I was having lunch with a buddy of mine lately and we were talking about technical interviews. We've both gone through a few rounds of them in the last year, and my friend happens to be actively looking for a job so he had gone through one just days before our lunch.

He explained that the live coding portion didn't go as well as he had hoped — he said that he was asked to build a dynamic web page with only plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript and got an email a few days later saying he wasn't strong enough in those areas.

This got me thinking, and then I had a major revelation...

As a professional software developer, a big part of your career progression will involve how you work with others. Growth inevitably involves leadership. Even if you don't go into management, as you grow into more senior roles you will be expected to mentor more junior members of the team and help them to build a solid foundation of the fundamentals.

Learning how to give and receive feedback in a team environment can make a huge difference in how well you perform at a job and what you ultimately get from the role. These are my tips and insights based on my nearly two decades of experience.

If you've read some of my other content then you probably know that I am a big fan of side income. It has gotten me through some very lean times in life and has helped me to build a solid foundation for my family.

One of the most difficult things there is when it comes to side income is actually getting started. For a lot of people they just don't know where to begin. Cold calling local businesses can end up costing a lot of time in the end, and you may have to compromise on your rates in order to land jobs that way.

Nobody wants to do that. The good news is that there is a dead simple method you can use to kick-start your journey into side income.

Bootstrap is something I've been working with for over a decade. When I first started using it, I didn't quite get it. After a few attempts at building website themes from scratch on my own it started to make more sense.

Developing a complete, cohesive and consistent theme is a big job! If you just look at the number of components that Bootstrap offers you can get an appreciation for the volume of work involved in building all of your HTML and CSS from scratch.

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time you probably know that I believe strongly in the power of doing side work as a software developer. While it is possible to incur some costs, it is one of very few fields in the world where you have an unlimited supply of all the raw material you can ever need for any job — your thoughts and your actions.

We can create something from nothing, with only an investment in time and the power of our own minds. Think about that for a moment. It's a powerful concept. If you use it as proper motivation, you can change life for you and your family.

Part of taking opportunities that come along is being prepared for them. This is the primary reason why I have kept a business entity running over the years as a software developer.

Ever since the later years of my college career, I have had a strong desire to start and run my own successful venture in the world of software. I can't quite explain it, but the idea of working for myself has always been much more appealing than the idea of working for somebody else, being stuck on the treadmill of trading time for money.

For that reason, I've spent many late nights and weekends tinkering with code, trying to learn the skills that would some day translate to a successful digital business.

One of the biggest success stories of my life thus far is the story of a project that was born from this desire, ended up failing and ultimately being resurrected and providing extreme value.