Let’s start with the key principles that are going to allow you to become a great IT professional and to start building your skills as a leader:

1. Start at the beginning

This is a key concept: do not try to put your energy into jumping over steps. You can move fast through a step if your skills allow you to, but be aware of your limitations and take the time you need to understand what you need to learn.

Jumping steps ahead can come at a great cost later.

2. Be aware of your limitations

Being aware of my limitations has been and still is essential to know when to look for answers elsewhere when I don’t have the knowledge to provide them. It taught me first what to learn and also, later, which kind of professionals and persons I needed around me, on my teams, to mitigate my weaknesses and set the teams up for success.

There is nothing wrong with having limitations; we all have them no matter who we are. What makes us different is what we do about them.

You need to identify and understand your limitations in order to work on defeating or mitigating them.

3. Be an autodidact and take it to the core of your professional life

As soon as I realized what I wanted to become, about eight years ago with about two years of experience on my back, I knew I was far away from getting there. I wanted to be the best Frontend Software Engineering that I could be, and at that point, I was a fast learner but my commitment was far from where it needed to be to become what I decided I wanted to become.

I worked on identifying my technical weaknesses and I started a hardcore autodidact process. I started from the beginning of the path walking towards my objective, dedicating hours and hours of reading, prototyping, writing until I was happy with the knowledge I acquired about something and felt I was ready to move to the next thing on my list.

You will and should never stop learning and please, never make the mistake of thinking you know it all.

4. Compete against yourself, not others

It makes no sense to compare yourself with someone else, it is only going to take you far away from the things you should be working and focusing on.

Compete with the professional you were a second ago every second, not against others.

5. Always be humble

If you don’t have the ability to accept and work on your limitations, if you think you know it all, if you always think you are the smartest guy in the room… the consequences for your career, for your team and/or for your company, are going to be huge and you will never be able to become a real leader or even a pleasant person to work with.

There is no mystery about this: no one likes a know-it-all, and by being one you are just limiting yourself in every possible way.

6. Be a team player

Put this concept on the key of your culture, even more, if you want to be a leader one day.

You are not going to get anywhere by yourself

Help others, accept help from others, learn to be part of a team and understand that in the end you succeed or fail as a team. It doesn’t matter if you did your part perfectly if the final product doesn’t work, it really doesn’t, because in the end what you did is part of something bigger, that works or fails as a whole.