Jump-start your career in five hard lessons

Think you've got what it takes to become a hot-shot executive but that your boss is holding you back? Or maybe you're just sick and tired of working your butt off while everyone else gets ahead? Well, quit your whining, and do something about it.

No, don't get a self-help book; they're mostly a waste of time. I've got a better idea. But before we go any further, I need to say this: I'm no career guidance expert, I don't have volumes of data, and I'm not here to sell you anything. On the other hand, I do have five hard-learned, real-life lessons from the trenches.

Learning these lessons enabled my success. Yeah, I know, I hate people who say that too, "I was a big success in [fill in the blank] and, if you buy my book, you can be a success too." The only difference between them and me is that I'm not trying to sell you anything.

Will my lessons work for you or anyone else? Fair question. I have no idea. But I do think they're fundamental and not the kind of stuff you're likely to find hanging around a bookstore. These are not obvious "falling off a log" lessons. I learned them through painful trial and error. Speaking of which, if you'd like to know whose advice you're taking, just check out my bio.

If there's an overriding message, it's this: success isn't easy, and there are no formulas. Anyone who says otherwise just wants to sell you something. Everything you're about to read is hard, but I don't know of any work-arounds. If there were an easier way, trust me, I'd have tried it. And, like anything significant in life, just reading it isn't likely to help you much. But if it resonates with you, perhaps it will affect your behavior and then, the sky's the limit.

Lesson 1: Get in the line of fire. Find a way to put yourself in a critical position on a program that can make or break the company. Take big risks, especially early in your career, when it doesn't matter so much. Stick your neck out and test your reach. Management will respect your willingness to put your butt on the line for the company. Don't get hung up on winning. Whether the project succeeds or fails is secondary. Same goes for titles and compensation. Show your capability first. Then see Lesson 2.

Lesson 2: Actively manage your career. Rarely will anybody hand you a promotion. You have to negotiate for it, schmooze for it and work your tail off for it. If somebody's in your way, find a way around him. Sell yourself up the management chain--or laterally, if you have to. Find a mentor, and follow his advice. If all that fails, start interviewing. You have to be willing to jump companies and even geographies, if you have to. But don't make a lateral move; go for the next level up. It's easier than you think to get a promotion when you switch companies.

Lesson 3: Find your passion. Follow your instincts, and listen to what people you trust tell you. If you're open and honest, you will eventually find your passion. When you do, be willing to change careers, if necessary. Have the guts to make a lateral move, or even take a step back, but only if necessary to find your raison d'?tre--what you were meant to do. That will always be your best-chance path to success. I did this once in my career, and it paid off big-time.

Lesson 4: The race to the top is a marathon. Most great careers are built and earned over time. Not only do you have to be smart, opportunistic and lucky; you have to be willing to sacrifice, and work long and hard, to get to the top. It's fine if you're not willing to do that, but make sure that it's your decision, not somebody else's. You don't want to wake up one day to find that you're bitter because you didn't go for it.

Lesson 5: Be practical about your goals. Your risk profile changes over time. Be honest about where you are in your career timeline, and choose jobs and companies accordingly. Consider early-stage start-ups when you're young and have time to see enough of them through to ensure a return on your time investment. Remember, playing start-ups is like playing poker; they don't all pay off. When you're older, try late-stage private or undervalued public companies that can benefit from your experience.

I'll leave you with some advice I learned long ago. Six simple words with potent meaning: "The only true success is happiness." In case it's not obvious, it means that if trying to get ahead stresses you out and makes you and everyone you love miserable, ask yourself why you're doing it. The answer may inspire you to reconsider your life's priorities.

Lastly, if this helps you, or you have some advice of your own that might help others, let us know.

[ribarbora]

Six Even Harder Lessons for a Career in Corporate

Here are some lessons I've learned from working for very large U.S. corporations:

Lesson 1. No good deed goes unpunished

No matter how good your intentions, and how flawless the execution, if someone a level or two higher than you is not very bright, is afraid for their job, and has some power, they will use their position to try to destroy you.

Lesson 2. You can get hurt by getting in the line of fire

Face it, fire is exactly that -- whether you're talking about taking a stray bullet in a crossfire, or getting burned to a crisp by actual fire, the fact remains that getting into the line of fire can net you lots of pain, in the modern corporate world. You may be rewarded by being asked to go into the line of fire over and over again until you crash and burn. You may be rewarded by being made the whipping-person for a project gone awry. You may even be rewarded with promises and dangling carrots, time after time.

Lesson 3. Scientific Management is not dead

The notion that scientific management was a turn-of-the-century concept that was used only in factories, is false. Management's ability to come to employees and say "we know better - do it this way, and by the way, work longer hours" has not disappeared at all. The notion that employers are "kinder and gentler" is false. Everyone is out to rake in as many dollars as possible. Whipping your employees when the market is volatile and jumping ship is scary -- that's the road to riches most commonly chosen by the VP-and-above crowd. I don't think that accounting for every minute of one's day is what Reagan had in mind when he said "trust but verify", especially not for exempt employees...

