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Career Advice

Career Advice

We Broke I.T. Purchasing

Read­ing Time: 4 min­utes

“What is the dif­fer­ence between uneth­i­cal and eth­i­cal adver­tis­ing? Uneth­i­cal adver­tis­ing uses false­hoods to deceive the pub­lic; eth­i­cal adver­tis­ing uses truth to deceive the pub­lic.” — Vil­h­jal­mur Ste­fans­son

The process by which we in the IT indus­try eval­u­ate and pur­chase new equip­ment is bro­ken. The entire cycle from prod­uct incep­tion through mar­ket­ing, eval­u­a­tion, pur­chase and on to instal­la­tion, is almost as use­ful as snake mit­tens. And as far as I can tell, it’s only get­ting worse.

mar­ket­ing mon­ster

After spend­ing mil­lions of dol­lars of research and devel­op­ment mon­ey on the road to a final prod­uct, and need­ing to get to mar­ket as quick­ly as pos­si­ble both to recoup their invest­ment and to release some­thing, or any­thing, com­pa­nies turn to their crack mar­ket­ing depart­ments. For many peo­ple this is regard­ed as a whol­ly bad idea, and a process which should be set to the flame like a witch. How­ev­er, as the peo­ple of this opin­ion are not in charge of any­thing, the world march­es duti­ful­ly onward. Slide decks are made, white papers are writ­ten, hours are spent in the ser­vice of a great prod­uct name, until even­tu­al­ly the baby can be revealed and judged not on its mer­its but on its saleabil­i­ty.

Oth­er com­pa­nies, sens­ing that they are now behind the prover­bial eight-ball because they don’t have the newest Bin­ford 9000, rush to call the new baby ugly while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly trot­ting out their cur­rent prod­uct, now re-brand­ed as being the same as every­one else’s, only bet­ter in every way. Some­times there is a new prod­uct that can be wrapped in the appro­pri­ate lan­guage on launch, oth­er times its an old prod­uct being pol­ished like so many fetid turds. But at least the prod­uct is out, it’s com­pet­ing (maybe), and a mar­ket seg­ment is born.

Of course the ana­lysts must get involved at this point, lest the mass­es be con­fused as to what they should be buy­ing. They eval­u­ate the new prod­uct, the exist­ing prod­ucts with their me-too swag­ger, and any oth­er prod­ucts that might con­ceiv­ably be use­ful in round­ing out a new­ly formed slice of the sil­i­con val­ley dream. Things are stud­ied, ques­tions asked, prod­uct man­agers cajoled into fill­ing out forms and answer­ing ques­tions, chins are scratched, fore­heads rubbed, look­ing glass­es con­sult­ed. Final­ly, charts are made, resplen­dent in their mul­ti-col­ored, impor­tant sound­ing axis and titles, the win­ners and losers laid out for the world to mur­mur over in trade shows all over Las Vegas.

These are all impor­tant process­es and must be fol­lowed very exact­ing­ly. After all, with­out the mar­ke­teers invent­ing a name, or the ana­lysts cat­e­go­riz­ing those cohorts, how can a rea­son­able C‑level exec­u­tive pos­si­bly be expect­ed to be told what they should buy? Charts are very impor­tant here, ven­dor sales peo­ple equal­ly so, and ana­lysts are per­haps the most impor­tant of all. Short­change any of this process and bad things are like­ly to hap­pen; tech­nolo­gies might be eval­u­at­ed on their own mer­its and against the needs of the com­pa­ny instead of what every­one knows to be the cor­rect process, name­ly, buy­ing the best entry in the best cat­e­go­ry of the best ana­lyst’s col­ored charts.

 

*

“Damnit, John­son! Do we have the new foop-splort 52xy‑C port-box
bal­ancer?”

“Um, we could be look­ing into…”

“And what about mov­ing our stuff into the fog bank? Are we fog­ging yet?”

