25 min read career growth

Grow as a developer, a career guide for 2026

21 original opportunities, plus 6 AI-era opportunities to grow your skills, wealth, personal brand, network and wisdom. Examples and steps to choose your next move.
Blog banner showing the path with multiple milestones

A map for career in tech and list of opportunities to explore for career growth, for experienced developers

Last updated: 6 October 2026

Table of contents

Check out the book to save on some screen time reading this 5000+ words article

About the author and the research

Author Background: I am a developer and founder of Invide, an invite-only community of top developers. Since 2016, Invide grew from 0 to 15000 developers. I interviewed 1000s of developers 1 on 1 and learned from their diverse experiences. I have experience working in different domains such as startups, academic research, community building and as an independent developer/researcher.

Research Methodology: For this research, I compiled my knowledge base and also specifically crowdsourced diverse ideas & opportunities from technology leaders in different stages of their careers to build this map for developer careers. I continuously invest time to make it one of the most accurate and most updated career maps on the internet for developers. This is relevant for you if programming is your primary skill and you want to utilize this skill to grow further in your career. Some of the paths suggested here are unconventional and you may already know about many others but might not have had an opportunity to explore. Some of the readers have shared that they grew in their existing career path using this guide. Some developers shared that they figured out a new career path and created passive income by using this guide as a map. Having said that, I understand, this guide needs frequent updates, which is why I always seek to learn and listen to new experiences and perspectives.

And this is my research on career growth for developers
This is a long(5000+ words) read so if you don't have time right now, bookmark this and subscribe to this newsletter where I share one opportunity every week. You may also order my book for more detailed content on the topic.
Check out the book for more detailed guide

The mid-life crisis and the "need for change"

A person looking out the train during journey

How time flew so fast, Nitin wonders sometimes. Once, he was happy and full of hopes when he came to this hi-tech city from his hometown to join his current organization as a Software Engineer.

Not anymore! He hates office politics, he is tired of the traffic, he is tired of his boss and his colleagues, his plans most of the times fail, he misses not being there for the family when they need him, he can't stand the polluted air around him anymore, he doesn't feel good to ask for money from his flatmates at the end of month and the project that he is working on makes him feel worse: useless. His personal life has its challenges. And all of this uncertainty, worries about future, dissatisfaction, burning out and growing older brings him to the question

What am I doing with my life?

He starts questioning his life decisions and his capabilities. It is very clear that something needs to be changed. But what? Should he switch to another job or start improving himself; should he start a side project, a startup probably or start contributing to an open-source project; or should he wait and let the serendipity take its course...

Nitin is not alone in this situation. It has happened to me and to every adult that I know, and it keeps happening almost every year. It is so common during certain age and stage of a career that it has been named: mid-life crisis. If you also feel this strong need to change, you are at the right place and this is probably a good sign as it will manifest in a growth mindset and will lead towards a better life.

aww-board--2-
Mid life crisis representation
“Your inner potential cannot develop without your willingness and conscious participation.” --Philip Arnold

With this post, I aim to bring possibilities you might have overlooked while fixing bugs and shipping releases. These are personalized for developers and practical to do.

Read through and pick the opportunities best suited to you at the moment.

"Writing programs, learning about new technologies and tackling the day to day challenges, I was so busy in my routine life that I never really thought about the opportunities that were staring at me right there" --Anonymous

Friends and peers may have suggested starting a business or going for higher education. Here we will explore more possibilities and get started.

At the other end of mid-life crisis is a better you, a better life

5 levers of career growth

“Untapped potential is the difference between where a person is now and where he or she can be.” Bo Bennett
aww-board--4-
5 levers of career growth

There are 5 aspects to pay attention to for a great career. Consider the career as a strategic game where you acquire more of these 5 powers to win

  1. Wealth - money, time, equity
  2. Personal Branding - reputation, subject authority, visibility
  3. Network - support, relationships, references, bonding
  4. Skills - knowledge, technical skills, soft skills, lateral skills
  5. Wisdom - insights, self-awareness

While you may give one area more priority than the other but you must not ignore any of them. We need to grow in all these areas to fully realize our potential. If you put career growth as a mathematical formula, it will be the product of all these powers, being exceptionally good in one area is great, being average in most of the areas is also good but being a 0 in any of the areas may paralyze your career growth.

