As a software developer, what career advice changed your life?

In my early 20’s, one day my boss, who I really respected, gave me a performance review and told me I was in the wrong job, I wasn’t very good and I should look for something else.

I was stunned, shocked, devastated. I loved my job and I thought I was good at it. I couldn’t understand. I was confused and I felt so alone. It is the worst feeling.

It turned out to be the best career advice I ever would receive.

I went home and cried.

I spent a few days rethinking, analysing myself, what was wrong? I was determined to stick with it.

I decided to change the way I did things, how I communicated. I did more self study, I reinvented myself.

A year later in my performance review with the same boss, he told me he was nominating me for the best engineer of the year award. This was a very prestigious award in a large international engineering organisation, just to be nominated was reward in itself. I came third out of 50 nominees.

It became a habit after that. Every year after that I would decide I would better myself that year, set goals, enrol in studies, learn something new. It helped me to not only become, arguably, top of my field, but also to diversify, expand my skill sets, keep on top of technological advances. I’ve been doing it now for 30years and I’ll do it for another 30. As you might imagine, I amassed a large personal toolkit which allows me to offer these skills to a broad range of prospective employers. I do contracting and I’m never short of work as a result.

So the best advice I ever got was being told I wasn’t good enough, and in the wrong job.

I adopted a motto for myself after that experience,

“When you get knocked down in the game of life, get up, get better and get going again”.

I remind myself of it every year.

It’s how you react to feedback that gives you character, and strength. Learn to take feedback as an opportunity to improve. Use it positively and you will excel.

In my leadership roles I encourage others to do the same and provide mentoring where the desire is there.

The list of courses I've covered over the years to constantly re-invent myself is very long and I doubt I could remember even half of them. Some were pre-internet era.

My approach: I set my goals according to what I expected to do both in my job and my own Personal aspirations. In the beginning I wanted to do basic cultural languages so I could work across Europe. I learnt Russian because the Berlin Wall came down and I thought I might work in Eastern Europe (but I never did).

As a Systems/Software Engineer in 80’s/90’s I went through the whole transition from basic software languages into OOD languages, and database structures as that was trending back then, and you had to keep up. It was a given that I needed to understand all the various types of data communication protocols that were used across systems engineering.

I did a science foundation degree course to help educate my kids, this was to ensure I was knowledgeable when they started asking the difficult questions and also for my own interests. I felt a personal lacking in general knowledge. My own interests diversified and I moved into wanting to understand Oceanography.

Around the year 2000 my family and I had decided to immigrate from the UK to Australia. I was hoping to do something completely different and diversify, and so I hoped to become a scuba diving instructor on the Great Barrier Reef. So I did the PADI courses. I realised later it would never pay enough.

After arriving in Australia I enrolled my kids into soccer and found that I could not find a good soccer coach, so I learnt to coach myself. As I moved up the knowledge tree in Sports coaching I also found that coaches needed additional skills like sports medicine and first aid, so I did those. As I became one of the better coaches and started coaching more elite players, not just my own kids, I realised I needed nutrition qualifications and fitness certification so I became a personal trainer as well. I was doing this in the evenings whilst maintaining my day job. Again, I thought I might take this up as a different career path, but again I realised it would never pay enough.

In Australia I also found the job market quite different to the UK. There was less need for Engineering and I found a greater need for traditional IT Test Management and IT Project Management, so I studied those and got myself certified. When Agile came along it was a natural transition to take up scrum coaching.

The learning roadmap just presented itself given the circumstances of my work and personal life. Often It was just learning for learnings sake, trying to predict the skills I might need, where I needed to upskill and also because it was now habitual, whatever interested me at the time. Most courses done in my own time during evenings. One might question if I had a compulsion disorder relating to self learning. I was and still am addicted.

Some of the highlights

1: ADA software programming (via VHS tapes)

2: C++ software programming (via VHS tapes)

3: Computer Science Degree (1 day/week for 3 years)

4: 1553B Data Communications and 1773 Fibre Optics

5: 12 week college circus acts (juggling, unicycle) taught me how to use both sides of my brain, and a hell of a lot of fun

5: VXI Instrumentation Remote Control Programming, IEEE488, Early SCADA

6: Oracle / SQL

7: Unix Shell scripting / Sun Solaris shell scripting

8: VAX/VMS scripting

9: Object Orientated Design techniques, Yourdon, SELECT, Teamwork

10: UML

11: Open University (Science Foundation Course) including Cosmology, Plate Tectonics

12: Oceanography (1st year only)

13: Open University Software Engineering (1st Year Only)

13: Russian (2 year night school) - surprisingly this came in very handy

14: German Language for business, Italian and French for Beginners (via tapes)

14: PERL Programming

15: Mercury Test Director / TSL programming / Winrunner

16: Quick Test Professional (QTP) / Load Runner

17: ISTQB Test Foundation Course

18: ISTQB Advanced Test Manager Certification

18: HPALM Administration, Visual Basic/Excel Reporting

19: Internal Quality Auditor Certification

20: Link11 and Link16 Data Communication

21: PMP Certification

22: Business Leadership Diploma (1 day/week for a year)

23: Prince2 Certification

24: ITIL Framework / Six Sigma

25: JIRA Administration

26: JIRA Help Desk Administration

27: ASTQB Operational Expert Test Manager

28: Cyber Security Certification/WhiteHat

29: photography for DSLR Cameras

30: Nutritionist Ceritification

31: Hypnotist Certification

32: Advanced Microsoft Project Schedule Certification

33: SharePoint Administration

34: PowerBI

35: ServiceNow Administration

36: SAP and ABAP programming

37: TOSCA Test tool Administration

37: WATIR/Ruby

38: Java Programming / J2EE / ASEERT

39: JBehave/IntelliJ/IDEA

40: Selenium Test Automation

41: SOAP UI / LOAD UI

41: BML modelling

42: ATLAS programming /ATAL / Rebare-2 / PAWS

43: XCode Programming

44: Institute Of Fitness - Personal Trainer

45: Scrum Master Certification

46: Scrum Coach Certification

47: Level 1 Sports Coaching

48: Level 2 Sports Coaching

49: Sports Medicine (6 week course)

50: Junior Soccer Coach Certification

51: Youth Soccer Coach Certification

52: Advanced Soccer Coach Certification

53: First Aid / CPR Certification

54: PADI Scuba Diving Certification

55: PADI Rescue Diver

56: PADI Master SCUBA Diver (incomplete)

I feel a bit nerdy now! And there’s still a load more. But Variety is the spice of life, right?

And Knowledge is everything, if you use it wisely.

And Did I ever use them, you bet I did, often and in many jobs. I still use many of these skills now. The ones I don’t are beginning to fade from memory.