“I…”

*

The staff respon­si­ble for using equip­ment on the net­work, osten­si­bly those for whom the chal­lenges are well known, bear lit­tle respon­si­bil­i­ty for mak­ing a final deci­sion and are well-served by appear­ing to be on board, what­ev­er the final deci­sion. In fact, if they appear as not pay­ing prop­er feal­ty to the pitched tech­nol­o­gy they run the risk of being brand­ed a heretic, a crab­by mal­con­tent only want­i­ng to keep things the way they were in the era of the punch card, some­one to be shunned and hid­den away from any­one reek­ing of impor­tance. For those not inclined toward man­age­ment, and not desirous of being involved in any deci­sions going forward–including lunch orders, types of free drinks in the kitchen, fla­vors of cof­fee, work hours–this is prob­a­bly not a whol­ly bad thing. They’ll grow a beard, grow bit­ter, and even­tu­al­ly be found half deliri­ous clutch­ing a sta­pler.

How­ev­er, for those engi­neers who haven’t quite giv­en up on life, the mar­ket­ing, ana­lyst, and sales machine can be a jug­ger­naut upon which many careers are made. If exec­u­tives are on board, and why would­n’t they be, it’s prob­a­bly best to agree their clothes are quite love­ly thank you very much, or feign only mild con­cern, “I wish that came in blue.”

But, a few mil­lion dol­lars lat­er, and some cold nights search­ing for your soul among the crum­bled dreams of your bro­ken life, a pile of shiny new gear–or soft­ware, licens­es, and bro­ken promises–will arrive upon your doorstep, ready to be inte­grat­ed into what­ev­er remains of your appar­ent­ly old and bust­ed infra­struc­ture. It might not work, or do any­thing use­ful, or even real­ly inte­grate very well at all. But think of it this way, by the time you install it, learn it, and fig­ure out just what you can do with it, a new cat­e­go­ry will have been born and you can start the process all over again. Unless you’ve been hid­den away with your hereti­cal ram­blings and your sta­pler.

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Career Advice

On Titles, Certifications, and Not My Job

Read­ing Time: 3 min­utes

I’ve nev­er con­sid­ered myself—strictly speaking—a net­work engi­neer, or any­thing in par­tic­u­lar like that.  It’s help­ful for job descrip­tions, or hir­ing, but not as a means of self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.  I start­ed my career as a programmer—and had been pro­gram­ming as an ama­teur for years before that—then moved into sys­tems (Unix, ear­ly DOS, then Nov­ell, Win­dows, etc.), net­works, and now into an amal­ga­ma­tion of all of those dis­ci­plines under the aus­pices of strat­e­gy and man­age­ment.

I don’t under­stand peo­ple who don’t want to learn to pro­gram, or about stor­age, or vir­tu­al­iza­tion.  I don’t under­stand pro­gram­mers who don’t want to know about net­works.  This “hyer-silo-iza­tion” that’s hap­pened in the last 15 years or so is some­thing I’m still not used to, even though I osten­si­bly have to deal with it on a dai­ly basis to make hir­ing deci­sions, task track­ing, etc.

This stems back to my roots in the com­put­er world.  I start­ed out as a young kid back in 1980 or so, teach­ing myself to pro­gram LOGO and Basic on an Apple IIc.  As time went on I picked up more lan­guages, mov­ing on to Pas­cal and C, but also expand­ing into set­ting up BBS sys­tems, toy­ing with modems and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy, and get­ting time with main­frames and the old big-iron at local uni­ver­si­ties when­ev­er I could get a teacher who knew some­one to slip me in under the radar.  I was fas­ci­nat­ed by the tech­nol­o­gy and all it allowed for me to do cre­ative­ly.  Fun­da­men­tal­ly, how­ev­er, I had no con­cept that I was any­thing oth­er than real­ly into com­put­ers and sys­tems.

Fast-for­ward a few years, and at some point—and I blame the HR folks for this, mostly—people start­ed to describe them­selves in terms of job func­tions.  It wasn’t good enough to be some­one who knew com­put­ers, or could learn new tech­nol­o­gy quick­ly, or could pro­gram in a cer­tain lan­guage or what­ev­er.  Now you had to “be” some­thing.  You had to be a soft­ware engi­neer, or a net­work admin­is­tra­tor, or some oth­er thing.  Then it fur­ther broke down by OS, and the cer­ti­fi­ca­tions came.