Sometimes it is an overlooked opportunity in one of these areas only that breaks the barriers in our growth(e.g. a person in your network referring you a game-changing opportunity, a speaking opportunity that made you the subject matter expert that people look up to, etc.)

Here's the list of opportunities that will impact at least one of these focus areas and boost your career.

"Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can" --Arthur Ashe

The list of opportunities to unleash the growth

aww-board
Categories of opportunities based on the effort and the impact

High Impact: Can bring huge change in one or more career growth areas(wealth, personal brand, network, skills, wisdom)
High Effort: Requires significant amount of time and resources for long term

We will explore opportunities in the top 3 categories, leaving the low impact, high effort opportunities out of the scope.

Bucket#1: High Impact, Low Effort

You've been looking at the screen for a long time, you can read this guide on book as well

1. Write/Record a tutorial

Benefits:
Personal Branding, Skills, Network, Wisdom

Overview:
Explaining a concept to others is a great way to solidify your learning and it also improves your writing/speaking skills. If you share your learnings with others via social media or your blog or youtube, this can significantly help you build your brand and authority in the subject. Creating a tutorial also leads to increased self-awareness and insights about the topic.

To an employer/client, this will make you stand out. This approach also has chances of becoming a good side income over time if you can garner decent traffic on your tutorials.

For 2026, I would build a regular audience alongside search traffic. The Reuters Institute's 2026 report reports a drop in Google search traffic to news sites. For your tutorials, give readers a way to follow your work through an email newsletter, community or video channel. Publish to learn and show your expertise, and treat income as a bonus that you test over time.

Inspiration:

  • Amit Agarwal shared tonnes of tutorials on his blog Digital Inspiration and became a popular tech blogger in India
  • Hitesh Choudhary has made a great personal brand as well as generated income by sharing tutorials on his YouTube channels (nearly 2M subscribers across Hitesh Choudhary and Chai aur Code)

Get started:

  1. Choose a topic that you learned recently
  2. Create a tutorial on the subject
  3. Share it on your social media channels

Moving to next level:

  1. Do it more often e.g. move from publishing one article/video once in a while to every month and then every week...
  2. Improve your choice of topic e.g. figure out the topics that audience respond to most or a topic that has not been covered well before
  3. Improve your style and delivery
  4. Engage with people who comment on your posts

FAQ & Resources:

  1. What tools & platform can I use to write down my posts?
    Notion, Wordpress, Medium, Google docs, Evernote, Google Keep, Simplenote, your blog, Github README
  2. Where do I share my tutorial? Your X (Twitter), LinkedIn, Reddit communities, youtube, Hackernews, blog, email newsletter, popular publication as a guest writer(little tough to execute but not impossible), etc.
  3. Where do I get a good affordable microphone for recording?
    Amazon

Current opportunities:

2. Speak at a conference

Benefits:
Personal Branding, Network, Skills, Wisdom

Overview:
Speaking at conferences is a great way to showcase your knowledge on a subject. It helps you create a deeper understanding of the subject. It improves your public speaking and presentation skills as well. Being a speaker, many people will get to know you and you will get connected to lots of people in a meaningful way.

Inspiration:

  • Remember Pranav Mistry? He rose to fame thanks to his talk on gesture recognition

Get started:

  1. Write down the topics that you can share your knowledge on
  2. Listen to some tech speakers from past conferences for inspiration
  3. Write and record a brief intro of what you'd like to talk about
  4. Record yourself speaking on the topic(15-30mins)
  5. Explore tech conferences that match your interests
  6. Submit talk proposals to tech conferences
  7. Speak
  8. Gather feedback from the audience
  9. Improve
  10. Repeat

Moving to next level:

  • Learn more about public speaking
  • Get a mentor
  • Practice

FAQ & resources:

Current opportunities:

3. Contribute to open-source

Benefits:
Personal Brand, Skills, Wisdom, Network

Overview:
As a developer, what else can add to your brand better than a contribution to open source! The public code and a genuine effort to give back to the community is a reflection of your verifiable skills and your attitude. When your code is public, you'll push harder to make it the best of your work and this will improve your technical skills. As you will be collaborating with other open source contributors remotely, this is going to sharpen your collaboration and communication skills too.

