Slashdot Mirror
What Mistakes Can Stall An IT Career? (cio.com)
Quoting snydeq:
"In the fast-paced world of technology, complacency can be a career killer," Paul Heltzel writes in an article on 20 ways to kill your IT career without knowing it. "So too can any number of hidden hazards that quietly put your career on shaky ground -- from not knowing your true worth to thinking you've finally made it. Learning new tech skills and networking are obvious ways to solidify your career. But what about accidental ways that could put your career in a slide? Hidden hazards -- silent career killers? Some tech pitfalls may not be obvious."
CIO's reporter "talked to a number of IT pros, recruiters, and developers about how to build a bulletproof career and avoid lesser-known pitfalls," citing hazards like burning bridges and skipping social events. But it also warns of the dangers of staying in your comfort zone too long instead of asking for "stretch" assignments and accepting training opporunities.
The original submission puts the same question to Slashdot readers. "What silent career killers have you witnessed (or fallen prey to) in your years in IT?"
CIO's reporter "talked to a number of IT pros, recruiters, and developers about how to build a bulletproof career and avoid lesser-known pitfalls," citing hazards like burning bridges and skipping social events. But it also warns of the dangers of staying in your comfort zone too long instead of asking for "stretch" assignments and accepting training opporunities.
The original submission puts the same question to Slashdot readers. "What silent career killers have you witnessed (or fallen prey to) in your years in IT?"
You know, "This one weird trick can save you from silent career killers! Just sign up for our seminar, hire our career coach, etc. to learn more."
Definitely can ruin your life.
...not liking sports. Even though these grown men never played anything more than flag-football or a coed softball game they carry on about their favorite teams with the pronoun, "we," like they had something to do with the team's success. Many are huge fans of teams for whom they've never lived in the state that the team is based in and only attend games when that team comes to town for one game against the local one.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Over time in development and IT, I've seen guys who carreers stalled - but it wasn't from anything like failing to attend social events, it was just being complacent doing one thing, and not even really excelling at it but just being "the guy who does X" for years on end.
You really do have to push to try new things, get training, or try to get some other tasks besides something that is pigeonholing you. In the earlier days of career I would even do things like take vacation and pay for my own conferences, which greatly paid off later (also sometimes I was able to get a company to expense a conference after the fact, so don't give up even if they say no). However key is that you have to try and make use of what training you get, even if it's just prototypes that show alternative ways the company could be doing things. Very often those can spring up into real projects.
Going back around to social events, like I said I don't think they hurt your progression - but that's within a company. The thing talking to people in the company and getting to know them a bit does do, is make it much easier to find jobs later as people move on and disperse to lots of other companies. It's a great help to be thought of well by someone who works at a company you are thinking of working for, and even better having an inside person lets you invite them to lunch and ask real questions about what it is like to work there. So longer term, I don't think you have to go to every event but do make an effort to not only be friendly but also interested in the lives of those around you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Career killer par excellance
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
Two huge ones I feel they missed are sticking with a single company without advancement for too long, and waiting for responsibility to be given to you.
While hopping between jobs every 10 months is a big red flag for most, staying at the same company in the same role for 10 years is even worse (IMHO). Every time I meet a developer who has been at the same company for a decade while staying at a mid-level developer position, I expect mediocrity. Only once have I been wrong. In your mid 20's to mid 30's you need to be moving up in responsibility rapidly, and most of the time a non-enterprise sized company cannot keep up with enough opportunities.
Also most coworkers I have had wait until being formally given responsibility instead of just taking it on themselves. Every time I have gotten a significant promotion my day to day responsibilities were largely unchanged. This was because I was already doing that role and the company was just making it official. I hear many coworkers complaining about how poorly their department is being run without ever finding ways they can improve it themselves without direction. If you have a boss that doesn't like this, get a new boss. But you cannot just wait for opportunities to present themselves; create opportunity.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
But I don't label it a mistake.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Getting old. Although you wouldn't like the alternative to avoiding that.
That is all.
IT systems come and go. IT people inexorably linked to systems also come and go. Best way not to go? Stay curious, learn new things, learn new systems. Look to the future, create the future you want to work in. Don't link yourself to the past and present.
Realising that corporate politics is a load of bullshit and not playing along is the #1 career killer.
When they say, "Our employees are our most valuable asset."
Pro Tip: The more you can relate to Dilbert (in general) the more you need to find somewhere else to work.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
... that stall every other career:
1) Not knowing my worth.
2) Relying on others to advance it.
Which are somewhat two sides of the same coin.
