With the risk of being tagged as a hater, I want to talk about careers and how your actions might drive your career toward a mediocre one.
I have three personal stories regarding real-life situations I want to share with you. I’ve noticed people make (poor) decisions which, in my opinion, were either leading to or help them sustain a mediocre career. In this article, my purpose is not to judge the decisions they took, but to observe them and come up with an alternative, which again, in my opinion, might have helped them improve their careers. Assuming they let me, I will always do something to help them without being too pushy.
After these stories, you’ll be reading about some very obvious signs which can lead to “mediocreville” careers. And of course, you’ll know first thing you can do to prevent this from happening. There will be a series of articles describing ways to improve your career and avoid this altogether, so stay tuned.
Image source – https://theplumberscoach.com/career-goal-mediocre/
Story #1
Even if it’s longer, this one still has the greatest impact on me, and there was nothing I could do about it. I’m into computers since I was a child. I remember in 1992 or 1993 (so I was 5 or 6 at that time) when my dad had just purchased a 386 computer. Compared to today’s hardware and software, as you can imagine, it was very limited, but I was fascinated by it. Of course, I was more interested in playing games which came with Windows 3.1: Solitaire, Minesweeper and I think Freecell. An honorable mention is also Supaplex, which also got me grounded because I got blocked. Of course I didn’t know to press ESC to restart level and started to cry so loud and long that my father had to come home from work. Of course, Supaplex was deleted afterwards and I got grounded. Anyway, I wasn’t always playing games, I used to spend hours drawing in a paint-like program and learning to type fast in AmiPro, a Word-like program.
With time, my interest in computers in general grew more and more. I was mostly interested in installing and configuring Windows OS and other software, constantly learning new things, configuring basic networks, playing games and browsing the web (initially via internet cafes, then dial-up from home).
In high-school, things started to change for me, I started to get into Flash. I started creating animated websites with it (which were of course awesome) and afterwards I got into HTML & CSS. I liked the idea of creating something from nothing. So I started to create hideous web sites and I got better with time.
At some point, I wanted more. I heard about databases but I never had the courage to start actually learning about them as I thought it was very challenging. Some more time went by and my desire to use databases to make my website “dynamic” grew. After some time, I decided to start learning about databases. I followed a tutorial and started to add PHP and MySQL into my website. I managed to implement (and understand!) super basic insert/update/delete/select (CRUD) operations in several hours. The satisfaction I got from that was HUGE, I felt I could do anything. So, I started to extend my PHP skills to make my website even more dynamic, the satisfaction I got from it was greater.
Time went by and high-school came to an end and I knew I wanted to join a faculty specialized on computer science. I busted my ass learning for the exams and I managed to get in.
At that time I was pretty skilled with computers (or so I thought), just not on the concepts I was about to learn at college. The first year was the worst, I had big trouble understanding the basic concepts of programming, even though I got the hang of PHP. I managed to fail my Basic Algorithms exam, which was pretty easy if I’m thinking about it now. Anyway, the thing was that I was having a hard time, especially since I had no programming experience from high-school as other colleagues had. They seemed to be doing way better than me and I asked some of them to explain things to me so that I can understand too. Some were very nice and managed to make me understand the concepts and I passed my exams.
In the second year of college I started my own company focused on building web sites. Time went by and I started my master’s degree also in computer science.
After I finished my master studies, I got myself employed at a new job at the local university as a web developer for close to minimum wage. I took the decision to get employed due to the low number of clients and orders at my company(due to being a 1-man show with only tech skills, no business skills).
After a year, I got the opportunity to go to a bigger software company, iQuest, where I’m still currently employed at. When I joined iQuest, I realized that I didn’t know how to code at all and all I did before was unprofessional, sloppy, un-maintainable, cowboy coding => a joke. So here I was, starting to learn how to properly code.
Here comes the interesting part. After a year or so, I went grocery shopping at the hypermarket. When I get to the cash register, surprise, how do you think I meet? One of the colleagues who used to teach me programming in college.
I was mind blown. What the hell happened? As we didn’t really talk much after college, I didn’t want to be rude and ask about why is she working as cashier instead of programming, so we briefly talked and I went back home. I was shocked, here I was working at this software company, finally programming professionally, and my colleague, who helped me get here is working as a chaser in the hypermarket. Whaaaaaaat?
Several months passed and I met another colleague who helped me in college with programming and learned that she was working for a public institution on minimum wage. In college, I thought of her to be brilliant at coding. Having programming background since high-school, she used to nail problems which seemed very complex to me at the time. I felt to tell her about my new job at iQuest and asked her to join too. She declined stating that the work she was doing was pretty relaxed and she didn’t want anything new. Again, I thought to myself whaaaaaaat? I’ve never seen her since.