Inspiration:

Get started:

  1. Pick an open-source project that you care about
  2. Find some good issues that you can contribute to
  3. Understand the issue and provide the solution
  4. Make the changes in code and create a pull request
  5. Keep engaging with the community

Moving to next level:

  • Help other open-source contributors
  • Start your open source project

FAQs & resources:

Current opportunities:

4. Launch a side project

Benefits:
Skills, Personal Branding, Wisdom, Wealth

Overview:
Launching a website/app/tool as a side project is the best way to learn new technology, test your knowledge, test your idea for a business and a side income. Don't just leave it on your computer though, publish it, share it with your target users, learn from their feedback and improve it. If your side project gets popular, it might add a significant personal branding and a scope of earning from your project. Irrespective of the popularity of your side project, you will come out as a better understanding of your skills, insights about user behavior, understanding of what it takes to build a product from scratch and launch it in production and this makes your resume impressive to prospective employers.

Inspiration:

  • Jack Dorsey started a side project that eventually became twitter

Get started:

  1. If you already have a side project sitting inside your computer's project folders, which you are still excited about then start again or start over. Otherwise, think of a problem that you want to solve for yourself or for your friend and the technology that you want to learn. Use this technology to solve the problem.
  2. Each day or week, dedicate some time to move the project forward
  3. Push the first shitty version to production
  4. Share it with your friends and gather feedback
  5. Improve
  6. Repeat

Many times all it will take is a day or a week to launch your first version.

Moving to next level:

  1. Create a demo video or landing page for the project
  2. Document the project plan
  3. Set deadlines for the next couple of milestones
  4. Release new updates faster
  5. Start sharing progress publicly(don't be afraid to share bad news as well)
  6. Figure out a way to communicate with your users
  7. Figure out a way to reach out to new users
  8. Create a channel to gather quality feedback faster
  9. Involve more people(possibly friends) to contribute to the project

FAQ & resources:

Current opportunities:

Bucket#2: High Impact, High Effort

Check out the book for more detailed guide

5. Get a full-time remote job

Benefits:
Wealth, Skills, Wisdom, Network

Overview:
Working on a full-time job allows you to work on a business/tech problem for a longer period which helps you build a better understanding of the specific problem or the industry. As you work with your colleagues closely for a long period, this builds the strongest relationships that are going to be useful in your career. You improve your soft skills such as teamwork, leadership, collaboration, and communication.

When the job is remote, this gives you more peace and balance with your personal life as well. For people who come from developing nations, working for organizations in developed countries can be a chance to earn more than the local market. Check the actual pay and employment arrangement for each role, because remote companies may adjust salaries by location.

Be prepared for competition for remote roles. LinkedIn's March 2025 research found that remote-job availability had declined while job-seeker demand remained relatively strong across the countries it studied. Before spending time on interviews, ask whether the role is fully remote, which countries it hires from, and whether office visits or relocation are required.

If you're in India and want to work for a global company, also explore its Global Capability Centre(GCC), an India-based operation of that company. A March 2026 government response, citing NASSCOM, reports more than 1,700 GCCs employing over 19 lakh people in India. Check the engineering work, ownership of projects and office-attendance requirements of each role.

Get started:

  1. Prepare a CV and a professional online profile(e.g. LinkedIn/PersonalWebsite) demonstrating your skills and work history
  2. Explore companies that hire remotely (If you're from India, thoroughly check if the company is open to working with people in IST timezone)
  3. Pick a list of companies that you'd want to work with
  4. Set up email alerts for new opportunities from these companies
  5. Sign up for Invide(recommended for Indian developers) alerts for new remote job opportunities. Stack Overflow Jobs, which I originally recommended here, closed in 2022. Use the companies' careers pages or current job boards for those alerts
  6. Before applying, check that the role accepts applicants from your country and that the working hours suit you
  7. Apply

Moving to next level:

  • If you have never worked remotely before, learn about what it takes to work remotely(or you may join Invide accelerator program to learn & experience this)
  • Dedicate time to nurture relationships with your remote team members

FAQs & resources:

Current opportunities:

6. Found a startup

Benefits:
Wealth, Skills, Network, Wisdom, Personal Brand

More details about this hack are available in the book

Inspiration:

  • Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded a startup in 1998 when they were Ph.D. students. I don't remember its name though, I might need to Google it.