Now we have peo­ple who are the gate­keep­ers, and if you don’t have a cer­tain cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, or a cer­tain set of very spe­cif­ic job titles, or haven’t banged out a min­i­mum accept­able num­ber of Bin­ford-6100 installs, you’re not qual­i­fied to do <insert job title here>.  So peo­ple pur­sue titles, and cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, and expe­ri­ence with what­ev­er they think the recruiters are look­ing for—but noth­ing more.

The soft­ware folks claim no knowl­edge about net­works, net­work folks claim no knowl­edge of sys­tems, sys­tems claim no knowl­edge of data­bas­es.  On and on the sto­ry rolls, cre­at­ing a giant ball of not-my-prob­lem as it goes.  Fur­ther tech­nol­o­gy devel­op­ments con­tin­ue the cycle; things like SDN cre­ate even more fric­tion and sep­a­ra­tion… one more thing to not know any­thing about.

The first job I ever had as a pro­fes­sion­al in the com­put­er world was to build out a net­work and devel­op some soft­ware for a com­pa­ny.  These were the heady days of tech­nolo­gies with names like vam­pire-taps, before every­thing turned into a “don­gle-gate” fias­co to be avoid­ed at all costs.  But I digress.

I can imag­ine the hor­ror some of you are now feel­ing; won­der­ing what’s wrong with a world where you’d hire some­one to build a net­work and devel­op soft­ware for it.  Can you imag­ine the fur­ther hor­ror of telling you that I lat­er on—at that same company—developed a web page for them, back before most peo­ple even had AOL or Com­puServe, let alone the “real” Inter­net?

I don’t tell you this to tout my own back­ground or make myself feel old.  I tell you this because the key dif­fer­ence between then and now—at least in my mind—is that we in the indus­try used to be prob­lem solvers.  Used to.

I don’t know if it’s the influx of money—people in col­lege decid­ing that law school is too hard but this com­put­er gig is pay­ing well—or some oth­er fac­tor, but some­where along the way we became obsta­cles to prob­lem solv­ing.  We became entrenched in an us vs. them men­tal­i­ty, and we stopped think­ing of how to say “yes”. How to say “yes” to solv­ing a prob­lem using any tech­nol­o­gy avail­able.  How to say “yes” to learn­ing to pro­gram or script if that’s what is nec­es­sary.  We stopped being will­ing to use any and all tools to get the job done and instead we became divas, only will­ing to use the tech­nol­o­gy that we decid­ed was wor­thy of our time, or we decid­ed was use­ful to our careers.

I’m here to tell you that the indus­try is chang­ing again.  It doesn’t mat­ter what silo you think you’re in, the indus­try is chang­ing for all of us.  Spe­cial­ties will still exist—things we’re “bet­ter” at than others—but silos will not per­sist as they are today for very much longer.  You are either going to be one of the peo­ple will­ing to learn, adapt, and say “yes” to busi­ness-enable­ment, or you’ll be the part of the indus­try we don’t acknowledge—the crusty rel­ic in the back room that nobody wants to talk to and is even­tu­al­ly, and uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly, replaced.

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Career Advice

Interview Questions I Hate — Part I

Read­ing Time: 2 min­utes

“So, why do you want to work here?”

If you’ve worked a day in your life, chances are you’ve been asked this ques­tion dur­ing an inter­view.  And, if you’re like the rest of us, you’ve said some­thing about how much you love the com­pa­ny, it’s your dream job, you’re look­ing to real­ly make your mark some­where, or some oth­er hack­neyed tripe that you hope sounds good to the per­son ask­ing the ques­tion.

I’ve spent a lot of time inter­view­ing peo­ple for my teams over the years, and I can tell you that your like­ly first instinct is right: the ques­tion is just about as worth­less as any­thing you could be asked in an inter­view. Every­one answers it the same way–with vac­u­ous gusto–and every inter­view­er hap­pi­ly ticks of a box as if you’ve passed some mag­i­cal “qual­i­fied to work here” test. But it’s crap and almost all of us know it.

