The number one impediment I’ve seen over the years for Angular developers to grow with the framework is that they’re stuck with an older version of Angular at work and can’t use any of the modern features of Angular 16 and 17, for instance.
This tends to happen because of dependencies, which makes this newsletter entry on picking your dependencies one of the most critical pieces of advice of the year. As a result, this would be the number 1 skill I’d recommend for an Angular team lead or solo coder because it will allow you to upgrade often and never stay out of touch with the framework.
On a side note, being (or becoming) the developer who takes the initiative to create a branch and upgrade Angular to a newer version will make you indispensable at work, which is the best thing for career advancement.
Another idea, if your work project is up-to-date, is to start introducing Signals or the new control flow syntaxes. This will achieve the same result as a complex upgrade: Your colleagues will be more reliant on you for all things Angular, which elevates your status in the company.
If your current work project seems helpless, challenge yourself with a side project, which could be one of my Angular certifications or even the Angular Accelerator program, where you’ll build a brand new app with Angular 17 through challenging yet realistic exercises.
So that’s what I would recommend:
1) Take charge at work and try to upgrade existing apps (or introduce modern features such as Signals into them if you’re already up-to-date)
2) If achieving any of this in your work projects seems impossible, try to do so by working on open-source projects, certifications, or a series of exercises similar to the Accelerator program.