7. Get a Ph.D.

Benefits:
Skills, Personal Brand, Network, Wisdom, Wealth

More details about this hack are available in the book

Inspiration:

  • James Gosling earned his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University and later on joined Sun Microsystems and created the popular programming language Java

8. Start an independent research

Benefits:
Skills, Personal Brand, Wisdom, Wealth

Overview:
Being an independent researcher(also termed as gentleman scientist or self-funded scientist) is an unconventional path that one can take. Work on your choice of science area, discover or invent something useful.
Being an independent researcher is intellectually stimulating and brings a sense of freedom as you can decide the direction of the research(as opposed to academic research where the direction is decided by the funding organizations).

Being a self-funded scientist is not an easy path though when you don't have an academic background(e.g. Ph.D.) or when your financial situation is not so good.

Doing research requires resources e.g. training of complex AI algorithms often requires hours/weeks of training on multiple GPU/TPUs.

Grants and fellowships for independent researchers have different eligibility rules, and some require an institutional affiliation or a Ph.D. So to succeed, you will have to be excellent at not only research but at independent fund-raising as well. Check these requirements before building your research plan around a funding program.

Patents and crowd-funding are good tools to succeed in this path. Licensing and royalties are one way to make money from inventions as a self-funded researcher. So having an understanding of how you can protect your IP rights is quite useful.

Inspiration:

  • Thomas Edison is one notable example of the successful independent researcher(without academia background) owning 1000s of patents
  • In today's context, Stephen Wolfram is one successful independent researcher. He's popular for his product Mathematica.

Get started:

  • Find the research gaps
  • Define your research area and prepare a research plan
  • Achieve milestones for your research objectives
  • Build your reputation via patents or presenting your research & knowledge via conference talks

Moving to next level:

  • Prepare a plan to gather resources and funds to scale
  • Network with people who can help you accelerate your research or fund your research
  • Fund-raise and grow

FAQs & resources:

Current opportunities:

  • Royal Society research funding is for researchers at postdoctoral level and above. Its 2026 application guidance says undergraduate, Master's and Ph.D. students cannot apply. If you are starting independent research without a Ph.D., these research grants are not a funding route for you. For qualified researchers, check each scheme's country and institutional requirements.
  • You may find some scholarships/grants for independent research on the DAAD website, check out their scholarship database. Filter out for your qualification level (for undergraduates there are few, keep checking)
  • Present your breakthrough research at Git Commit Show

9. Publish a paper

Benefits:
Personal Brand, Skills

Overview:
Research papers are reviewed by credible peers which is why authors of published research papers are considered to be credible. Your paper is a verifiable demonstration of your research capabilities and subject-matter expertise.
Having research articles in your CV will add to your branding like nothing else. This makes you not only more desirable by organizations but also opens doors for opportunities in academia/research.

It is going to take as long as few months to years to put together a paper as it involves a lot of hard work in compiling literature review, obtaining and presenting desirable results, develop mathematical theory and generating novel insights, getting it peer-reviewed, addressing reviewers' comments and ultimate publication of the manuscript.

Inspiration:

  • Omar Syed published a paper on Arimaa, a game he developed

Get started:

  • If you haven't done any research yet, explore research papers in your interest area and find a research gap. Complete your research work.
  • Compile your research in the form of a paper
  • Get it reviewed from someone who has already published a research paper
  • Explore the scientific journals(e.g. IEEE) that publish research on your research area
  • Submit the research paper for review
  • Be available to answer the questions and make the needed edits

Moving to next level:

  • Present your research at different conferences
  • Speak about it at science or tech conference
  • Explore further research on the subject

FAQs & resources:

10. Publish a report as a data journalist

Benefits:
Skills, Personal Brand, Wisdom

Overview:
Data Journalism is the journalism done with data. As a Data Journalist, you collect large amounts of data, analyse it and visualise it to tell a story. To do this job, you utilise multiple skills such as - analytical skills, data science, storytelling, communication skills, etc. This makes up an interesting choice for developers and data scientists who have interest in journalism or storytelling. Your programming skills give you an edge compared to other journalists who don't have programming skills.

