May 15, 2014 at 11:00 pm
I've had health problems which can really limit what I can do. I also have a sub optimal reaction to stress. My people skills aren't as good as my technical skills.
May 16, 2014 at 2:52 am
I found that it is not worth planning too much in advance in a technology career as technologies and the types of roles change over time.
That doesn't mean that one should be directionless but don't spend too much time and effort on something that has no value for the foreseeable future and would only come to fruition in a decade or so. Unless you are doing it for enjoyment.
I am certainly not saying that one shouldn't invest in oneself but rather just don't play too long a game.
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
May 16, 2014 at 7:02 am
Sometimes a minor failure, more like a temporary set back, results in a re-evaluation of our career, and it is actually becomes the impetus for moving to the next level up. That's true for those of us who may be risk adverse and tend to get stuck in a rut doing what's familiar; rather than branching out beyond what our current specialization is.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
May 16, 2014 at 7:42 am
When thinking back on my career, just a few simple mottos I have developed come to mind:
Change is good, albeit scary.
Stick to the facts when trying to solve problems. If you get lost in what you expect instead of what you inspect - you will almost always end up on the wrong road.
Break it down when it gets too big.
Try never to burn a bridge, you never know when it may become your best available path.
Most all of my failures could have been avoided by thinking a second time before I hit that button!
May 16, 2014 at 7:47 am
Always liked what Tim O’Reilly has done for technology. But what I like most is that he has been driven to do what he sees as the right thing. If all he focused on was money, power and control, I suspect that we would not be having this discussion.
Still, the word Failure is a word that society is most uncomfortable with. Yet, many great things have come from failed attempts. Thomas Edison is said to have said that “I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” And in the early days of IBM, a management executive made a bad decision that ended up costing one million dollars. The executive expected Tom Watson to fire him. Watson’s reply was that he just spent a million dollars training him, so he was not going to fire him. And we have all heard of how Einstein was an early failure, relegated to the Swill patent office.
Everyone I know has had ups and downs in their career. And priorities often change. But what really is success? Everyone must decide what success is to them, and not let the simplistic goals of fame, fortune, power nor money define success. Define success for yourself, and let any failures be a means of learning.
The more you are prepared, the less you need it.
May 16, 2014 at 7:59 am
It goes to perspective. "Have I failed in my career?", I don't know, my career is not over yet. Have I had failures in my career? Sure, those set backs have led to all the successes. Did I chart my career and then follow the road map? No. Is that a failure? It is if you call that a failure. (I have thought it was in a period of life). What is the purpose of my career? Ultimately, it is to provide for my family. It is not about me being glorified for my intelligence. It is not about me always getting to do what I want to do. It is not about me.
Do I like what I do? Sure. Do people think I am intelligent? Well, they pay me like I am, and I provide them a service like I am, so by some measure I must be.
Do I make the people around me happier or sadder for the experience? Do I improve my work place or simply extract income? I think the answer is I make people happier and improve the environment (while getting income). Have I failed in my career? I do not know. I do know I am succeeding at my career.
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Livin' down on the cube farm. Left, left, then a right.
May 16, 2014 at 8:22 am
I have learned that when you consider a job opportunity, you really need to consider how your personality will fit in with the culture of the workplace.
I took a job at a law firm. I was in their I.T. department doing software training, help desk, and some database maintenance. The job itself was interesting and kept me busy.
The issue is that I am a very non-confrontational type of person. It was difficult when attorneys would call screaming with an issue (which wouldn't have been issues if they would have called me before they tried to fix it). I got so stressed out that I developed some major health issues because of it.
:crazy:
May 16, 2014 at 9:46 am
Andrew..Peterson (5/16/2014)
Thomas Edison is said to have said that “I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
BE CAREFUL! You're on an IT forum quoting Edison. You'll inevitably stir up the Tesla vs Edison debate and that always gets ugly. :hehe:
I do like that quote and admire his outlook on the failures...I wish I could be so tenacious.
May 16, 2014 at 9:48 am
I read your question and laughed. The question could have been how I failed in my career and lived a better life?
When I was 23 or 24 I interviewed at Microsoft, about 1988. I was offered a job doing programmer telephone support. I was in a serious relationship at the time and we discussed the pros and cons. I told her flat out that we'd be quite wealthy if I took the job and stayed for 10 or so years but that'd I'd be gone 13 to 14 hours a day at work. If I would have taken the job I'm sure we wouldn't have gotten married had a great kid and have now been together for over 25 years. I failed at the money/career and succeeded in life.
Actually my career is life not work so maybe I haven't failed.
May 16, 2014 at 10:00 am
Hrm. Well, it's still rather early in my career (just under four years of being a DBA/Database programmer so far), but I'd say I've definitely failed so far, on several occasions :-P. The core failure in every case to date has simply been that I've failed at failing.
I'd imagine it's not too different for most new programmers, but I could certainly be wrong. When I first started, I had a few screwups and mistakes, and the response I had was one of puzzlement. "How did that go so wrong? I tested it plenty! It shouldn't have done that!" and so on. Eventually, in my puzzlement, I'd stumble upon the answer.
That's not the right way to go about it, though, at least from my current point of view. No, with each new bit of functionality, I should've been thinking "This WILL break. It won't work right. Something's not going to act as expected. But plan for every eventuality you can think of, trap the problems, and improve the process." That's a far better means of thinking, I'd say, and it sadly wasn't until recently that I'd had that epiphany.