I’ve per­son­al­ly nev­er used this ques­tion in any of my inter­views, but I always get asked this when I’m inter­viewed. I hate to say it, but I real­ly lose respect for folks when they use this ques­tion in an inter­view. I under­stand the osten­si­ble goal is to get to the heart of why this can­di­date picked your job post­ing to respond to, why they jumped through the hoops to get the inter­view, etc., but the fact is that in most cas­es it’s because you have a job open­ing and pay in actu­al dol­lars and not Monop­oly bills.

If you’re look­ing to get clos­er to what I assume the goal of this ques­tion is, you can change it up a bit and ask ques­tions like: “What about our com­pa­ny intrigues you?” or “How do you see your­self con­tribut­ing to the com­pa­ny?” or some­thing along those lines. At the end of the day, you’re look­ing to get beyond the point where you’re get­ting the same rote answer from every can­di­date.

Peo­ple have dif­fer­ent moti­va­tions for apply­ing to posi­tions.  Often they’re look­ing to move on because they don’t see any addi­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties where they’re at, they’re in a neg­a­tive work envi­ron­ment, or they’ve just topped out as far as the con­tri­bu­tion and val­ue they feel they can bring to the com­pa­ny they’re cur­rent­ly at.  Oth­er times it’s out of des­per­a­tion: they’ve just lost their job or feel they’re about to, they need more mon­ey for a vari­ety of rea­sons, etc.

Moti­va­tion is impor­tant, and I do under­stand the need to deter­mine the moti­va­tion of the per­son sit­ting in front of you. How­ev­er, I’ve always found it bet­ter to have a con­ver­sa­tion with the per­son rather than ask­ing the same ques­tions they get every­where else.  Just talk to them a bit, get to know where they’re at in their career and what they’re look­ing to do.

Oh yeah, and don’t ask any of those ques­tions like “How much wood would a wood­chuck chuck if he was on a train going 50mph in 0‑gravity, upside down?”  That moves you from hack­neyed to hack job.  Just say­ing.

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Career Advice

Coping with Difficult Bosses

Read­ing Time: 4 min­utes

Author Jan­ice Davies said, “dif­fi­cult peo­ple are your key to self empow­er­ment, you need to learn how to cope with them, not let them dom­i­nate and affect you.” But what if the dif­fi­cult per­son is your boss? What then?

In over 20 years of work­ing in my cho­sen career I have large­ly had what I can only sup­pose is the great­est luck in select­ing my boss­es. Most have been more than fair, have taught me along the way as true men­tors, and sev­er­al I still count as friends and advi­sors to this day. A cou­ple, how­ev­er, have tru­ly been night­mares.

Every­one has their own gauge for what makes a boss dif­fi­cult to work with, but mine comes down to more of a feel­ing than a set of con­crete habits. And when I say dif­fi­cult, I’m not refer­ring here to a demand­ing boss, or one who expects results and calls you out for not achiev­ing the results; that’s just the price of admis­sion in the cor­po­rate world. I’m talk­ing about when things reach a lev­el of dif­fi­cul­ty where you begin fear­ing for your job.

The prob­lems in deal­ing with dif­fi­cult peo­ple are, by nature, made even more dif­fi­cult when that per­son is large­ly in charge of your abil­i­ty to pro­vide for your fam­i­ly. Your stress lev­els can increase, you start tak­ing out your frus­tra­tions on the oth­er peo­ple in your life that you work with or care about, and your over­all health and out­look can become marked­ly more neg­a­tive, lead­ing to a decrease in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

Below are some strate­gies I have found that have helped me, and I hope that some or all can help you should you find your­self in the posi­tion of hav­ing to deal with a dif­fi­cult boss.

Adjust — As much as pos­si­ble, try to adjust to the new real­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion. Some­times, as peo­ple are put in new posi­tions they can feel over­whelmed, under pres­sure, and are them­selves deal­ing with dif­fi­cult rela­tion­ships upstream. With any luck, this peri­od of dif­fi­cul­ty will pass and you’ll find that you’re able to cul­ti­vate a strong, trust­ed rela­tion­ship with your new boss.