Pay in data journalism depends on the role and employer. You can choose this path to grow your personal brand and skills. I also chose it because of this belief:

👉 I strongly believe that in order to be ridiculously successful, you need to be among top 5% of whatever you do. That gives you a leverage to charge the price that you want*

For 2026, the reason I would explore this path is the technical work behind a good data story. The Reuters Institute's 2026 report describes newsrooms using AI to analyse large collections of documents and find stories. As a developer, you can build tools to collect and clean data, find patterns and help journalists check the results.

There is also a skills gap worth considering. In the European Journalism Centre's 2023 survey, only 12% of respondents rated themselves advanced in data analysis and 15% in data visualisation. The figures are self-reported and from 2023. If your interests/skills align, I would aim to stand out through strong data skills, reporting and knowledge of a particular subject. Irrespective of your commitment to be among top 5%, Data Journalism can be a good choice to explore side income while working as a Software Engineer.

Inspiration:

Get started:

  1. Read some data stories consistently to get inspired and understand the craft
  2. Find an interesting idea or trend for your story
  3. Find the relevant data and analyze
  4. Visualize data
  5. Simplify the story for your target audience
  6. Publish it on your blog or any publication that you can get access to

Moving to next level:

  • Write more stories to learn and create a good portfolio
  • Finish a Data Journalism course
  • Finish a course on Journalism in general. If you don’t want to learn “the Journalism”, you’d need effective collaboration with the Journalists to succeed in this domain
  • Get a fellowship or internship in Data Journalism
  • Get a job as a Data Journalist

FAQs & resources:

Current opportunities:

  • Jobs at Intergovernmental organizations such as UN, WHO, World Bank, etc.
  • Check organizations such as European Journalism Centre, Google News Initiative, India Data Portal, Newslaundry, ICFJ, Hindustan Times, IndiaSpend and USC Annenberg for data-journalism fellowships and internships. Check each program's current call and eligibility before applying.
  • Grants for Data Journalists

Bucket#3: Low Impact, Low Effort

11. Finish a MOOC

12. Accept more responsibilities at current job

13. Finish a Bootcamp

14. Participate in a contest/hackathon

15. Learn about industry

16. Read a book

17. Learn a lateral skill(a skill other than programming)

18. Volunteer for non-profit

19. Actively help other developer grow via dev communities(e.g. StackOverflow, Invide, Reddit, r/python, etc.)

20. Mentor someone

21. Improve soft skills

🔍
To get one detailed analysis of one opportunity at a time with the latest info, join the Dev Career Hacks newsletter. You can also read more detailed guide in the book.
Check out the book for more detailed content

AI-era opportunities for developers

AI is changing the work developers do and the skills employers look for. In its August 2026 report, LinkedIn reports that the hiring rate for AI Engineers grew 64% year over year in the US and 68% in India during April–June 2026. These figures come from members' reported job starts. They do not tell us how many developers lost jobs because of AI.

Here are six more opportunities to explore alongside the original 21. Some build on application development, testing, infrastructure or consulting experience you already have. The open-source project links in this section are learning and contribution routes, not paid openings.

22. Build AI applications and agents

Benefits:
Skills, Wealth, Personal Branding

Overview:
Build a product that uses language models, tools and data to solve a problem. e.g. an assistant that answers questions over documents or helps someone complete a business workflow. You can explore this through a side project, client work or an AI engineering job. Your application-development and integration skills give you a starting point. An AI agent can use tools to carry out steps in a task, e.g. retrieve information and draft an action for a user to approve.

For client work, agree fees for implementation and ongoing support. For a hosted product, explore a subscription or usage-based pricing. Account for model/API costs, hosting and maintenance when setting the price.

Inspiration:

Get started:

  1. Pick a small task you understand and find someone who would use the feature
  2. Connect the model to the required data/tools and build the user flow, including what happens when it fails or needs help
  3. Publish a working demo and explain your decisions. See opportunity 23 for measuring its quality

Current opportunities:

  • Explore LangGraph to learn how agent applications are built. Build a small integration or investigate a reproducible issue in a tool you use
  • Try a narrowly scoped client prototype or side product; see opportunity 4 (side project)
  • Apify's monetisation guide explains how to publish AI agents as paid Actors on its marketplace. Check running costs, publishing terms and payout requirements before pricing your agent

23. Evaluate AI systems

Benefits:
Skills, Wisdom, Wealth

Overview:
How do you know an AI feature works? Evaluation engineering involves defining success, building tests and investigating regressions. Testing, debugging and data-analysis experience can help you get started. You will also need to learn how to measure systems whose answers can vary between runs.

