debugging, and channel their restless energy into learning new technologies.

The goal isn't to mask your ADHD or pretend it doesn't exist. It's to understand how your brain works and build a career that lets you do your best work.

Self-assessments in tech often feel like an awkward exercise in self-promotion mixed with forced introspection. But here's the thing: they're actually one of the most powerful tools you have for career advancement — if you approach them strategically.

Most developers treat self-assessments like a checkbox exercise, writing generic summaries of what they worked on and calling it done. That's a missed opportunity. Your self-assessment is your chance to control the narrative about your performance, highlight contributions that might have gone unnoticed, and position yourself for the opportunities you actually want.

Think of it as documentation for your career. Just like good code documentation, it should be clear, accurate, and useful for future reference.

Getting laid off, passed over for promotion, or having a project fail spectacularly feels like a gut punch. In tech, where we're used to solving problems and building things that work, professional setbacks can hit especially hard. Your confidence takes a beating, and suddenly you're questioning everything from your technical skills to your career choices.

The thing is, setbacks in tech careers are incredibly common. I've seen talented developers lose jobs due to budget cuts, skilled engineers get passed over for promotions because of politics, and entire teams disbanded when companies pivot. The setback doesn't define your ability or your future — but how you respond to it will shape both.

Let's talk about rebuilding that confidence strategically, using the same problem-solving approach you'd apply to debugging a complex system.

Remote work changed the promotion game. The old rules about being visible in the office don't apply when everyone's working from their kitchen table, but new challenges emerged around how to demonstrate value, build relationships, and position yourself for advancement when you're not physically present.

A Stanford study showing remote workers are 50% less likely to get promoted is often cited, but it's worth noting that study was conducted before remote work became mainstream. The landscape has shifted dramatically. Companies that figured out how to evaluate and promote remote talent effectively gained a competitive advantage during the pandemic and beyond.

That said, getting promoted remotely does require intentional strategy. You need to be more deliberate about visibility, more systematic about documenting impact, and more proactive about relationship building. But it's absolutely doable — and in many ways, remote work can actually accelerate your career if you approach it strategically.

Building remote culture isn't about replicating office dynamics through video calls and virtual happy hours. It's about intentionally designing systems, processes, and norms that help distributed teams thrive. The companies that figured this out early gained a massive competitive advantage in talent acquisition and retention.

Most organizations approached remote work as a temporary accommodation — "How do we make this work until we can get back to normal?" The smart ones realized this was an opportunity to build something better than what existed before. They focused on outcomes over activity, asynchronous communication over constant meetings, and psychological safety over performative presence.

The difference between teams that struggle with remote work and those that excel comes down to intentional culture design. You can't just hope good culture emerges organically when people are scattered across time zones and working from their dining tables.

Working from home isn't just about swapping your commute for coffee in pajamas. It's about designing a work environment and routine that actually makes you more productive, more focused, and more sustainable in your career. The people who excel at remote work treat it like a skill to develop, not just a perk to enjoy.

The early days of remote work were filled with advice about getting dressed and creating boundaries — basic stuff that assumes the main challenge is pretending you're still in an office. But the real opportunity is bigger than that. Remote work done well can eliminate the productivity drains of office life while giving you unprecedented control over your environment, schedule, and focus.

The key is being intentional about how you structure your days, workspace, and habits. Random approaches lead to random results.

Your next career opportunity probably won't come from your manager or HR department. It'll come from someone who knows your work, respects your expertise, and thinks of you when opportunities arise. That person might be a former colleague, someone in your professional network, or even someone who discovered your work online.

Career advancement in tech increasingly happens through reputation and relationships built outside your immediate work environment. The developers who get the best opportunities aren't necessarily the ones who work the longest hours — they're the ones who build strong professional networks, demonstrate expertise publicly, and position themselves strategically in their industry.

This isn't about shameless self-promotion or collecting LinkedIn connections. It's about building genuine professional relationships, sharing knowledge that helps others, and creating a professional reputation that opens doors you didn't even know existed.

Your resume doesn't need to tell the story of a perfectly linear career path. In fact, some of the most valuable skills and experiences come from work you weren't paid for — open source contributions, volunteer projects, side projects, and community involvement that demonstrate capabilities traditional employment might never reveal.

This is especially true in tech, where the best developers often have GitHub profiles full of passion projects, contribute to open source in their spare time, or build tools to solve problems they care about. The key isn't hiding the fact that some of your best work was unpaid — it's positioning that work strategically to demonstrate the skills and mindset employers actually want.

Smart hiring managers understand that motivation, problem-solving ability, and technical skills matter more than whether someone cut you a check while you developed them.

We've all been there. You're working late, feeling productive, and you run git add . without thinking. Then you realize you just committed your .env file with production API keys, or that embarrassing debug log with customer data, or your personal notes with colorful commentary about the codebase.

The good news? This is fixable. The bad news? Simply deleting the file and making a new commit doesn't solve the problem. That sensitive data is still sitting in your Git history, waiting for someone with git log and too much curiosity.

Here's how to actually remove files from Git history, when to use different approaches, and how to avoid this mess in the future.