On the DotDev.co site Sharon Steed has written up a post suggesting the importance of a non-technical skill that can help you in your career: being a better writer.

No skill will serve you better in your career than being a confident communicator. As important as being able to talk to people is, however, today I want to focus on written communication. Writing often gets a bad wrap, but it doesn’t have to be the dreaded task many of us make it out to be.

She talks about some of her own experience with writing and how it related to the eventual move to public speaking. She talks about how most people she talked to saw writing as a chore and always had their reasons why. She points out that, while most people seemed to dislike writing, they do it all day - emails, chat, texts, etc. She makes some suggestions you can follow to help take the dread away from writing and instill the confidence you need to make it more effortless.

On the Laravel News site there's a recent post by Sharon Steed talking about building a culture of trust and why sharing is good on both a personal and corporate level for your career (and not just in technology).

I speak about empathy on teams and why vulnerability is a great asset in your professional life. Sharing ideas falls right in line with my own ideology, but I also understand why people are so terrified to offer up opinions.

[...] I’m constantly amazed at how many people refuse to talk about projects they are working on for fear of others trying to swipe the idea. I’m even more so surprised at people who go out of their way to not share ideas with bosses or coworkers. Yes, there is absolutely a chance that someone else will take credit for that idea. The nature of working with other people, however, is that of collaboration.

She goes on to give some example situations, how sharing and trust between people plays and role and how many are realizing the value of being open. She gives examples of companies that are following this same idea on a corporate level like Buffer, Zappos and Landmark (an oil and gas software company). She ends the post with some practical advice on how you can help foster this culture of trust in your own company and career.

The Loosely Coupled podcast has released their latest episode: #10, Titles and Classifications. In this episode hosts Jeff Carouth and Matt Frost discuss these two topics and how they effect one's career.

In this episode Jeff and Matt continue their conversation about careers by discussing their thoughts on titles and classifications of developers. If you’ve ever asked “what is a senior developer?” or even “am I a senior developer?” this episode is for you.

You can listen to this latest post either through the in-page audio player or by downloading the mp3 of the episode directly. If you enjoy the show, be sure to subscribe to their feed to get this and other great episodes as they're released.

The Loosely Coupled podcast has release their latest episode (#9) discussion some suggestions around career development. Join hosts Jeff Carouth and Matt Frost as they talk about the management and development of your life as a developer (and maybe even beyond).

This was the first ever live recording of an episode, broadcast over Google Hangouts on Air. With the help of the kind folks in the IRC channel (#looselycoupled on Freenode) this episode covers topics such as salary negotiation, when to ask for a raise or promotion, how to plan a career plan, how to deal with co-workers in difficult situations, and a few other pieces of advice about successfully navigating a career as a developer.

You can listen to this latest episode either through the in-page audio player or by downloading the mp3 for listening offline. If you like the show and want more, be sure to subscribe to their feed and get the latest as they're released.

Adam Culp has a great new post to his site sharing some of his thoughts and advice about advancing in a career in development for those that might feel a bit "stuck".

As the organizer of the SoFloPHP User Group I am often approached by entry to mid-level developers asking what they can do to advance in their career or become better developers. Of course I am nowhere near perfect but have been around long enough to get a few bumps and bruises along the way, so [this list] is what I usually share as some pointers.

Some of the things are PHP-specific, but a lot are just general good practices any developer should follow. His list includes things like:

• It's okay to stay up late once and a while, but get some sleep
• Track your time and get in the habit of knowing what you did with each hour
• Certifications will not actually carry much value on your resume, so I would not make them a main focus.
• Pick an IDE to use and learn it FULLY. I will not recommend one in this post, so explore and find one that fits how you want to work.
• Always strive to make yourself replaceable. If you are replaceable you are also promotable, and you can go on vacation pain free.

He also suggests learning a few other tools like git (and github), a good IDE and having a "pet" full-stack framework. Check out the full post for more great tips.

NetTuts.com has started off the week on a humorous note with this latest post showing the "11 Phases of a Web Developer's Career" as illustrated with animated GIFs of various internet memes.

The career of a web developer is an interesting one with many slopes. Considering a learning curve this steep, you can fully expect to live through periods of frustration, enlightenment, self-righteousness, and every mindset in between. In this article, we’ll have some fun, by reviewing each of these phases through the lens of a meme!

Some of the phases include:

• Phase 1 - Noob
• Phase 3 – Complete Frustration
• Phase 5 – Fragile Code
• Phase 7 – Cocky
• Phase 9 – When Code Becomes Art
• Phase 10 – Seasoned

Check out the post for the images of these and the others on their "top 11" list.

In this new post to the Developer Drive site today, they share six things that you, as a developer, can do to hold you back in your career (or development growth in general).

The web development industry is one that is always growing because of how we use the web. No longer do we expect the Internet to simply host a digital pamphlet for a business. The expectations nowadays are for a site to be rich with content, provide the means for visitors to interact and be dynamic in every interaction. With the demand at an all time high, freelance web developers may think that there is little they could do to harm their career. Unfortunately, there are many ways that people in this industry sabotage themselves when it comes to their career.

Among the things they recommend avoiding are practices like clinging to older technologies, failing to network with other developers and market themselves and forgetting why you were hired in the first place.

Those developers out there currently looking for a job (you shouldn't have to look too far) might want to read Michelangelo van Dam's take on job hunting 101 for of his experiences when recruiters contacting him.

In this day and age, everyone uses the internet for finding new jobs or to find a new employee, but more and more I sense that it's all turning into one big mess. This blog post is devoted to all those people contacting me because they have the best job position. [...] I know it's a tough market out there, lot's of competition and so many technologies and skills to keep track off. I know, but it is [you, the recruiter's] business! You decided to dive right into the job chaos, so don't cry if you have to do a bit of work. Do you think we just turn on the computer and it writes code itself ? You do your job, I do mine.

He points out a few specific times a recruiter has sent emails about a "direct hire position" that needs filling immediately or a Java developer (when, clearly, Michelangelo is a PHP developer). He also points out to recruiters that, despite what they may think, they're almost never the only one getting in contact about the same job.

if you're out looking for a new PHP job, go check out the community itself. Most of us have a list of companies with PHP job vacancies or we have a shortlist of trustworthy, understanding recruiters that have touched base with the PHP community and won't let you down once you sign up.

Emran Hasan has a recommendation for those looking to hire on a "senior PHP developer" - beware.

With the rise of PHP developer as career, many are trying to get their share in the pie. Lately I've met a number of developers who have worked for more than one/two years in developing PHP applications in various companies and they consider themselves as "senior" developers.

Key things to keep an eye out for are the "more talk, less code" they tend to do and the lack of dedication to the tasks at hand. These bad developers then follow up with the typical blame to the junior developers, noting that it was them being difficult that caused all of the "real" problems.

On his blog today, Marc Gear asks if developing PHP makes for a solid job prospect for the future:

Good developers who know and want to work in PHP are hard to come by. Consider that perhaps PHP is so popular because it does some jobs really well. [...] To me, [Terry's quote] says that PHP is a pretty good scripting language to be getting stuck into, that its something that you should be using if you want to develop web applications that are used by hundreds of thousands of users across the world.

He points out some developers that are almost ashamed for knowing PHP, thinking that it's a "low level" sort of language that doesn't really count in a world of Javas and .NETs. Too bad they're apparently oblivious to the high quality, enterprise level applications that are developed with it and use it every day. Shame to be missing out on that because of some silly personal opinions...