Inspiration:

Get started:

  1. Take an existing AI application, such as your project from opportunity 22, and define what a successful result looks like
  2. Prepare ordinary and failure cases, keeping some cases aside from those used to improve the application
  3. Compare two model or prompt versions over repeated runs. Publish the test suite, results and failures, including weaknesses in your tests

Current opportunities:

  • Use Promptfoo to build a test suite, reproduce a failure or improve documentation
  • Look for evaluation responsibilities within application and research engineering roles as well as dedicated evaluation jobs

24. Help businesses deploy AI (forward-deployed engineering)

Benefits:
Skills, Network, Wealth

Overview:
Work with people to identify where AI fits into their workflow, integrate it with existing systems and help them use it. Forward-deployed engineers (FDEs) work closely with customer teams, write production code and help deploy it within the customer's systems. Solutions architects may also work on technical discovery and pre-sales advice. If you enjoy engineering and explaining technical decisions to clients, this is a direction to explore. You can pursue a paid customer-facing engineering role or a client engagement with agreed implementation and support fees.

Inspiration:

  • Anthropic's Quantium case study describes workflow-specific applications, practical guidelines and hands-on staff training as part of company-wide adoption

Get started:

  1. Work with a willing user/team to map one repetitive workflow and agree what improvement would count as success
  2. Deliver a small pilot with appropriate access controls and a way for people to review its actions
  3. Write a handover and support plan. You can build on your project from opportunity 22

Current opportunities:

  • Start with a pilot at your workplace or a small client engagement
  • Search employer careers pages for customer-engineering, AI-solutions and forward-deployed work, including at consulting firms. Check whether the role involves sales, implementation, travel or ongoing support

25. Run and optimise AI infrastructure

Benefits:
Skills, Wealth

Overview:
AI applications need systems that serve models reliably and manage response time, throughput and resource use. Backend, infrastructure and distributed-systems experience can transfer to this work. Working on accelerator kernels requires additional hardware and performance knowledge.

Inspiration:

Get started:

  1. Serve a suitable open model using the vLLM quickstart, with hardware within your budget
  2. Benchmark a fixed workload, change one setting and compare quality, speed and resource use
  3. Publish the environment and measurements so others can reproduce them

Current opportunities:

  • Follow vLLM's contribution guide. Start with documentation, a reproducible bug or a scoped benchmark
  • Search for inference, model-serving and ML-platform responsibilities when exploring engineering jobs

26. Contribute your expertise to AI training

Benefits:
Wealth, Skills

Overview:
Developers can contribute technical examples, review generated code and explain mistakes to help improve AI models. Some of this work is offered through task-based contracts. Screening, project availability and payment terms vary, so check them before depending on it for income.

Inspiration:

  • BigCode's StarCoder2 and The Stack v2 account describes code-dataset work such as language/license detection and filtering. It shows the kind of data work that model training needs

Get started:

  1. Prepare a few original coding tasks with reference solutions and executable tests
  2. Add an annotated review of an incorrect solution. Show that you can explain technical errors clearly
  3. Use these as work samples for expert screening. Follow each assessment's rules and check eligibility and terms before accepting a contract

Current opportunities:

  • Search for coding-expert, training-data and AI-trainer contracts. Check country eligibility, how tasks are assigned, the rate for each type of work and when payment becomes due
  • Study the public dataset example above to understand the work

27. Secure AI applications and agents

Benefits:
Skills, Wisdom, Wealth

Overview:
An agent with access to tools and data introduces security questions: can untrusted instructions change its actions, can it access more than it needs, and can it expose private data? Application, cloud and offensive-security experience can help you explore this specialisation.

Inspiration:

Get started:

  1. Use your own test application with constrained tools and synthetic data
  2. Test malicious inputs and excessive permissions using the OWASP agent-security checklist
  3. Implement controls and document which failures remain

Current opportunities:

  • The OWASP LLM Top 10 project accepts post-release corrections and feedback. Follow its contribution process
  • Publish a documented assessment to demonstrate your skills for security roles with AI responsibilities

Using AI tools in this work:
If you use AI coding tools while exploring the opportunities above, make the work something you can explain and maintain. e.g. for a side project, test the generated code and understand how it works before publishing. For an open-source contribution, read the project's AI contribution policy.
The 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey found that more respondents distrusted AI output accuracy than trusted it. Build the habit of checking the output as you use these tools.