So, in several months I met with two colleagues who helped me a lot in developing my programming skills in college. One is a cashier at hypermarket and one works for minimum wage on a public institution and didn’t want to follow my advice and switch to a better alternative (and remember, I worked close to minimum wage at a public institution too).
This didn’t seem fair, from my point of view and it got me thinking how on earth can such a thing happen?
Story #2
I have a friend who is always bitching about money and always sees me as a very rich person just because I work as a developer. In his mind, I am a “millionaire” who can afford anything and I have a super cool and relaxed job compared to his. I’ve seen him being envious and pissed multiple times about this, even though he’s not doing bad at all. Since he seemed to want a technical job too, I decided to help him and offered my help, for free, to educate him towards a technical career. He wasn’t interesting in development as it “is too hard for him“, instead he wanted to try testing after I’ve explained him the basics in a 2 hour talk.
He’s clever, I know he can do it. So, I’ve guided him toward a 96 pages book (ISTQB Foundation Level Syllabus) which describes from scratch, what basic testing is. If properly understood and with a bit of practice, could get him the junior tester job he seemed to want. I told him to come at me any time he had the any questions regarding any testing activities and I would gladly help him.
The following weekend I called him to organize a board-game night and I was rejected. He said he stays home and read and learn about testing. I was impressed, satisfied, “way to go“, I thought. A couple of weeks later we met and he told me that he doesn’t have time to read those 96 pages and he quit. I was disappointed. Big time.
I asked him: “How do you expect to learn a new thing a get a new job if you are not willing to invest the time to read those lame 100 pages?” His answer was very defensive: “Those are 100 pages of technical content, it’s not like you’re reading a novel“. And I said: “Of course not, but even if you read and understand (even with my help if required) 10 pages / week, you would finish it in about 2.5 months. Also we could have practiced what you learned to make sure you really get it“. Again, his answer was defensive: “It’s not that simple and I don’t have the time for it.”
Story #3
I have another example, my younger brother (7 years difference). He’s a developer too, at a different company. I told him as soon as he got employed as a developer, to come and ask me things he does not understand so that he would not waste as much time as I did with various concepts. I recommended him books, I asked him to come and code with me various pet projects. He rarely reaches to me and it pisses me off, because I did not have anybody to learn from and I would have valued this very much when I was just starting out. He can take advantage of this situation and accelerate his growth, faster than I did, but he doesn’t.
The good thing is that he is learning new things, at his own pace, but he’s learning. He comes with 2-3 technical questions per year to me. I just wish, he would take advantage of this opportunity more often…
Conclusions
So these were my three personal stories. From my perspective, the decisions taken in them, were not the best towards a great career. Seeing this happening and liking to help people grow, determined me to start this blog, the facebook page and this is why I organized the Basic Programming and Professional Programming courses. To help the future developers in their career because I know the beginning can be difficult.
There are many professional quality technical conferences, but a very few target the beginner developers. Also, I found it difficult to find someone knowledgeable enough and willing to invest some time to explain things simply for the beginner level.
I want to change that. I want to help build and grow the local technical community, I want to give something back.
Don’t make the same mistakes I did, avoid cowboy programming, do things the right way. Start developing your career in an organized way, make sure your professional growth is solid. But in order to achieve this, you must invest in yourself and in your education. Unfortunately, even though I hear some would want a software developer career, they don’t act like wanting it. Here’s why I say these things…
Steps towards a mediocre career
Little by little, after also reading articles and books, hearing stories from other people and also observing a huge indifference for learning in people, I think I found the answer to my previous questions:
how come my colleagues who taught me development concepts (so I know they are knowledgeable), didn’t land a job in the field they invested time in (computer science)?
why would you throw away an opportunity to learn new skills after a weekend?
why wouldn’t you take advantage of career help when you have someone willing to help you in this direction?