Be Proac­tive — Try to antic­i­pate your boss­es needs before he or she knows they have a need. If they’re under pres­sure, and you can be the go-to-per­son that hands them reports, deliv­er­ables, etc., ahead of them ask­ing, you’ll have gone a long way towards eas­ing the rela­tion­ship into a bet­ter place.

A lot of times this comes from under­stand­ing your boss’s role in the com­pa­ny. For instance, I report to the CFO at my company–a role which is large­ly con­cerned with bud­get­ing, fore­cast­ing, and gen­er­al­ly deal­ing with the finan­cial health of the com­pa­ny. Every­thing that I do in the tech­ni­cal sphere is couched in terms of impact to the bot­tom line of the com­pa­ny. That’s a gross over-sim­pli­fi­ca­tion, of course, but the point is that you need to under­stand your boss, what their role in the com­pa­ny is, and how you can help to make them look good to their boss.

Don’t React Emo­tion­al­ly — I can’t tell you how many times after read­ing an email I’ve want­ed to walk down the hall to my boss’s office, storm in, and start loud­ly expound­ing on my view of the world and my boss’s place in it. I have seen that hap­pen, and while I some­times get a lit­tle joy in the vic­ar­i­ous­ness of the thing, I nev­er indulge myself in the same behav­ior. I respond even­tu­al­ly, but not quick­ly or emo­tion­al­ly.

I’m not sug­gest­ing you ignore emails, phone calls, mem­os, or ran­dom edicts at all. In fact, I have a gen­er­al rule of try­ing to respond to any­thing that comes my way by the close of busi­ness the same day. If it comes from my boss, I respond with­in two hours even after-hours. That said, you can acknowl­edge some­thing sim­ply, direct­ly, and with­out emo­tion. If, a few hours lat­er you still feel the need to have a con­ver­sa­tion, you’ll have giv­en the heat-of-the-moment emo­tions a chance to sim­mer down.

I have sent some seri­ous flame-throw­er emails in my day–some to ven­dors, some to co-work­ers, and even some to peo­ple I’ve worked for. Do you know the one thing every one of those emails in the last 20 years has had in com­mon? With­in min­utes or hours I regret­ted send­ing them–each and every one. A lit­tle bit of time would go by and I’d increas­ing­ly start feel­ing like the petu­lant child I was act­ing like. Almost inevitably I’d trudge off some­where to make an apology–not because I had to, but because I felt I need­ed to.

Learn from the Expe­ri­ence — Many of us either lead teams today, or will lead teams in the future. Even if lead­er­ship roles aren’t what you per­son­al­ly aspire to, the time will prob­a­bly come where you will find your­self lead­ing a team of some size. The expe­ri­ences you have with your boss­es should be sug­ges­tive of the type of leader you want to be. We all love the good ones, but some­times it’s the bad boss­es that teach us more in the end.

Know When to Walk Away — The rela­tion­ship you have with your boss should nev­er feel per­son­al­ly neg­a­tive. By that I mean that you should nev­er feel as if your boss **hates** you, or wants you to fail, or has no con­fi­dence in you as a per­son. Good boss­es will let you know if you’re not meet­ing expec­ta­tions long before it becomes an issue. If your boss is mak­ing your life mis­er­able with­out any sort of use­ful feed­back, then it’s like­ly one of two things is going on:

  1. They’re a mis­er­able prick, and want every­one who works for them to feel the same way.
  2. They don’t have the self-con­fi­dence to sit down with you and tell you that they have no con­fi­dence in you. So, they walk around with a mas­sive grudge, hop­ing that you’ll leave and they won’t have to deal with the prob­lem any longer.

In either case, this is prob­a­bly the point where you have to con­sid­er that things may not get bet­ter, and per­haps walk away. Work rela­tion­ships should nev­er be per­son­al­ly neg­a­tive, but we’re all human beings and some­times things just don’t work out. It’s irri­tat­ing, often feels unfair, but it’s the way things some­times are and we just have to deal with it as best we can.