I happen to be in the lucky place of having (at least) two careers in an lifetime. The other being performing arts. (I have a dancing/performing arts diploma) I can assure you the things holding me back in one are the precise same things holding me back in my other career in IT. It boils down to this: All careers, IT and elsewhere, that deserve the name are hand crafted and built on the willingness to have uncomfortable/difficult conversations and make tough decisions. Your current IT lead is just the very same as your current choreograph: Beyond a minimal extent he/she doesn't give a flying fuck where you are at in 20 years from now. And they don't have to. It's not their job or their concern.
It should however be yours.
I'm pretty glad with how my career is going and you can be sure all advancements are based on going through very very tough patches and seeing them through and coming out on top. Eventually.
My two eurocents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
To be fair, that will stall many careers.
Sleeping with the bosses wife or girlfriend come to mind. Anything involving the words, "officer that isn't my cocaine." Getting drunk and mistaking the main server as a urinal
Fire arms and the disk drives from the corporate san.
posting to facebook while intoxicated.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
1. Being born after 1985 or before 1975
2. Not living in NYC/SF/Austin/Boston
3. Being born without a penis
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Non-Career or life goal focused responsibilities can undermine one's ability to excel in one's chosen career.
So to can life's responsibilities recieved at inopportune times. But that's life. Life never goes according to plan.
Overspecializing is a huge danger, and it's a constant fight in IT/dev trying to figure out where you need to be next. This is especially important now that SaaS services are starting to take the place of managed environments and in-house software. I know several people who work as contractors in NYC bouncing from banks to law firms to media companies, and rates are dropping. Some skills just aren't in demand as much as they were...Exchange admins who knew everything about the product used to make tons of money because email was so important to companies...now they just buy Office 365. CCNP-level engineers who knew the network back and forth could easily make huge salaries and they're largely being replaced by SDN managed by the ISP or someone in India. The problem is that to get to these levels in any speciality, you need to tunnel-vision focus on your area at the exclusion of almost everything else.
The problem this presents is that you basically have these choices to try to make a career for yourself:
- Specialize and hope to $deity you picked something that will be around for a while...you can get rockstar-level money but the downsides are (uaually) having to move every year or so where the work is, and the risk of finding yourself in a dead end needing to jump to another rabbit hole.
- Be a total generalist...you'll be jack of all trades and master of none. You'll usually be limited to small shops which limits income and exposure to "enterprisey" huge systems. The only upside I can see is you won't find yourself in the same place EMC or NetApp wizards are finding themselves now.
- Dive into rabbbit holes but constantly bounce out...that's where I am now. The upside is that I've been able to work at the same place for over 10 years (which is important to me because I like a stable home/work life) without being the guy who's had the same year of experience 10 years over. Downside....chasing New! Shiny! Must Learn NOW!!! while being semi-competent at whatever specialty I'm engaged in. The firehose of information can get exhausting, especially when you see how much new shiny is yet another wrapper on a wrapper on a layer on a framework on a container on a virtualization platform.
Long term survival in the IT world without winding up a washed-up middle manager or project manager means being flexible. Don't go too far down rabbit holes...the good money is only temporary and will require another massive effort to climb out and back down the next one.
Companies vary. Sometimes they hire the cheapest of the cheap IT people, with no interview lasting longer than it takes to present a Microsoft stamped certificate that proves that they have attended a class. Some companies do better here, with smarter IT up the chain away from the support desk.
Smaller companies in my experience tend to hire better people, because each IT worker has got to manage so many more things.
Really large companies all outsource everything, so instead of ignorant American cookie cutter IT clones, they hire cheaper foreign cookie cutter IT clones. (solution to the workers here is to stop being clones and compete on quality instead of price)
Never stop learning. Make sure you stay current. Use every position as an opportunity to learn new things.
Manage perception. Make sure people see you as a subject matter expert and a person with high commercial value.
Network effectively. Stay in touch with people as they change jobs.
Proactively seek new opportunities.
Negotiate hard for the compensation you want. This is another aspect of perception management.
I've been continuously employed and well paid in this industry for over 34 years. Just changed jobs again.
