In How to double your career growth as a Software Engineer- Part 04 we talked about professional conduct. Today we are going to talk about taking risks.

There is a saying, “The biggest risk is not taking any risk”. Most of the software engineers can not reach the position they want to be in just because they are scared of taking risks. They want to change their life by having a startup or doing something new, but they love their comfort zone. They do not want to go through all the difficulties to make a successful startup and fail eventually. This is why risk-taking tendency and patience are the most valuable things that a Software Engineer can have to be more successful in their career.

Many talented software engineers in our country will fail the Stanford marshmallow test cause they love certainty more than uncertainty in their lives. The Stanford marshmallow test was conducted many years ago. They put some children in a room by themselves with a camera and gave delicious candy marshmallow to everyone. They said you can eat the marshmallow now, it’s yours, we are not going to tell your parents, but if you wait until tomorrow, you will get three marshmallows. Later they found some kids had eaten the candy immediately while others waited till the next day and archived three marshmallows.

They tracked those kids who waited till the next day. It has seen that those kids got a lot more successful in their lives than the kids who had eaten the candy immediately. They did not just get successful in their work, they also had a great married life.

The lesson we can take from this study is that taking risk needs patience. You are not going to get a successful startup in a month as Warren Buffet said, “No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.”

Here are 10 tips which will help you to take risks as a Software Engineer (Most of these tips are shared by the CEO of JetBridge, John Sung Kim)-

• The secret to success is simple - have great mentors and surround yourself with people who are both smart and passionate.
• Know the greatest risk is not taking a risk at all. Risk aversion is success aversion.
• Every great startup or human life is the result of a consistent series of new experiments.
• Embrace failure. It’s just data for a new experiment.
• Being offered a job at a startup and not taking it will haunt you until the day you die if that startup becomes successful.
• Neither children nor your spouse is a good excuse not to take calculated risks.
• You should take risks at the younger age of your life to start a company so that your kids get the opportunity to run it one day and make it bigger.
• The difference between the successful IT professional and the forever servant is that the successful person was willing to fail 10 times before achieving success.
• Always be researching, Always keep on experiencing to make changes in your life.
• Be patient after taking risks. You can not produce a baby in a month, wait until it comes out.