Am I happy with my career in technology?

That's the question that haunted me for the first several years of my career, and for the most part the answer was "not really". Despite working with nice people at a nice place with nice managers and a nice salary, I felt restless at my corporate job from somewhere around day 10. I found that many of the people I made friends with at my corporate gig tended to be a lot like me; restless and looking for something more. Despite the fact that I got annual raises, earned several promotions, and got the opportunity to do "special" projects in software architecture, I found that something was missing. I thought for a long time that it was money, that I just wasn't making enough. I thought that if I made more money then things would be better and it would give me the satisfaction of knowing that I was making "progress" in my career.

After a few years with corporation #1 I left for a job at corporation #2 offering a lot more money, bonus, and better benefits. I quickly found out that corporation #2 was very much the same as corporation #1, the difference was that my network of friends, colleagues, and connections was gone and I was essentially starting over, albeit at a higher salary. I also found out that much of the technical expertise I had developed at corporation #1 was based on that company's proprietary technology, and that relative to my career level, I was behind many of my new peers in terms of current technology practices. I also discovered that at corporation #2 I was part of IT rather than product development, the nuance of which had never occurred to be before that experience. In addition to all of that, I still had that "something is missing" feeling about how I was spending each day at work. Needless to say, my stint at corporation #2 was brief.

From those experiences at corporations #1 and #2 I had the realization that what was missing in my career wasn't money or a career path, it was adventure! I needed the experience of learning new business domains and building something that didn't exist before, or at least that didn't exist for ME before. I needed to discover new technologies for myself that caused me to reconsider what was great about one vs another, and through that process be able to compare and contrast different languages. I also discovered that the risk that I could not live with in my career was the risk of spending 40 years being bored. But I also knew that to have that kind of career I would have to change how I had approached my career up to that point.

Why should you care about any of this?

The good news is that those experiences, frustrations, and feelings of boredom helped me figure out what actually makes me tick, and thus helped me find greater satisfaction in my career. Instead of always feeling like the squeaky wheel at work, I owned who I was and what I liked and decided to turn it into an asset rather than letting it drive my discontentment. I know that there are many people out there that have that same feeling about their career because I talk to them from time to time, often with that same dissatisfaction in their voice, and often asking if I knew of anyone that was hiring. It is with the goal of helping those friends and colleagues and anyone else that this might reach, that I decided to share three big lessons I learned that have guided my career ever since.

Are you Product or are you IT?

At the heart of every company is the thing that makes money. This seems obvious, but it is very important if you are like me, a passionate technologist that wants to be part of creating a great product. At my first company, the product was software. Yes it was a financial services company, but because of its roots as a data processing company, the product was the software that kept track of all of those dollars, performed calculations, and ran a huge part of the mutual fund processing business in the US. Because of this, those that worked on the software were on the inside of the company, were part of making the product great, were part of making the money, and were therefore valued as a core component of the business.

Corporation #2 was a bank, one of the oldest and most successful banks in existence. The job of a bank is to take deposits, makes loans, and make money by collecting interest on those loans. That is obviously a vast oversimplification of what a bank does, but elaboration on what a bank does isn't the point of this article. Even though I was writing software as I had always done, I was no longer part of the product, I was IT, and that is literally how the bankers I interacted with would refer to me and my colleagues. I'll never forget being in a meeting with one of the project sponsors, a banking executive, and having him refer to me, a human being sitting right across from him, as IT. From the perspective of those responsible for making and managing the product and thus the money, I was now an expense that needed to be managed rather than a critical asset that would help them make the thing that would make the money.

There is nothing wrong with being in IT, it is an incredibly valuable role without which a large company could not function, just realize that there is a difference. The next time you consider taking a job as a developer or architect, make sure you understand how your role impacts the thing that makes money. Are you product or are you IT? Companies invest in product while IT is often seen as an expense that needs to be "optimized".

As a Techie, I am responsible for my career opportunities!

