Building A Successful Tech Career: Gaining Traction — Part 2
After having created a career path, what is next? So many of us get caught up in the endless cycle of boot-camps & online tutorials in the quest of building a career in the tech industry. These endless cycles of boot-camps, trainings & tutorials will however still not determine how successful or not you will be in this industry. In this article we explore finding a thin line between two personas : Long-Term Lee & Short-Term Sal.
What in the world do we mean by Short-Term Sal(Richmond) & Long-Term Lee(Clifford). I meant who in world are these two people? Getting into the tech industry is not quite a regular path and what makes it worse today is the numerous number of trainings, boot-camps, online courses, YouTube tutorials and countless articles on “programming, crash course, coding-for-dummies” and the likes! HA! Gets exhausting huhh!
Before I continue, I wish to state that I am not against trainings, boot-camps, online courses and all. In fact, I love doing these myself and I even find myself taking part-time offers as a Programming Instructor/Facilitator for these boot-camps — I mean, turning my passion into profit :)
This article seeks to help those who find themselves in the endless cycle of tutorials, boot-camps, trainings et al. As you begin to grow in this industry, don’t get caught up in such cycles, it may leave you frustrated and shallow in the long term. This brings us to our personas for today, Short-Term Sal(Richmond) & Long Term Lee(Clifford)
Why Clifford & Richmond? Ha! Clifford used to be my amazing work colleague at my former workplace and I believe we are perfect examples of the personas I am about to talk about shortly. (I learned these concepts from Eva Mwangi during one of our experience sharing sessions at getINNOtized)
Long-Term Lee(Clifford): These are the kind of people who believe in understanding everything when learning something new. Like, they literally try to understand a lot and must feel they understand a lot before they move on to another thing. For example, if Lee is studying Machine Learning, Lee will try to understand the mathematics behind machine learning, the algorithms, the proofs, the run-times! My Lord! He will ensure he knows the ins-and-outs of machine learning before he moves on to another topic.
Short-Term Sal (Richmond): These are the ‘takashi’ people in the industry. We learn about functions in programming, and strive quickly to move on to objects and encapsulation. I mean, when we study lets say 1+1, we will move on to try 1+ 1.5 and see if we will get results. We are the kind of people who study bits and pieces and move on to another thing. We are not too concerned about whether or not we fully understand the basics, we learn and move!
Now, let’s take a look at a graph of these two personas in a fair world.
A closer look at the fair career trajectories indicate that, in a very fair world, Long-Term Lee should achieve more than Short-Term Sal within a given time period.
Lee takes his time to learn more, understand the fundamentals before moving on to take a project or work. So over a period of time, Lee will have all it takes to be successful in a fair world.
Sal on the other hand, rises quickly in a short time and gradually begins to fall in terms of achievements in the long term — in a hypothetical fair world.
What Actually Happens In The Real-World (The Unfair World As You May Call It.)
Now, in the real-world, Lee ends up spending a lot of time learning and in-turn will take a longer time rising in the industry while Sal on the other hand, spends less time learning and also grows quickly in the industry.
Why In The World Is This So?
Now, if you are new to this industry right, the goal is to find a balance between these two personas. I mean, each has its own advantages & disadvantages. Let me give an example, Sal (Richmond/Me) & Lee (Clifford/My Former Colleague) — having been on the same team, there were times when our unique personas helped us during client projects and other times it didn’t help. Sals like me get work done fast, meet deadlines and may impress clients if the project is usually short-term while Lees like Clifford, get to show off their knowledge & skill when there is an intense project that requires in-depth technical knowledge and expertise of which Lees used a lot of time learning so they can easily save the day during such situations. — See how these personas save the day in different circumstances! PS: That is why Clifford & Richmond were close buddies at work, complementing each other!
Right! So as you can see, these two personas are not that bad, the goal is to find a balance and make impact over time.
How Do I Find A Balance?
Hhmmm! Finding balance! I hope I have not lost you yet :)
Looking at our second graph again, we see that Sal grows faster as he spends less time on knowledge and in the long term, his knowledge base increases faster as compared to Lee who spends a lot of time learning and stays behind Sal in terms of growth in knowledge.
Sals are people who after knowing what they want , start something on it, show it and move on to the next phase. For example, when I was tired of Data Science, I switched teams and moved to the DevOps team because I wanted to learn something new, on joining DevOps, I read few articles on the ins-and-outs of DevOps, studied docker, created & deployed some images, studied pipelines, built pipelines etc, trust me, I did not have to finish everything on docker before moving on to pipelines — I studied, practiced and kept moving, so I can confidently say I can work in a DevOps team in the long term. I mean I did, but it was for about three months.
Lees are the people who will want to know everything on DevOps when they get started, they will go into the history of DevOps, System Administration, Linux Commands! Wheww! They want to cover the fundamentals before they get started on something. Do you finally see why they take a longer time to rise in the real world?
In finding balance, you need to know what exactly you want to do in this industry, study as much and little as you can, build projects, show off your projects (even if it has been done before), get feedback, try other exciting projects and keep learning.
“No one, when he has lit a lamp, puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, that those who come in may see the light. … “Nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lamp stand, where it gives light to all in the house. — Jesus Christ.
Eva gave an example which I always use when mentoring people on the need to show the little you know after learning is that, “Ronaldo is the best player in the world because we see him!” I dare say they are other players better than him but we do not see them and therefore in this unfair world, they cannot be considered as the best!
Once you begin learning, you must start to undertake small projects, write about the projects, tell a story around the project and share them with the world and get feedback (good/bad, it is still feedback!) The moment you begin to do these, you are already on your way to success since you have started letting your light shine so that others may see it.
Start building your portfolio — linkedin, medium, github, stackoverflow, dev.to etc, stop spending countless hours on tutorials and bootcamps,
Learn, DO- DO- SHOW-SHOW-SHOW- Repeat!
“Do not confuse motion and progress. A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress.” — Alfred A. Montapert
The more you do these, the more you become visible in the tech community, which puts you in a place where you get feedback, mentoring and in the long term, you see results in your career.
Conclusion
I believe you have now understood what it takes to rise & grow once you know what you want in this industry. When this happens, please do not get caught-up in the rat-race (endless cycle of tutorials, etc), the goal is to learn, do, do, do, show, show, show and repeat. You will realize that in the long-run, your knowledge base will grow and in turn set you up for success in the industry.
PS: Clifford’s growth is super impressive, Sals like me usually get stuck during hard-core projects and run to Lees to help us! But in the long-term, we all grow in the industry and achieve the level of success we all desire.
Thanks so much for reading! Watch out for our final episode on Building A Successful Career In The Tech Industry!
Don’t forget to hit the clap button as many times as you can! :)