Lesson 4. Management by Magazine is the de-facto standard

If you've not yet read about this in a magazine, let me fill you in: management by magazine is the uncanny and irritating ability of a senior manager to say "we're taking THIS direction, no ifs ands or buts" because he or she read and misinterpreted an article in some trade rag or management quarterly. It's also the ability of a middle manager to say "yes, sir", not challenge ridiculous orders, and let the muck flow downhill to the workers. When such projects fail, as they invariably do, who do you think is blamed? The workers who caused the project to fail, of course, not the VP whose lame-brained idea it was in the first place.

Lesson 5. Metrics and Processes are more important than getting the job done

Apparently, most corporations in America are led by people who read a book. I guess that's Management By Book, not Management By Magazine (see Lesson 4, above), but it's just as bad, if not worse. Someone at GE (a company that manufactures real, tangible products) once said (I'm paraphrasing here) that repeatable, measurable processes on the manufacturing line are a key to consistent quality and increased profits. This approach was then adapted to, and adopted by, the leaders of companies that don't manufacture anything -- banks, financial services companies, and -- the most flagrant misuse of Six Sigma in the history of mankind -- IT divisions and software companies. Moreover, they bloat their organizations with well-compensated employees -- often entire departments, including their own management structures -- who do nothing but measure things and produce reports. How this helps the bottom line is something I will never understand, because it doesn't make the workers work any smarter, any harder, any better. In fact, it does nothing but present obstacles to the people tasked with executing on the core competencies of the given business.

Lesson 6. Dates are more important than quality

I once worked at a company that wrote software for a specific vertical industry. This company would ship blank tapes (this was back in the mainframe days, before the Internet, when software was delivered on tape) in order to meet a delivery date that they promised their customers, and thus would buy themselves a week or more of additional software development and testing time, all the while apologizing to their clients and promising to investigate what happened to the tape. I once worked in the IT division at another company, this one in a completely different market. Their IT division serviced internal clients and produced content for their external Web site. In this company, even though there was no external, paying customer receiving the fruits of IT's labor, IT management pushed one of the axes very hard: meet the date. This company fancied itself adept at project management, and employed many certified project managers. These project managers were all tasked with back-filling project plans to a particular date. Now, I'm not a PMI-certified PMP, but it seems to me that the purpose of creating a project plan is to plan the activities and see how long it will take, not to stuff 10 pounds of activities into a 5-pound bag and call that effective planning.

Bottom line, working for yourself is better than working for someone else. Big companies, though historically more stable and able to compensate at higher levels, have their pitfalls. If you don't want to be stuck doing the typing while someone else is doing the thinking (or vice-versa, which can often be even more frustrating), you may want to work for a small(er) company. I think this "work for yourself" message has been conveyed in several recent articles on C|Net. Hopefully this commentary will serve to cement that message, and may prove amusing to those who have been swallowed by the whale and have not found their way out yet.

[cemptor]

Metrics and Dates in the software industry

I agree with the poster on points 5 and 6, having experienced them myself.

6. The reason dates are more important than quality:
- One simple, objective way executives know how to measure managers is to look at whether dates are met or not. It's quick and dirty, and enables someone to "declare success" in this age of quarterly "meet the numbers"

It's much harder to actually look at quality and figure out whether software meets the needs of its intended users or not. Takes much longer - especially large software can only be measured as users use it in real life, and depends on other factors such as organization design (can't expect to run new software with old structures), new processes and training.

Yeah, people come up with seemingly objective measures, such as % requirements met, defect rate and so on. But those can be gamed and are also difficult to measure.

The fact is, business application software (no experience with systems and other types) often does not have clear bottom line goals in the nature of solutions.

Second, the industry is nowhere near as mature as other engineering disciplines.

5. Metrics and Quality
I think it goes to some people trying to make the software business seem more mature than it is, by applying manufacturing like measures to it.

More importanly it makes for good "sound bites" for an executive to report that his projects meet <flavor of the day> quality standards, and if that has to be done with pictures, graphs and numbers, there are easy models available to force fit.

Above all, it is an easy way for the entire chain to get their bonuses for this quarter, users be damned. How may managers would agree to a measure of success over 2 years?

[fraza003]

Kudos to both posters above for telling it like it is and highlighting a very real and sad current state of affairs. This applies to not just our current 'corporate' setting but is prevalent in other areas of business. It's almost as if we've lost our way and gone blind in need of our next quick fix. Greed tends to do that and once enough people have bought into the 'corporate' mentality then it's just a matter of time before there is a herd like mentality. There's no accountability for anything as long as we keep wanting and getting more for making imprudent decisions and less effort. It just does not equate.

Here's a simple concept (befitting a simpleton like me) that I endorse and live by...Similar, to individuals (such as police officers) who are given additional power and authority than the general public, it makes sense that if such a person was to break the law then he/she should also expect to be dealt with twice as harshly. Turning our focus back to our 'maverick' business leaders, the same set of rules apply. As an executive, if you make imprudent and unwise business decisions with very short-term goals in mind resulting in the downfall of the company where so many livelihoods are at stake, you should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Nah, you should be castrated and left on a deserted island to fend for yourself with constant video footage being fed back to all the people who?s lives have been affected. Sound fair or am I being absurd???