Nowadays you can find lots of interesting Meetup groups on all kinds of technical subjects. That kind of socializing is probably even more useful in terms of long term connections for finding jobs, but also helping to expand what you know and not remain too static... just the act of constantly learning will bleed over even into day to day work.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In my particular case the court appointed psychiatrist thought that having had more than ten jobs over the past ten years at the age of 28 meant I was unstable. This of course was a woman in her sixties who's parents put her through an ivy-league school then never really had to hustle a day in her life because her dad was politically connected and got her connected to several judges who sent her business as often as she wanted in exchange for campaign contributions. She literally had a quarter million dollar a year position handed to her right out of college due to her connection and it just went up from there. Let's look at theses ten jobs over ten years at the age of 28 - most of them were in the first four years of that span, meaning right out of high-school moving from the sticks to the city without a connected family. The home town video store, to security guard - still aged 18 - that only lasted about eight months, to manufacturing, to better manufacturing to engineering to supporting businesses, to supporting satellite earth stations for gas companies. You're supposed to go through a bunch of jobs right after high school to work your way up in your career, the job as of the time of the shrink visit was at four years. Something else she held against me - the company I worked for when I first moved to Houston dissolved and formed a company in partnership with one of our clients. I worked for the same people more or less for four years, but since it was two different companies I changed jobs on paper and that contributed to my instability. When I did work for one of the oil companies who I worked for changed four times while I sat in the same desk in the same office - that was job hopping to her. It's almost like she was programmed into government technicality stupid mode. You would think someone doing that job for that long could understand people without a silver spoon in their rectums having to climb a ladder and someone who lived in Houston all their lives having some understanding about oil companies.
My next job was a pretty good one. It's wasn't super awesome, I stayed in one spot for 8 years at about ~$50,000 simply because I've been in a custody stale-mate the whole time and I wanted to keep the shrink happy. I had more opportunities come up, but I refused to take any risks, the sheer magnitude of my child support combined with well-timed extra expenses kept me from ever developing any kind of buffer zone for risk combined with the fact even if I found something better it would be a red mark as far as the shrink was concerned caused me to remain stagnant. My job at NASA was finally Obamanated after 8 years and I'm coming up at 4 at the next place. Fortunately within the position I'm at we're making changes in my department to actually form a subsidiary company and I might have a chance to make some risk taking type advancement without the same risk taking stigma I would take on my own. Regardless it's only a few years until my kid hits adulthood at this point and even though I don't truly have the buffer zone anymore it matters less.
I was considered a wiz-kid well ahead of the curve when I first started out. Even after I leveled out a little I was still upwardly mobile and making waves. After getting married to a sociopath the career brakes were hit hard.
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Other peoples mental health seems to be an issue I have to keep dealing with.
Married then divorced a socio-path. Dated several women that turned out having a lot worse issues than they let onto at first. Then thanks to corrupt courts my daughter lived with the sociopath instead of me, now she has some severe issues as a result.
I've been to two shrinks in my lifetime - the one the court made me go to and the one that I had free access to at one of my previous jobs.
The one I had free access to pretty much told me I was one of the most well adjusted people she had ever met and I had a phenomenal ability to deal with stress and hardship - most people would have had severe breakdowns after what I've been through. I told her I never had the luxury of having a window of low responsibility to allow myself to have a breakdown, I was too busy to have my own mental health issues. She liked the answer.
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Cops are trained to shoot someone if they look like they are reached for a weapon hidden in the waistband of their pants. Pulling up your shorts also looks like reaching for a weapon. If it is thought there is more than one suspect inside a room, all other suspects are asked to move away from the door. The other cop was doing the shouting giving instructions like "crawl towards me, with your legs crossed at the ankles". That led to his pants falling down, which in turn led to the guy reaching back to pull his pants back up, which in turn leads to the cop shooting him.
1. Being over 40
2. Being a US Citizen
3. Being White
I'm sure that there are others.
Go on, citizen, stamp the vote card. R or D, your choice.
Doing all your scripting in Brainfuck. Yes, you're a genius if you can do it - but it is rather complex to maintain...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I see this all the time. "I'm a web developer, I don't want to learn any backend services stuff.", "I'm a DB person. I don't code." In this market you'll be competing against full stack developers who do everything including all that devops stuff to deploy apps. Good luck with your career if you don't keep up with at least a few skills. Don't be a one trick pony in IT. It doesn't work anymore.
I've had 3 truly toxic managers in my career. One of them I didn't realize until after, but if you ever wonder, "Is it normal for my boss to undermine my efforts?", the answer is a resounding NO. Get out. As soon as you can. No paycheck is worth having to battle a person who should be your advocate.
I had _3_ < 1 year positions in a row. I was lucky in that the first and second had very reasonable explanations and the third was honestly just bad placement. I'm a jack of all trades developer but they were expecting an RBMS _expert_ - someone who had experience with gigantic databases and performance optimization. One of those kinda monastic tech disciplines.
Provided you don't make completely terrible decisions, the occasional mar isn't going to tank your career. Staying in a shitty position or one you're just not fit for is going to do far more damage.
I see my shadow changing, stretching up and over me...