Own Your Tech Career

Soft skills for technologists

Don Jones

• Editore: Manning
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781638356578
• Argomento: Ciencia de la computación
• Categoria: Ciencias computacionales general

Own Your Tech Career: Soft skills for technologists is a guide to taking control of your professional life. It teaches you to approach your career with planning and purpose, always making active decisions towards your goals. Summary
In Own Your Tech Career: Soft skills for technologists, you will: Define what "success" means for your career
Discover personal branding and career maintenance
Prepare for and conduct a tech job hunt
Spot speed bumps and barriers that can derail your progress
Learn how to navigate the rules of the business world
Perform market analysis to keep your tech skills fresh and relevant Whatever your road to success, you'll benefit from the toolbox of career-boosting techniques you'll find in Own Your Tech Career: Soft skills for technologists. You'll discover in-demand communication and teamwork skills, essential rules for professionalism, tactics of the modern job hunt, and more. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the technology
A successful technology career demands more than just technical ability. Achieving your goals requires clear communication, top-notch time management, and a knack for navigating business needs. Master the "soft skills, " and you'll have a smoother path to success and satisfaction, however you define that for yourself. About the book
Own Your Tech Career: Soft skills for technologists helps you get what you want out of your technology career. You'll start by defining your ambition—whether that's a salary, a job title, a flexible schedule, or something else. Once you know where you're going, this book's adaptable advice guides your journey. You'll learn conflict resolution and teamwork, master nine rules of professionalism, and build the confidence and skill you need to stay on the path you've set for yourself. What's inside
Personal branding and career maintenance
Barriers that derail progress
The rules of the business world
Market analysis to keep tech skills fresh About the reader
For tech professionals who want to take control of their career. About the author
Microsoft MVP Don Jones brings his years of experience as a successful IT trainer to this engaging guide. Table of Contents
1 Own your career
2 Build and maintain your brand
3 Network
4 Be part of a technology community
5 Keep your tech skills fresh and relevant
6 Show up as a professional
7 Manage your time
8 Handle remote work
9 Be a team player
10 Be a team leade
11 Solve problems
12 Conquer written communications
13 Conquer verbal communications
14 Resolve conflicts
15 Be a data-driven, critical thinker
16 Understand how businesses work
17 Be a better decision-maker
18 Help others
19 Be prepared for anything
20 Business math and terminology for technologists
21 Tools for the modern job hunt

1 Own your career

Many of us see the word success and think of a big salary or an important job title. Instead, success should be seen as a set of criteria that you define and that represent a career capable of supporting the personal life you want. A career plan is a plan to achieve that kind of career.

1.1 Job, career, success, and self

Let’s begin by quickly defining some terms so that you and I can be on the same page. I define job as a set of tasks that form a role you’re paid to do: a software developer, a data analyst, a systems administrator, a network engineer, a security specialist, and so on. A job is an arrangement in which the employer offers compensation to someone and that someone performs the requested job tasks. If you weren’t doing the job, someone else would be. In other words, your employer owns the job. That means your employer bears a lot of responsibility for the job: they have to provide you the tools you need, they have to tell you which tasks need to be performed, and they get to define the standards that you have to adhere to when performing those tasks.

Your career, on the other hand, belongs to you. Your career encompasses all the skills it takes to obtain, keep, and perform the jobs of your choice, and you may have several different types of jobs over the course of your career. You are responsible for your career: you get to decide where it is headed, and you have to pay for any of its upkeep that falls outside the scope of your current job.

So, your employer owns your job; you own your career. Suppose that you’re a software developer working on in-house applications written in C++. You’ve been doing this for a while, and you’re eager for a change. You’re also a little concerned that being great in C++ doesn’t offer many job opportunities in the world, and you’re—wisely—worried about getting stuck in a rut by working in a language that’s not too common.

You decide that you’re really interested in web development, and you’d like to take a class in advanced JavaScript programming. You also want to attend a conference on web development so that you can get a handle on all the various technologies that come together in web applications. But your employer refuses to pay for either the class or the conference. Should you be upset?

I would argue that no, you should not. The class and the conference aren’t connected to your job, meaning that neither the class nor the conference will do anything to make you a better C++ programmer, which is what your employer pays you for. Instead, the class is something you want for your own career. You want to expand the set of skills contained in your career, both to satisfy your own interest and to expand the job opportunities available to you. Therefore, you should be the one paying for the class and the conference, not your employer. But as you’ll see in chapter 5, expanding your hard skills is an important aspect of maintaining your career. So don’t cancel your class or conference just because you’ll have to pay for them.

There’s a downside to “owning” a technology career, in that it can be expensive. But there’s a definite upside to owning a technology career too: you can make it serve your bidding. Your technology career can be a powerful means of achieving . . . well, just about anything you might want it to!

But what should you ask your career to do for you?

1.2 Start at the beginning: With yourself

Too many of us graduate from school, get into our first real job as an adult, and immediately start trying to do the best job we can. We manage to impress our employer, and in time, we’re offered a promotion. Or perhaps we gain enough experience to land a better job elsewhere—one that pays more, offers a better job title, or has other upgrades.

