The document presents a crowd-sourced repository of career hacks for developers seeking to advance their careers, categorized by effort and impact. It emphasizes actions like writing tutorials, speaking at conferences, contributing to open source, and launching side projects to enhance personal branding and skills. The content also introduces Invide, a community aimed at supporting developers from remote areas, facilitating career growth through shared experiences and opportunities.

1. Share your feedback, experience and career hacks ideas with us.
help@invidelabs.com

2. Career Hacks for Developers
This is a crowd-sourced repository of all possible hacks for a developer's career growth.
Combine a couple of them as your time allows and you will have a great recipe to
the next level in your career.
Who are these hacks for?
This is relevant for you if programming is your primary skill and you want to utilize
this skill to grow further in your career.
How did we come up with these hacks?
For this research, we compiled our 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. Which we believe is
the most accurate and updated career map on the internet for developers. 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. We are always eager to
learn and listen to new experiences and perspectives.
Who are we?
Invide is a developer community from remote areas of the world. We are a highly
curated community with a 1.2% acceptance rate. Our 90% of members have 2-7
years of work experience and are from India. We run the world's first AI enabled
accelerator to help developers grow. We also organize the Git Commit Show, the
world's largest online developer conference. We are united by a common goal to
break location barriers to opportunities for developers.
Join community of top remote devs
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Share your feedback, experience and career hacks ideas with us.
help@invidelabs.com

3. Table of Content
High Impact, Low Effort
1. Write/Record a Tutorial
2. Speak at a conference
3. Contribute to open source
4. Launch a side project
High Impact, High Effort
1. Get a full-time remote job
2. Found a startup
3. Get a Ph.D.
4. Start an independent research
5. Publish a paper
6. Publish a report as a data journalist
Low Impact, Low Effort
1. Finish a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)
2. Complete a bootcamp
3. Attend a conference
4. Help a developer in a community
5. Volunteer for non-profit organization
6. Participate in a contest/hackathon
7. Accept more responsibilities at current job
8. Learn a lateral skill
9. Mentor someone
10. Improve soft skills
11. Become a technical writer
12. Become a technical interviewer

4. Career Hacks Categories
We categorize hacks according to the effort you need to expend and the impact you
are going to have.
High Effort
Low Impact
❏ Get a full-time remote job
❏ Found a startup
❏ Get a Ph.D.
❏ Start an independent research
❏ Publish a paper
❏ Publish a report as a data
journalist
❏ Finish MOOC
❏ Complete a bootcamp
❏ Attend a conference
❏ Help a developer in a community
❏ Volunteer non-profit
❏ Participate a contest
❏ Accept more responsibilities at
current job
❏ Learn lateral skill
❏ Mentor someone
❏ Improve soft skills
High Impact
❏ Write Record a Tutorial
❏ Speak at conference
❏ Contribute to open source
❏ Launch a side project
Low Effort

5. Bucket#1:
High Impact, Low Effort
1. Write/Record a Tutorial
#personalbranding #network #skills #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 learning with others via
social media or blog or youtube, this can significantly help you build your personal
brand and authority in the subject. Apart from all these visible benefits, the process
of creating tutorials leads to increased self-awareness and insights about the
subject.
To an employer/client, this makes you stand out. If you are able to garner decent
traffic on your tutorials, it can also generate good side income over time.
Irrespective of the results, it is a recommended approach to improve your skills &
personal branding.

6. Success stories:
● Amit Agarwal shared tonnes of tutorials on his blog Digital Inspiration and
became India's most popular blogger
● Hitesh Choudhary has made a great personal brand as well as generated
income by sharing tutorials on his youtube channel(500k+ subscribers)
Get started: Level 1
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: Level 2
1. Do it more often e.g. move from publishing one tutorial once in a while to
every month and then every week...
2. Improve your choice of topic e.g. figure out the topics that the audience
respond to most or a topic that has not been covered well on the internet
3. Improve your style and delivery
4. Engage with people who comment on your posts
FAQ & resources:
1. What tools & platforms can I use to write down my posts? Notion,
WordPress, Medium, Google docs, Evernote, Google Keep, Simplenote, your
own blog, GitHub README, etc.
2. Where can I share my tutorial? Your Twitter, LinkedIn, Reddit communities,
Youtube, Hackernews, blog, email newsletter, on popular publications as a
guest writer(little tough to execute but not impossible), etc.
3. Where do I get a good affordable microphone for recording? Amazon

7. Current opportunities:
● Paid work opportunities for technical writing can be found on major job
boards. For part-time gigs in technical writing, check out Upwork, Freelancer,
etc.
● Earn reputation and personal branding by writing a tutorial for these reputed
tech publications.
2. Speak at a conference
#personalbranding #skills #network #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.