Something I found after a few years of working at corporation #1 was that I had become a subject matter expert on the company's proprietary technology. By that, I don't mean the company's money making product, but the 15 year old proprietary technology on which the money making product had been built. I knew it inside and out, I had helped contribute to it's optimization, and I had been part of the group that made sure that other parts of the company adhered to standards for how it was to be implemented.

As I began to look for greener pastures I discovered that my knowledge of that proprietary technology was not only worthless outside of my current company, it was actually isolating and dramatically limited my ability to get top dollar for my skill set in the open labor market. After that realization, it became very clear to me that I had to become the steward of my skill set, and that this was something that would require constant attention. It occurred to me that my job as a technologist was not to learn a technology and then use it, it was to keep my finger on the pulse of technology and continually evaluate how my current skill set positioned me in the market. I couldn't be content being an expert in any technology, regardless of whether it was proprietary or open source, because technology changes too fast. I realized that while I may have many jobs at different companies, my true job was making sure I was always reinvesting in my skill set. It was either that or become like a 55 year old gentleman that I worked with at a minimum wage, "making-ends-meet" job during my college years. He had been a drafter at an engineering firm for 35 years, drawing by hand the designs that the engineers would develop. I remember how cheated he felt that he had lost his job to the new CAD software with just 10 years remaining in his career, and as a result was working shoulder to shoulder with a college student. I remember thinking that I never wanted to feel like that, but as a 20 year old it seemed like a very far off concern at the time.

As a result, I've made managing my skill set a priority, always trying to learn the latest technologies and actually do work in them if at all possible. This pursuit of opportunity has taken me through Java, Ruby/Rails, SmallTalk, NodeJS, BackboneJS, AngularJS, Flex, BlazeDS, ActionScript, Android native, iOS native, Cordova/PhoneGap, Ionic, Wordpress, Drupal, and many, many more. Because of this, I've had the opportunity to choose my opportunities rather than taking what comes or feeling like I had to settle for one kind of work over something I would actually enjoy.

I have to manage and build my own network

When I changed from corporation #1 to corporation #2, I had the sudden realization of just how insular a corporation can be. While at corporation #1 I had made it my mission to network internally as much as possible, I volunteered to give presentations at the company's internal tech conference, and I generally tried to be someone that knew people in each division of what was a very large company.

Upon leaving corporation #1 I found that just like my proprietary technology expertise, my internal network didn't count for much in the outside world. It was now on me to get out and start rebuilding my network in Kansas City as a whole, something that does not come easily to a techie like myself. Those evenings after work spent at networking cocktail parties were very awkward for me, but over time they got easier and I started making connections. This was critical to survival outside of a corporation because those connections helped to take away that lonely sense of isolation that you will have coming out of a large corporation.

What was really great about that initial investment into a network outside of a single company was that it opened me up to the vast array of companies that exist in Kansas City. I was amazed by how many small companies there were that needed tech talent and were willing to pay good salaries to get it. I had been led to believe that only large corporations were paying that kind of money for good people, but the reality was much different. The combination of managing my tech skills to leverage market demand and widening my network to include lots of different types and sizes of companies led me to work with some really cool people at some really cool companies. Through networking I was able to work on systems covering domains such as digital signage, document management, reused building materials, bluetooth low energy, blog and social media content management and delivery, and many more. It was also a networking connection that led me to JobShakers, a great opportunity to help companies leverage their current workforce to find great talent through referrals.

And finally, the best part about building and maintaining a good network outside of any one company is that it is yours! It is an asset that is yours to build and it is yours to leverage to make your career into what you want it to be.

A quick recap for all of the TLDR's out there (like me)

If you are a techie and you like building new stuff, make sure you understand what a company does and if you are part of product or part of IT, because there is a difference and it can have a huge impact on what you do. Again, if you are a techie, your job is not to get a job, it is to keep your skill set sharp, relevant, and marketable. If you do that, jobs will be easy to find. Almost no one is successful on their own, so get out there and build a network that you can leverage to make you career what you want it to be. And lastly, don't settle for a traditional career if what you really want is an adventure.