What­ev­er you do, don’t fol­low your first instinct, and freak out. Don’t write up a nasty let­ter, or tell the per­son what you real­ly think. Just fol­low the process pro­fes­sion­al­ly, and if you real­ly need to vent a bit, that’s what your Human Resources depart­ment is for. Even then, how­ev­er, nobody likes a whin­er so try to keep your crit­i­cism as con­struc­tive, pro­fes­sion­al, and imper­son­al as pos­si­ble.

Then, do what I do: go home, kick off your shoes, pour a nice drink, and cel­e­brate your unbe­liev­able good for­tune to not have to deal with that boss ever again. Just don’t make a habit of it… after a string of bad boss­es, you might have to con­sid­er that the prob­lem was­n’t with them.

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Career Advice

How to Not Get Fired

Read­ing Time: 5 min­utes

“Very thin line between arro­gance and confidence…Being hum­ble is that line. No one has ever said that hum­ble guy is real­ly an ass­hole.” ‑Unknown

In busi­ness peo­ple quit, get fired, or oth­er­wise leave a place of employ­ment through attri­tion every day, and for any num­ber of rea­sons. Most of the time it’s an occa­sion­al event, and while we’re often sad to see them go (or not, as the case may be) we don’t have the type of vis­cer­al, empa­thet­ic reac­tion to these one­sie-twosie sit­u­a­tions as we do when a large lay­off hap­pens.

Lay­offs, staff reduc­tions, work­force reduc­tions, right-siz­ing, and oth­er terms-du-jour are all words for the same thing: we’re tak­ing a per­cent­age of the busi­ness’s employ­ees and telling them that they are no longer need­ed. While the rea­sons and terms used may vary, the real­i­ty does not; it is an unpleas­ant expe­ri­ence for every­one involved. Some­one has to decide to neg­a­tive­ly affect some­one else’s life–to hurt their family–in order to keep the busi­ness, and by exten­sion every­one else still work­ing for it, healthy and mak­ing mon­ey.

In 20-plus years of work­ing in the Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy field, I have been through a fair num­ber of lay­off cycles. Many were the result of merg­ers and acqui­si­tions, and many the result of a bad out­look for the busi­ness in terms of cap­i­tal, growth, back­log, or fore­cast. In all cas­es I have been lucky enough to sur­vive, though that is always far from a given–no mat­ter who you are.

As the head of an IT depart­ment at a mul­ti-nation­al cor­po­ra­tion, I have respon­si­bil­i­ty for staffing my depart­ment accord­ing to the needs of the busi­ness, and this often includes the unpleas­ant­ness inher­ent in let­ting peo­ple go. How that process hap­pens, and what can change the odds in your favor, are some­times a mys­tery to peo­ple. Some­times you can do things to help your­self, and some­times you draw the short straw. That is the unfor­tu­nate real­i­ty. There are some things you can do to help keep the odds in your favor, how­ev­er, and to the extent that any of these obser­va­tions are use­ful to any­one look­ing to mit­i­gate their own per­son­al risk, here are the things I have observed in my own career:

Don’t be an ass. I know this would seem to be self-evi­dent, but I’m con­stant­ly sur­prised at how often it is not. I think peo­ple get com­fort­able, begin feel­ing like they are indis­pens­able to the com­pa­ny some­how, and let their inner rude­ness come out. It comes out in snip­py mem­os, in meet­ings, in terse respons­es to requests, and in phone calls. This per­son becomes the Nick Burns of your com­pa­ny, no mat­ter the depart­ment they work in. When lay­off time is com­ing around, you’ll be at the top of every­one’s list to go if there is any pos­si­ble way to make it hap­pen. You might sur­vive a round or two, but even­tu­al­ly your time will come up because the pain of keep­ing you around is greater than the pain of clean­ing up your mess. I don’t like fir­ing peo­ple in gen­er­al, for any rea­son, but if you’re an ass it real­ly makes the job eas­i­er.

