Happy IT Pro Day!

As we all know, lists and their thinly-veiled derivatives, listicles, drive social media. Post the "Top 5 Kinds of Bellybutton Lint" and you'll probably get at least a few clicks from people with 5 minutes and nothing better to read. One of the popular lists going around right now are "The Smartest People I Know Do xxx"-type lists. Attributed to everyone from Bill Gates to Abraham Lincoln, they supposedly offer a window into the habits of the rich, famous, powerful, and successful.

Of course, many of these kinds of lists have as their honored ancestor the book which arguably started the self-help book trend, Stephen Covey's "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People."

Early in my career, I was dutifully reading through it when my boss, Maria, asked me, "What makes anyone think that Covey, or the people he used as sources for that book, were actually effective?" I was caught up short. I mean, the book had already sold over 25 million copies. But my boss knew her stuff, and she was, like all the best tech professionals, asking to see the data before she wasted a single processing cycle on executing those instructions.

I thought about what she taught me, as we were ramping up for IT Professional Day 2018. It's not that Covey's book or those listicles are necessarily wrong, it's just that they're just not demonstrably true, either. There's no data. Which is why I'm so proud of the Tech Pro Day survey (https://www.solarwinds.com/resources/survey/tech-pro-survey-north-america). Rather than ask thought leaders or folks in tech management what they THINK would be effective, we asked boots-on-the-ground IT pros what they do and how they relate to the tech that makes up so much of their world. The survey applies data to understand what effective and engaged IT practitioners are doing, both to be effective and to keep themselves feeling engaged.

What we learned painted a picture of the habits highly effective tech pros.

1. We help others. Even when it's not strictly our job, we answer help tickets and take "drive by" questions.
2. The user is never far from our mind. Their experience, their needs, the tasks they are trying to complete are paramount.
3. When new tech comes on the scene, our first thought is how to use it make things better close to home—the business, our day-to-day tasks, and so on.
4. But our second thought is how to use it to make the world better—education, housing, healthcare, the environment, and more.
5. We honestly love the tech we've built a career around, so much that we use our free time to build our skills; we incorporate tech into our home projects; and we even leverage tech to make our vacations more, well, techie.

More than anything, what showed through the data was how engaged we are with the industry. Not content to wait for the latest innovation to roll into our shop (or over us like a techno-tidal wave), we actively seek it out, play withearly betas, share ideas on forums, and to generally be the best at what they do.

You could say that the number one habit of highly effective IT professionals is to be Tech PROactive.

So, however YOU plan to celebrate, acknowledge, or observe IT Pro Day this year, everyone here at SolarWinds want you to know that it's no baseless rumor, no urban legend, but hard data-sourced fact: Your skills are essential to the business and your work is appreciated. You are awesome.