8. 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:
● Writing a tech talk
● Tips on public speaking from Head of TED
Current opportunities:
● Speak at Git Commit Show
● Directory of conference CFPs(call for proposals) - confs.tech, callingallpapers,
cfpland, papercall, joind

9. 3. Contribute to open source
#personalbranding #skills #network #wisdom
Overview:
As a developer, what else can add to your personal brand better than a
contribution to open source projects! 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.
You can contribute via code reviews and documentation as well.
Inspiration:
● Linus Torvalds built the popular Linux kernel. Does his success story need
any introduction!
Get started:
1. Pick an open source project that you care about
2. Find some good issues that you can contribute to

10. 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 own open source project
FAQs & resources:
● Top open source projects : Mozilla, GNOME, Wikipedia, KDE, Apache, Python,
Node.js, etc.
● How to contribute to open source
Current opportunities:
● Google summer of code - 3 month programming project for students with
OSS organizations
● What can you do for Mozilla
● Open issues good for first-timers
● Mozilla Open Source Support provides $5,000 and $150,000 grant for
selected open source projects

11. 4. Launch a side project
#skills #wisdom #personalbranding #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 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 significant personal branding and a scope of earning from your project.
Irrespective of the popularity of side projects, you will come out as 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

12. 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:
● How to get started with side projects
Current opportunities:
● Showcase your side project at Git Commit Show

13. Bucket#2:
High Impact, High Effort
1. Get a full-time remote job
#wealth #skills #wisdom #network
Overview:
Working on a full-time job gives you an opportunity to work on a business/tech
problem for a longer period which helps you build better understanding of the
specific problem or 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 upon your soft skills such as teamwork, leadership,
collaboration and communication.
When the job is a remote job, this gives you more peace and balance with personal
life as well. For many people who come from developing nations have a chance of
making a lot more than the local market by working with organizations in
developed countries.
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 company is open to work with people in IST timezone, most of them aren't)
3. Pick a list of companies that you'd want to work with
4. Set up email alerts for new opportunities from these companies

14. 5. Sign up for Invide (recommended for Indian developers) and
Stackoverflow(Recommended for people closer to US time zone) alerts for
new remote job opportunities
6. 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:
● List of 100% remote companies hiring developers from India
Current opportunities:
● Join Invide to get matched with full time remote opportunities

15. 2. Found a startup
#wealth #skills #network #wisdom #personalbranding
Overview: Founding a startup is the fastest & the most lucrative way to accelerate
growth in skills, network, wisdom and personal brand. If it succeeds, it can generate
a disproportionate income that no other career option can. But if it fails, it can
negatively impact your wealth. For every success story in a startup, there are at
least 10 other failure stories. This path demands a lot from an individual in terms of
skills, time and resources which leads to the accelerated learning but at the cost of
work-life balance in most cases. The fate of a startup depends not just on an
individual but a ton of external factors which we may for simplicity here call "the
market". If you want to start a startup, usually starting with a "side project" is a
great idea. Once you build better understanding and feel confident, you can move
on to working on a startup full-time. In the end, the decision is mainly influenced by
your financial constraints and your conviction on pulling off the business plan.

16. Inspiration:
● Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded a startup in 1998 when they were Ph.D.
students. I don't remember it's name though, I might need to Google it.
Get started:
● There is no proven recipe for this
Note: Covering this specific topic is out of scope of this article, because
● There is no reliable right/wrong way to do this
● This requires significant expertise in skills other than software
engineering(e.g. business, industry specific skills, etc.)
3. Get a Ph.D.
#skills #personalbranding #network #wisdom #wealth
Overview: Ph.D. is a great way to build a deeper understanding of a field(e.g.
artificial intelligence) and contribute to the knowledge creation itself. During Ph.D.,
you get a chance to interact with very smart people and spread your research. Your
research skills, teaching skills and technical communication skills improve
significantly. This does require full-time dedication to research/study for up to 5-7
yrs. You get paid little to nothing during this period and the effort to reward ratio
remains comparatively low. Getting a PhD degree, however, opens the door to new
research opportunities in academia as well as better and higher paying
opportunities in tech companies. Having said that, getting accepted for Ph.D.,
earning the degree and early years after Ph.D. are quite challenging than people
usually expect it to be. Many factors make it hard to pursue a PhD, for instance, it
takes longer time to gain deeper understanding of your respective field, obtaining
desirable and useful results are sometimes a matter of luck, peer-review and
publication of a single research article can take from a few months to even a year.
As this can be highly rewarding and highly frustrating, it's better to do a thorough
research before going for this option and understanding if you're ready for it or
not.

