Commitment

From time to time, people in my LinkedIn network (or requesting connections) reach out to me for guidance and advice on what they need to do to achieve a successful career and also achieve their professional growth. For most of my life, I have worked in the IT area and step by step along this journey, I have managed to build a solid path to reach the point where I am, and it is natural for people to seek advice.

So today I decided to make this post just trying to pass on a little of my perception about it and also some general advice, instead of answering message by message.

When you plan and seek your personal growth, it is natural that especially the youngest ones think that it is simply investing heavily in technical training and acquiring as much as possible of these to then add to their LinkedIn profile various training courses, but many have forgotten, that it is not only technical knowledge that counts.

I, as an IT executive for a long time, can say that in many cases, it is better and safer to bring a person with good "soft skills" and then train them in the necessary technical skills, than to follow the opposite path. And this is where I will guide my line of reasoning ...

Nowadays, one of the most important points to evaluate in a professional, are the "soft-skills", that is, your ability to interact and work in a team, your ability in clear communication, humility in recognizing that others may know more than you and use it to your advantage, and together as a single large integrated team, bring out the best in each other and masterfully deliver what is entrusted to you. An item as important as, in terms of "soft-skills", is commitment ... without it, the other people in your team will never be able to trust you with any task, no matter how good you are, because in this case we will always have to have in practice, workarounds B, C and D, making our delivery pace slow down, since you are always contingent on something.

Commitment goes through the act of accepting a job at a certain company, being in meetings always 2 or 3 minutes early, dressing appropriately (in the case of being remote), especially when clients are present, delivering not only what is expected of you, but always going that extra mile, such as recommending something extra that can benefit your client as a whole. We as IT professionals have an enormous capacity to see beyond the specific area we are working on to deliver an application, we can visualize the satellite areas, which also demand some kind of result from this application, so we can and should always give our additional recommendation to help everyone involved, directly or indirectly, in that application.

This commitment needs to be taken seriously, it is not just about delivering your activities well, but also about committing effectively to the company. I have recently noticed a growing wave of professionals who accept a job offer with a company, and two or three weeks later, simply send an email to that company's HR (not even to his manager), saying that they have no interest in working for them anymore. In some other cases, there are even situations where the person does not even show up to work on their first day, because they have already received another offer. Unfortunately, talking to several colleagues in the profession, it is clear that this has been common in all geos and countries with different cultures. I see many people asking for thousands of commitments from companies regarding employees rights, but remember that this is a two-way street, the Company also expects from you, the commitment to what was assigned and entrusted to you.

When you, as a professional, accept a job offer, you need to keep in mind everything that is behind that offer: money and time were invested by people for a few weeks, in the search for professionals in the market, the commitment that the company makes to its customers (internal and/or external) regarding the work that you will be entrusted with, and so on. If you break this chain, you put all the commitments made to the ground, causing frustrations, risks to the image of both the company and your own. Yes, I say to your own, because remember that you are normally always connected on LinkedIn directly to people from that company or second-level to mutual contacts, and no matter how much it may not seem, at some point these people talk to each other, and the same useful tool that is used to make a good recommendation for you, ends up being used for the opposite.

It's no use being good technically only, you need to have commitment! Here is my confirmation that because in some cases, I have more confidence in having someone committed to my side and training them technically in what is needed, than trying the opposite and not having the guarantee that this person will be with the team for whatever comes and goes. Obviously there are situations where you will end up leaving the company in less than 1 year, but this should be the exception, something like commitments and promises made that were not fulfilled, etc, but if you jump from "branch to branch" all the time, the impression that passes to your future new employer is that you are always accepting a temporary offer, in search of your next one, right there the next day. And I see those who don't even put in their LinkedIn profile, this constant change, omitting some companies at several times ... don't be fooled, one day it will show up!

I hope I have been able to contribute a little with my experience for those who seek advice and that this is useful in your daily life and in your short, medium and long-term career planning.