How to build strong technology career?

- 3 minutes read - 442 words

The full article "How to Build a Strong Career in Tech" from Thiago Ghisi is at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-build-strong-career-tech-thiago-ghisi/. I want to put the gist here for my reference.

How does a Successful Career in Tech look like?

Definition of a Successful Career

The candidate resume metadata doesn’t often lie

resume metadata: Impact of their ideas on a large number of people directly or indirectly. Success = Impact & Influence! Or, ever-growing levels of Impact and Influence. influence: has influence as a supervisor or someone with power due to their tenure in the company.

influence without authority

The Framework: How to measure your skills and how to compare your contributions against your next level

The 4 Pillars to Grow Your Career

Don’t trust. Verify!

career progression models：

  • Startup-Kit model

  • Snowflake model

  • Spreadsheet-Matrix model

4 Pillars:

  1. Platform

  2. Product

  3. Process

  4. People

The most successful professionals that I know focus on getting better and increasing their impact and influence not only on the 1st P - Platform - but in all the 4Ps: Platform, Product, Process & People.

6Ps

  1. Product Delivery (Project Management, Continuous Delivery, User Experience & Product Roadmap),

  2. People (Mentorship, Feedback, Leadership Behaviours & Career Growth Strategy),

  3. Platform (Codebase, Engineering Practices, Architecture Patterns & New Technologies),

  4. Process (Culture, Metrics, Rituals & Systems),

  5. Partners (Relationship with Internal & External Product, Tech or Vendors),

  6. Paperwork (You know what that is when you work for a big corporation).

Generalizing Specialist

model

one should go broad first (master the 20% that will allow you to deliver 80% of the tasks) and go in-depth only when there is a big need, a big opportunity, or a strong interest in keeping developing your skills further in a particular area.

Jack of MANY Trades and Masters of SOME.

focus on the principles that are unlikely to change instead of the new tools

Book category:

  • Technology-specific books are very valuable but they expire.

  • Conceptual books are books that give us the foundation to advance in our careers.

  • Behavioral books are books that make us more efficient when working in teams and organizing ourselves.

  • Revolutionary books (some call them classics) are the ones that changed the way we work.

Favor conceptual and behavioral books for your career progression, starting with the revolutionary ones. Read technology-specific books for your short and medium-term plans.

The Career Accelerators

every career change should be accompanied by a big change in at least one of the 4 Ps: Platform, Product, Process, or People.

you should be changing at least one of the 4Ps - Platform, Product, Process & People - at least once every 2 years, not only during your 20s but actually during your entire professional career in Tech.

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