Granted, there are the occasional problems that blindside me, but thankfully it's fairly rare and still easily handled. I'm quite happy that, in the case of an unexpected problem, I can now troubleshoot it, institute a fix, and have it back to the users with no harm done by the problem in less than 15 minutes, in my current environment, anyhow. And from that, I learn another way that my code was faulty, and I slap on another lesson about what works and what doesn't.
Now, the next fun bit will see where I fail at in the future other than in this area of thinking 😛
- 😀
May 16, 2014 at 11:57 am
Steve, Most people measure the value of their careers by their successes, but I am of the camp that measures (in part) the value of their career by my failures... and believe me I've had some spectacular ones. I believe that if you don't have any failures, then you probably haven't stretched that limits of what you are capable of doing, and consequently are falling short of your potential. :hehe:
May 16, 2014 at 6:07 pm
After 30+ years in IT (and more than that "in the world") I've had my fair share of failures. First rule of failure: Admit it! That's what allows you to work on it and take corrective action. Here's a short list of the ones that immediately come to mind:
- Yelled at a co-worker (in my 20's), which really upset her. Learned to keep my frustration in check and properly channeled.
- Dropped a card deck - several boxes worth (yes, I'm THAT OLD). Learned to carry fewer boxes! 😛 (and pick up my feet)
- Deleted an entire production database. :sick: Learned to check the SQL in TEST first!
- Argued with my boss. Learned that supervisors aren't always right, but some of them don't want to know that. Started down the road of learning how to tell someone they could stand to improve (without pissing them off).
- Learned that some managers don't care about their people, and that I didn't want to work in that kind of environment. Yes, I left that job. In retrospect probably should have left earlier, but then again the new job I took lasted 10 years and I was making lots more money - and enjoying the work while improving the IT Infrastructure and assisting with a merger (lots of stories there). So maybe the timing was right after all.
- Can't count the number of coding errors, even if I wanted to. Or in how many languages. Just learn from them and move on; no point in dwelling on them.
- Failed to recognize or acknowledge my own talents. I'll bet a lot of people share this one. Maturity, some counseling, and regular reviews of my accomplishments have (mostly) removed this from my reality. Now if I can just keep my ego in check... :hehe:
And who knows what I'll fail at tomorrow... and what I'll learn from the experience. "It's only failure if you quit."
Steph Brown
May 17, 2014 at 3:34 pm
I think most of mine were around the people skills thing.
Not grasping the true meaning of what "its not what you know, its who you know" thing and "People and processes over tools and technology".
Being right is no substitute for being believed. Going the extra mile is all very well but if no-one cares then you've burnt some family time doing the impossible for the ungrateful.
Sometimes people are hell bent on doing something stupid. Sometimes less damage is done by letting them get on with it, having their inevitable disaster and either have them learn from it or move on. Trying to prevent the disaster actually prolongs the impact and you can end up being tarred with the wrong brush and blamed. I've made this mistake a few times and ended up being ill because of it. Make sure you are ready for the disaster and have plan B warmed up and ready to go.
I joined IT at a point where people in IT cared that the job was done right. It was a vocation for pretty much everyone involved. It has come as a rude awakening to find that some people just regard it as a job an scoot along doing the bare minimum, collecting their pay cheque at the end of the month.
My uncle said "don't work for losers, try and work for people who are going somewhere". His rationale was that a successful person will want to take his team with him. A loser will get replaced and it is more likely that they will be replaced by an external person (who wants to bring his own team in) than promote from within. You don't promote in a losing team.
Spending too long in a niche subject area. Have a principal skill topped up with niche supplement. That way if the niche closes you have at least some relevant skills on your CV.
Don't go chasing every technology fad. There isn't time to learn it all and you'll burn out trying. Focus on learning the concepts behind the tech and what the tech was designed to be used for. Some things come back into fashion and some concepts give you down different perspectives on how to use the tech you already know.
Above all remember that you spend a huge amount of time at work. If you don't enjoy it then you are in the wrong job. Many of our prisons are in our mind and of our own making.
May 18, 2014 at 8:29 am
Failure is often a good lesson. Throughout 2001' during the .dot.com mess, I kept making the wrong decisions, based on principal, and not best practice.
And today, 14 years later, that failure was a really good lesson, but one of which has had direct consequences on my career as both a software, and database developer.
I've been a store clerk the last 9 years, with no hope to return to Australia, Oahu, Cancun, Aruba, or the 29 states that my experience afforded me to visit.
But in the meanwhile, I did write a business application for the store to manage a complicated product delivery system that's been a huge success -mostly because it forced me to learn C#. The back end was MS SQL which, along with Oracle, and Ingress I had a pretty good command.
But my lesson is not keeping up aggressively with current technology, so if I were to return to the tech industry, catching up would be hard pressed.
It would be more like starting over. But that's ok, too! Because in all the business applications for which I advised, all the software languages I learned, all the software testing positions I served, all the support positions that lead to my experience -is evidence I started somewhere.
Not one of those positions did I fail. I only failed in choosing to stay with a core company being left behind, rather than the break away company with millions in financing willing to leave the old ones behind.
I made the right decision. But, damn I miss the international travel!
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