Diver­si­fy. Too many peo­ple define who they are by a job-title or a set of cri­te­ria and refuse to ever step out of that role. “I am a net­work engi­neer, or a sys­tems admin­is­tra­tor, or a DBA, etc.” These are fine and good macro-lev­el def­i­n­i­tions and help to indi­cate your area of expertise–where you’re most comfortable–or what you con­sid­er your areas of major strength. I get that. Here’s what I don’t get: some­one from account­ing has a prob­lem with their com­put­er and you can’t–or won’t–help them because “that’s not your job”. I don’t get the per­son who refus­es to touch Win­dows machines because “they’re a net­work engi­neer” or “they only use Macs”. Learn some new things, cross-train with peo­ple out­side of your spe­cial­ty, and you will become more valu­able. The more you know, the more weight you can shoul­der if need­ed, which increas­es your val­ue to the com­pa­ny.

Don’t be a pri­ma don­na. This goes back to my point above. I have met peo­ple who are so enam­ored with a piece of tech­nol­o­gy, or a method of doing things, that they either refuse to change or they change but become the dis­rup­tive force in the depart­ment. These peo­ple “only use” Cis­co, or Juniper, or Macs, or a cer­tain type of cable, or wire­less radio, etc. I have enough prob­lems run­ning a world-wide net­work and try­ing to avoid ven­dor lock-in, I don’t need anoth­er ass-hole on my staff who has their own ven­dor lock-in. I also don’t care if you’re a Mac or a PC. You’ll have the same options as the oth­er mem­bers of the team.

Do the unpleas­ant jobs. This has been writ­ten down in many forms, so I’ll just say this: they’re all cor­rect. Do the jobs nobody else wants to do and you’ll do well for your­self. This applies to both depart­men­tal, project-lev­el, and macro-lev­el com­pa­ny goals. Read Creel Price’s take, enti­tled The Best Career Advice You Won’t Want to Hear and Mike Bushon­g’s advice on Out­per­form­ing Your Peers by Man­ag­ing Expec­ta­tions. Actu­al­ly, read all of Mike Bushon­g’s career advice over at the Plexxi site as it’s all dead-on.

Align your goals to the com­pa­ny. You should always align your career goals, and the small­er year-over-year goals, to your com­pa­ny’s goals if you want to get ahead and become tru­ly indis­pens­able. If your goals are aligned with the com­pa­ny’s, then you are a part of the process mov­ing the com­pa­ny for­ward, help­ing it to earn mon­ey, and help­ing your­self in the process. If you are try­ing to move your career in a direc­tion fun­da­men­tal­ly at odds with the com­pa­ny you work for, then I’d sug­gest you should be look­ing for anoth­er place to hang your hat. It’s not a ten­able posi­tion to be fight­ing your own com­pa­ny on career goals and devel­op­ment.

Don’t be a one-trick pony. This kind of dove­tails with a few of the pre­vi­ous points, but it bears repeat­ing more suc­cinct­ly: every­one can be replaced. You might think that your stack of cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, and your deep expe­ri­ence in an area of exper­tise make you invalu­able to the com­pa­ny, but it’s not nec­es­sar­i­ly the case. In fact, if I am forced to down­size my staff, the first peo­ple on my short-list are the one-trick-ponies. The peo­ple who do one or two things at such a deep lev­el that they can re-write a rout­ing pro­to­col from scratch might be great for con­sult­ing, but are not always great for in-house staff. In fact, the deep­er and more spe­cif­ic your knowl­edge becomes, the more like­ly I am to replace you with more of a gen­er­al­ist who can adapt and do a lot more things at an accept­ably high lev­el. I’ll hire a con­sul­tant to do what you do. That’s not an argu­ment against excep­tion­al­ism. Just make cer­tain it is aligned to the needs of your com­pa­ny.

Look, at the end of the day I absolute­ly hate being in a posi­tion to have to let any­one go. I hate see­ing oth­er peo­ple lose their jobs, and I real­ly hate what it does to the moral of those still at the com­pa­ny. Con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, almost nobody wants to go around lay­ing off staff. But if the time comes, and I’m told I have to get rid of one per­son in my depart­ment, traits like the ones I’ve list­ed above play a big fac­tor in my deci­sion.

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