Preparing for interviews:
Check the AI policy for each interview round. Canva describes expecting AI use in its backend, frontend and machine-learning technical interviews. Anthropic allows AI for preparation, but requires take-home assessments and live interviews to be completed without it unless explicitly permitted. Practise solving problems both ways. When AI is allowed, be ready to explain your choices, review the generated code and debug it. Ask the recruiter about permitted tools before the exercise.

Picking the opportunities

Now you know the possibilities, how to pick the right set of opportunities to pursue?

Here are some tips

  • Don't try to do everything at once(Duh?). Pick 1-3 opportunities to work on at a time. Ideally, pick 1 opportunity from each category.
  • Listen to your gut which opportunities excite you the most
  • Start-Grow-Maintain principle: Starting alone won't add much value. Understand the time & resources needed to start, grow and maintain each goal. e.g. maintaining a startup requires significant effort and a full-time commitment. How much time or resources do you need to be in a position to dedicate your full time to a startup?
  • Understand what do you gain out of the selected opportunity(e.g. wealth, network, knowledge,...). If you pick "speaking at the conference" which will help you grow your branding, network, knowledge & wisdom, then you may want to reconsider picking "writing a tutorial" as another focus area, because this will also help you gain the same things and focusing on both goals at once might be tough.
  • There are multiple right answers so don't feel bad if it feels like you're missing on things that you let go. Set a time-frame to experiment with your options and reevaluate after that time-frame. Repeat.

Getting started

Most of these goals are not a one-time thing, they require continuous efforts and iterations to achieve significant impact. Here's how you navigate the changes effectively and without going crazy

  1. Decide your strategy for a particular goal
    A. Be a rebellion: Make a bold decision to change drastically. Quit your current engagements and start focusing on your new goal for full-time.
    B. Live a second life: While working on your current job, decide to dedicate some time(daily or weekly basis) to your new goal on the side.
    For low effort goals, the recommended strategy is B(Living a second life). For high effort goals, I recommend to start with B only and later on when you get more confidence, move to A(being a rebellion).
  2. Now it is time to block calendar schedule to work on the selected goals(e.g. Goal#1 every Sun afternoon for 3 hrs)
  3. Ask yourself, can I break this big goal into smaller SMART(Specific, Measurable,Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals? Read more about SMART goals here.
    For a particular goal, if you can do this, wonderful. What to do when it is impractical to do so?
    A. Gather more knowledge around the subject and talk to people who have achieved similar things
    B. Replace goal-based approach with process-focused approach: Some tasks suit a deadline(e.g. make your resume by 31 Dec.); others suit a routine(e.g. share your learning on social media every day). If limited knowledge/expertise makes the time required hard to predict, focus on taking consistent actions that can lead to the goal.
  4. Take the first smallest action as soon as possible: When there's not a clear path, it is very easy to get stuck in a cycle of over-analysis. The trick to avoiding this unproductive thinking is to take the smallest action as soon as possible. e.g. Want to achieve "speak at the conference", update your social profiles with the tag "looking for speaking opportunities" or maybe record a video right now. That is the smallest action to build momentum.
  5. Keep up the momentum with the help of community or accountability partner: Now that you have started, you need to keep the momentum. Communities, where people are working towards the same goal, can help. The alternative could be to have an accountability partner who can help you track and move forward towards your goal.
“The will to win, the desire to succeed. The urge to reach your full potential – these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.” Confucius
☘️
For more detailed content, buy the book. The proceeds from the book sales are used to support Invide community.

References and credits

This is a map for developer career and map is not the territory. With your help, we can make this map better. Following resources helped me writing this guide. Do share your tip and your success story with me in the comments, so I can make it even better.

  1. How to pick career by WaitButWhy
  2. SMART goals by Mindtools
  3. Mindshift - a MOOC on breaking through obstacles to learning and discovering hidden potential
  4. Invide community members interview
Check out the book for more detailed guide

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