Even though I don’t really understand why, I think, the answers are pretty simple, there is this tendency to:
don’t care
be unaware of the return of the spent time in various activities (which tends to be zero)
don’t think long term
not willing to learn (new) things which force getting out of the comfort zone
have other non-career priorities which they temporarily value most at this time
make excuses
From my point of view, you are heading toward a mediocre career (any career) or building one from scratch if most of the time you:
don’t know what you want to do in the near and far future. What is the direction you are heading to?
saying you want more from your career and not doing anything about it
spend most of your free time after work with:
watching tv (tv shows, reality tv shows, competitions etc.)
netflix and other on demand video stream service
social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Whatsapp etc.)
news sites
playing video games (especially online ones)
don’t educate yourself learn new things (reading/tutorials/articles)
don’t learn from yours and others mistakes
don’t like to work with people
don’t take responsibility (e.g. it’s not my job to do that)
don’t develop career-oriented habits such as having 10 minutes daily for reading
produce excuses (no time, too hard, good friend, good parent, cleaning, dishes, cooking etc.) to improve your skills
not seeing your job as a business which needs constant improvements to make it more profitable
not having a personal development plan
keep bitching/envying/gossiping/getting pissed at other people’s jobs and not doing anything to improve yours
doing the same thing at work, in the same conditions (no changes) and getting pissed you are not promoted/given a raise
If you find yourself doing the several from the above activities in most of you time (and the keyword here is MOST OF THE TIME), I got news for you, you’re heading towards (or already reached and sustain) a mediocre career.
Before you come with hate at me, don’t get me wrong, I’m not absurd, I don’t want you to fill ALL your free time with those things.
I’m not some kind of robot:
I also watch netflix, but I don’t watch half a season of a show EVERY DAY
I also play video games, but I don’t do it EVERY DAY and I also don’t do it INSTEAD of a more important activity I know I need to do
I also open facebook every now and then, but I don’t spend hours every day
What I want you to get out of this is the following:
think about what would happen if you started investing in your career (regardless of what your career is. this applies to ANY career)
monitor your daily “wasted” time (tv shows, facebook, games etc.) and think what you could learn every day instead. There are apps for smartphones to monitor your activity. On PC there is this tool https://www.rescuetime.com/ which I use to track the time spent in the apps I use. Add the netflix/facebook/games times per week and think about what you could have learned new in that time
start doing something about your career. Start small. Invest a small amount of time daily to educate yourself. For example, allocate 15-20 minutes/day (skip 1/2 of your average TV show length) for reading a book. If you are a technical person, I totally recommend Code Complete => https://www.amazon.com/Code-Complete-Developer-Best-Practices-ebook/dp/B00JDMPOSY/. It opened my eyes like no other book. Helped me a lot, but it’s a very “discouraging” 960 pages book for most people. How long would it take you to read it: 6 months, 1 year? Imagine reading as little as 10 pages in your daily reading session. You would finish it in 96 days ~ 3 months, which would be way sooner than initially expected. Even little sustained effort pays big time after a while.
Track your “wasted” time, see what you could have done with it. I’m not telling you to stop doing what you like and start doing what you don’t. Just try to be aware of how you’re spending your time and what you get out of it. Ask yourself if it’s really worth to keep investing your time in the same manner. If you are pleased with the results, keep going.
Being aware on how you’re spending your time is an achievement too, so make sure you track it. At least now that you know you’re “wasting” it, it’s an assumed decision.
Personally, from time to time, I choose to excessively “waste” some time for a while, knowing that eventually I’ll feel bad about it and I get motivated and start doing more productive things.
I recently started to think about my accomplishments in time and whether I was happy about it or not. January passed way too fast for me, we just entered February and I thought of myself: what did you accomplish in the first month of the first year? The answer was: not much. I asked myself the same thing after the first quarter, and this time there was a change, among other things I managed to read 2 career related books. I will continue to do this every quarter and adjust accordingly.
Recap
So to recap:
monitor your daily “wasted” time
be aware on how you’re spending your free time and think if it’s worth it
start doing something for your career every day (e.g. read a book for 20 mins a day, every day).
In case you don’t currently do anything about your career, any small change in your behavior will make a BIG impact on your career, because you went from NOTHING to SOMETHING.
That something was not there before, and will have an impact, especially if you do it daily. Maybe in the near future, you will extend the time spent for improving your career. Track your results, adjust as you see fit!
If you got offended by anything I wrote, I’m sorry, this was not my intention. I hope you are now aware that you might be going towards a mediocre career. But fear not, this is just the first part, the problem. There will be a series of articles describing specifically what you can do to avoid this. We barely scratched the surface here and will get in more depth in future articles.
Share this information with people you care about (sharing is caring). Make them aware of these decisions they might not know are affecting their career. Keep track “wasted” times together and learn ways to avoid it. Build habits focused on career improvement together. Summer is near – in the sunny weekend afternoons, together with my girlfriend, we usually go in a short road trip nearby, find a bench and start read books for 3-4 hours.
P.S: If you’re looking to start/restart your career in the software development field, I can help you. Follow the blog for more interesting articles or you can join the available courses: Basic Programming and Professional Programming.
Also, don’t hesitate to contact me via Facebook or drop me a line if you need help or have questions. I will follow up on those, I promise.
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