17. Inspiration:
● James Gosling earned his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University and later on
joined Sun Microsystems and created the popular programming language
Java
Get started:
● Understand whether Ph.D. is for you or not
● Research available Ph.D. positions, universities
● Prepare for GRE and get a good score
● Apply for Ph.D.
● Get recommendation letters
● Complete the selection process
● Move to the university
● Stay alive till you get the Dr. in front of your name
Moving to next level:
● Build strong relationships with your colleagues, professors and industry
people
FAQs & resources:
● Understand if Ph.D is for you or not, a guide by Dr. Ronald, a CS Ph.D.
● Applying to Ph.D. programs
● In the end, academia is a business(a different kind of business) and Ph.D. is a
job
● Some fellowships
● What is life like for PhDs in computer science
● A research on PhD students
Current opportunities:
● Directory of Ph.D. opportunities

18. 4. Start an independent research
#skills #personalbranding #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 academia research where
direction is decided by the funding organizations).
Being a self-funded scientist is not an easy path though when you don't have an
academia 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.
There are no dedicated grants for independent researchers these days, only a few
small fellowship programs. So to succeed, you will have to be excellent at not only
research but at independent fund-raising as well. Independent research had been
quite popular in the 19th century (most of the scientist you may have heard of e.g.
Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, etc. had been independent researchers).

19. Patents and crowd-funding are good tools to succeed in this path. Licensing and
royalties are the most common way to make money for self-funded researchers. So
having an understanding of how you can protect your IP rights is quite useful.
Inspiration:
● Thomas Edison is one notable example of 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:
● Crowd-funding for scientific projects
● Introduction to intellectual property - Crash Course
● A blog post on independent research
● Blue skies - research without clear goals
Current opportunities:
● Royal Society is famous for funding independent researchers (e.g. Charles
Babbage). Checkout their website for funding options. It provides 1m pound

20. funding as Theo Murphy Blue Skies award to independent
researchers(Update: Discontinued).
● You may find some scholarships/grants for independent research on DAAD
website, checkout their scholarship database. Filter out for your qualification
level (for undergraduates there are few, keep checking)
● Present your breakthrough research at Git Commit Show
5. Publish a paper
#personalbranding #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 the subject matter expertise.
Having research articles in your CV will add to your personal branding like nothing
else. No need to say, 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.

21. 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:
● List of computer science journals
● How to write a great research paper
● Some research paper templates for popular journals
● All computer science research papers

22. 6. Publish a report as a data journalist
#skills
When you combine skills of data science with journalism, you get Data Journalism.

23. Bucket#3:
Low Impact, Low Effort
1. Finish a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)
#skills
Overview:
A MOOC(Massive Open Online Course) is a convenient way of learning from the
experts. You can learn and improve a variety of skills with MOOCs from your home
and on your time.
Keep learning about technical skills where you want to build expertise in as well as
soft skills such as communication skills, leadership skills, etc. whichever can help
you to work more efficiently.
The common problem with MOOCs is that many people start to learn but lose the
motivation before finishing the course.
Resources:
● Class Central
● Class Central / Learning How to Learn Course
● edX
● Coursera
2. Complete a bootcamp
3. Attend a conference
4. Help a developer in a community
5. Volunteer for non-profit organization
6. Participate in a contest/hackathon
7. Accept more responsibilities at current job

24. 8. Learn a lateral skill
Learning a different skill other than Software Engineering will move you from good
to great. T-shaped skill development(having deep knowledge in two fields and
generic knowledge in other fields) have been discussed and have been suggested
by many people. If you're good at data science as well as journalism, an opportunity
for Data Journalism opens up. Similarly
Tech Skill + Write = Blogger
Tech Skill + Speak = Tech Speaker
Tech Skill + Journalism = Data Journalist
.... and so on
This also improves your existing performance in software engineering as well. So
learn a lateral skill
9. Mentor someone
10. Improve soft skills
11. Become a technical writer
12. Become a technical interviewer
With this pdf, we aim to bring an array of possibilities that can unlock your
potential, some of them you might have ignored completely because of your busy
days in fixing bugs and shipping new releases. These are highly personalized for
developers and are practical to do.
Read through, understand and pick the opportunities best suited to you(not more
than 3) at the moment and move forward confidently.
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