Don’t Ignore Your Career!
Despite the quirky title, Chad Fowler has written an essential read for today's developer:
My Job Went to India (And All I Got Was This Lousy Book) 52 Ways to Save Your Job
Fowler's book is a Call to Arms for software developers about what it takes to succeed in a flat world in which technical skills are globally transferable. He attacks the complacency that I see so frequently in software teams complacency that surfaces in engineers who think that their contributions and their value will always be self-evident. He points out a potentially fatal blind spot in the developer community: an unwillingness or lack of recognition for the need to continuously change, evolve and expand their skills. Today's professional developer must have the deep skills of a specialist, together with the breadth and soft skills of a business generalist. The combination is compelling, powerful and utterly differentiated. And it is the future.
Aspects of our profession are becoming truly commoditized. Java programmers, for example India and other offshore markets are full of them. Programmers no longer differentiate themselves and their value by simply developing Java code for a living. There are simply too many others who can do that as well more cheaply, potentially better, and potentially faster for this to be a viable strategy.
Today's developer must think beyond the isolated, individual contributions that once made them uniquely valued. They must become business savvy; attuned to people and organizational politics; and they must actively seek out new skills to replace those that are declining in value due to commoditization. Fowler is an articulate and thoughtful defender of our profession, but he also dispenses a fair amount of tough love.
You may be asking yourself, why is Galen discussing a call to arms book for software engineers? First, because I am a member of this community and this is a time of profound change. Fowler is cogent and thoughtful on a topic that impacts us all and his message should be heard. But also because I see a powerful role for metrics in what it takes for developers to lock in their unique value. Metrics provide a basis for self management, self improvement and for gaining perspective into the broader picture. Developers who have visibility into the project have the opportunity to become part of the solution in identifying opportunities and risks. 6th Sense Analytics plays a unique role in providing this visibility making developers more self-aware and more business-aware.
During this series of posts, I will examine each of Fowler's areas of focus. Let me give you a taste of the topics covered in the book...
Choosing Your Market
Is about finding the niche where you will be the most valuable leveraging your strengths and finding areas where you can have a unique impact. One of the points Fowler makes here is that "Coding don't cut it any more." He speaks in terms of extending your skills beyond simply coding to become more of a specialized technologist, or more business aware, or more project and leadership aware. The point is to spread your abilities out, challenge yourself and your comfort zones and increase your breadth and value.
There are many directions to choose from, so you need to carefully craft a strategy that matches your innate abilities, interest and core strengths. You see that "leverage your strengths" theme quite often in my recent blogs because I think it's critically important.
Investing In Your Product
I'll let the cat out of the bag. The product is you! And the investment is in your learning, growth, and expansion. Fowler discusses strategies surrounding how to grow, for example, becoming a mentor or protégé, tagging along with the business folks, getting involved in process and/or methodology change implementations, and generally hanging out with the best people in your organizations learning from them.
This investment is continuous and challenging. It also needs to be internally driven by you, not externally by others. You'll also find it hard because change is hard and you'll be moving from comfort zone. However, just as with any investment, with high risk comes high potential payback.
Previous Post:
Modernizing distributed AD with metrics
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Don’t Ignore Your Career, continued