Without really thinking about it, we start to equate success with salary, job title, the size of the team we lead, and other criteria. But we rarely stop to think, “What’s it all for?” That’s what I’d like you to do right now: stop and think, “What’s it all for?”

What kind of life do you want to live? How do you want to spend your time, both on and off the job? What contributions do you want to make to the world? What passions and experiences do you want to pursue?

I want you not only to stop and think about these questions, but also write down your thoughts. Writing things on paper with a pen or pencil helps you take the thinking seriously—and helps you remember your conclusions.

Your answers to these questions clarify and define the life you desire, so I call this piece of writing your life definition. Unlike other definitions, your life definition may change as you enter new phases of life and discover new goals and values. My current life definition is not the same one I’ve always had. As I’ve grown older, formed a family, and changed interests, my definition has changed. That’s fine; that’s what being alive is all about! But I’m careful to document, in writing, what I want from my life. I revisit this definition annually, and I treat it a bit like punching in a destination into a GPS app, in that this life definition is my destination. When I get there, I want to stay there, unless something happens that prompts me to rethink what I want from life.

One more thing before you start thinking and writing: I want you to write this life definition as though you were on the outside of your life looking in. Not to be depressing, but treat this definition as though it were a kind of extended obituary. It should represent what you want your life to look like when you’re looking back on it. Writing it this way can help you distill your most important dreams, goals, and desires. To show you what I mean, I’ll share my current life definition.

This is what I want my life to look like when it’s all over. I want you to take note of a few specific bits in this life definition:

• Money is implied in my definition because I’ve listed some things that will clearly require money to achieve. At this stage, however, I’m more interested in describing what I want than worrying about how much it will cost.

• I’ve described the types of jobs I want to take. Work is, after all, a big part of life: most of us spend a third of our lives working. It’s important to me to have a job that I find satisfying and that provides the income I need.

• I’ve listed things that I haven’t yet achieved, even though I’m pushing 50 years old. I may not ever achieve all my goals, but I’m pointing myself toward them.

• I’ve included some things about my personal life that will require time, which in turn creates certain implications for my work life. I need a job that will give me free time to work on writing novels, for example, which means that I probably won’t be working for hard-charging startup companies that need 20-hour workdays.

My life definition is the destination that goes into my “GPS of life” app. Everything I do is meant to drive toward that destination. My life definition is what it’s all for. It’s why I get out of bed in the morning; it’s why I work; it’s why I live.

Please write it down . . . on paper

Human cognition—the way we think and learn—depends largely on our senses. The more senses are engaged in a given experience, the more lasting and powerful the resulting memories are inside our brains. That’s why we can have such strong memories from our childhoods. The smells, the sounds, the sights, even the taste of the churro add up to that memorable moment at Disneyland.

Typing on a computer doesn’t engage many of our senses. Our sense of touch and even our sense of sight barely register what we’re doing: the words simply flow onto the screen, as they’re meant to do.

But when you write down your definition of your life, you want your brain to be deeply and deliberately engaged. You want to be thoughtful, and you want the words you write to be branded into your mind. That way, those words will always be more present for you, helping you remember what it’s all for.

That’s why I’ve always written my life definitions over the years, using a sharp pencil and a quality notebook. Even sitting here typing this book’s manuscript into a computer I can smell the leather of the notebook cover, feel and hear the scritch of the pencil

against the page, and feel my hand traveling across the page. Those sense memories instantly bring the key elements of my life definition to mind. I didn’t even need to go get my journal to offer you the example I did, because my definition statements are indelibly carved into my consciousness. They’re always top of mind—as they should be.

With my life definition—my GPS destination—firmly in front of me, I need to figure out what it’s going to take to get there.

1.3 What does success look like for you?

For me, success is simple: it’s whatever it will take to get the life I want. Success is literally a bulleted list of things I need to achieve that life I’ve envisioned and defined. If my life definition is what goes into the “GPS of life” app, my success is whatever parts I need to build a vehicle that will take me there.

Consequently, success is not something I pursue endlessly, but a specific set of measurable goals that I can slowly work toward. I will know when I reach those goals, and at that point, all I need to do is maintain that success rather than try to continue growing it. I never feel that I’m in a rat race, endlessly pursuing the ...

Indice dei contenuti

• Own Your Tech Career
• Copyright
• contents
• front matter
• Introduction
• 1 Own your career
• 2 Build and maintain your brand
• 3 Network
• 4 Be part of a technology community
• 5 Keep your tech skills fresh and relevant
• 6 Show up as a professional
• 7 Manage your time
• 8 Handle remote work
• 9 Be a team player
• 10 Be a team leader
• 11 Solve problems
• 12 Conquer written communications
• 13 Conquer verbal communications
• 14 Resolve conflicts
• 15 Be a data-driven, critical thinker
• 16 Understand how businesses work
• 17 Be a better decision-maker
• 18 Help others
• 19 Be prepared for anything
• 20 Business math and terminology for technologists
• 21 Tools for the modern job hunt
• index