Careers are long-term, and Jobs are temporary
Hey!
Welcome back to another week of musings. As you read this, we’re observing MLK Day in the US.
I hope you had a restorative weekend or enjoying your long weekend!
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Things I discovered in the past week
Fixing Common Pitfalls of Codemods is part of a larger article around Codemods, but that section was fascinating! It's worth the read.
I've been reading The Man from the Future: The Visionary Ideas of John Von Neumann. I've barely started, but it's an interesting read. I like reading biographies because they put the history of humanity in perspective—how much development we've achieved in so little time.
Architecture is a game of constraints satisfaction is a good article by Gregor Hohpe that discusses architecture and constraints and how they change over time, get removed, or are weakened.
If you're into old school Latin-American music, and vinyl, listen to Coco María present: "Coco María In The Mission" at Discodelic.
Last week, there were a couple of events at work, and I wanted to meet folks in person to begin the year! During the conversation, the topic of tenure and careers came up.
I felt compelled to wonder what keeps a person at a job for a long time. It depends on each person, but it’s a combination of the people you work with, the difficulty level of things you’re learning, and how “tangible” you can feel your impact. I mainly discuss those three dimensions in a setting where work-life balance, pay, and alignment with company values are given.
The people around you, including your manager, help a lot. We engage with them for long chunks of time. Before the pandemic, we would see each other for 40 hours or more. Now, it's more like calls and Slack messages, but either way, we certainly talk.
There’s this saying that people don’t leave jobs; they leave managers, and I’ve seen that as accurate.
Between you and your manager, there should always be a constant stream of work that helps you be productive and stretch your skills to keep a growth trajectory. If they’re too difficult, you might burn out; if they’re easy or more of the same, you’ll get bored and leave. The more senior we become, the less a manager will be able to help, sometimes because they don’t have enough time (your report to a Sr Director or above) or because you’re expected to be senior enough to define your goals and align with the company goals, or you might be more senior than your manager.
Being more senior and having more expectations around you means you’re making the right choices. You should always meet with your manager and skip levels to keep a pulse on the goals, manage relationships with managers, products, etc., and get a pulse on the organization.
At any level, we should ask in our yearly review, or more periodically, what value I think I bring to the team around me. But also to our managers, what value they see we’re providing to the teams around us?
I hadn't thought that deeply about how I felt about the value I bring. Instead, I "felt" the value via my yearly review of my achievements. But this past week, I went again through my list of projects and support I provided and felt I was still proving value in various areas. It also made me realize how I had shifted my definition of value from doing tickets working in sprints to planning large projects (multi-year), delegating, de-risking, securing funds, etc.
My evolving definition of the role I execute has made me realize that I'm also trying to build acumen for the career I want to have in the long term.
While doing our current job is important, keeping an eye on the long-term of our careers is also important. Where do we want to go? What do we want to learn and practice? For example, when I started university, the AI conversation was not at the same level as today, so there are specialized roles now. So I don't know what will happen in the next 10, 20 years. Even if that is true, we should acquire skills that allow us to keep growing and being effective regardless of the new roles that come into the industry!
Your turn
What do you think about your current job? Have you given any thought about your career? Regardless of where you're in it, starting, mid, or thinking of (early) retirement. Let me know your thoughts by replying to this email!
Happy coding!
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