Why self-manage your own career
The great tragedy of the software engineering industry is that it is filled to the brim with very smart and capable people who rarely spend any time thinking about their careers. Sometimes, it almost feels like there is an implicit expectation that their knowledge of sci-fi lore will eventually turn their real life work into a smashing success; and the mere mentioning of the idea of “managing” ones career is met with frowns.
I have hired, managed, and career developed a fair bit of software engineers in the past decade, and I feel like I have developed a rather controversial take on the subject. I’ve been on the both sides of this process, an engineer and a manager, and although I’m mostly reaching to software engineers here, I hope this post will help managers as well.
What is a career and why it needs managing
In this day and age, when you bring up the word “career” it conjures the images of corporate employees of the 60s and 70s. A person joins a company as a mail room clerk and then spends the next 30 years climbing the ladder all the way to the managing director. And then people conclude that the term is stupid.
And, in a way, they are not wrong. That situation does not really exists in software engineering industry any more. The wast majority of software companies don’t survive past a 10 year mark. Actually, most of them disappear within 5 years, and an average tenure of a software engineer in a company those days is 1-2 years. So, you can’t think about careers like that any more.
But, then again, the number of software engineers doubles every 5 years. So, if you decided not to worry your pretty head about a “career” for 10 years, and were coasting as a tech lead for a while, you’ll facing a competition of 4 younger, hungrier, and very likely smarter than you are kids who want your place. What do you do then?
Don’t get me wrong here. Some people choose to stay on the tools their entire lives, and I thoroughly respect them; some of the best engineers on the planet are this way. But, most people are not like that, and whether you like it or not, chances are, you are the most people. What you want now — which is coding — is not the same thing that you will want in 5-10 years. Most of you will eventually want growth.
The raise of the creative class
If you red my last article about the roles structure in a software engineering company, you’re probably wondering now what does it mean in the context of the short tenure and ubiquitous contract work in the software engineering industry, and how it all works in this environment. Well, at least I hope you’re wondering about that.
In the past 30 years the structure of employment changed drastically. The old corporations were a bit like a factory floor: you have the bosses, designers in the R&D department, assembly workers, QA, etc. There were people who think, and there were people who do what they wore told to. That approach worked great in the context of the military industrial complex of the post WWII era, but it doesn’t stand a chance in the modern fast paced and highly competitive environment.
The shift that we saw in the industry in the past few decades was focused on enabling employees to fully participate in the product development process, we started to work in cross-functional teams with a lot of decision making freedom. And with that, a significant premium was placed on talent. Add to that the cheaper, faster travel that enabled workers mobility, and we have what we have today.
A contemporary software engineer has way less similarities with an assembly worker at a factory, and looks much more like a freelance artist. A lot of them are for all intents and purposes freelance artists as a side gig; OSS maintainers, public speakers, writers, promoters.
The corollary of this fact is that it is much more appropriate those days to think of software engineers as the members of the creative class, rather than members of the working/middle class as the factory floor engineers used to be.
Managing your own career
Now, lets add two and two together. The org structure still exists. The ladder still exists. Managers still promise help to build your career within their organisation. But, you’re a member of a creative class, and you’re not going to stay there that long anyway. So, what do you do?
Well, have you ever seen a musician, or a photographer, or a writer building their career in a company? Join some corporation for 20 years and climb the ladder? No, not really. Because members of the creative class value their freedom, and they manage their own careers. And so, they invest their own time into improving their skills, getting better gigs, selling their craft better, finding niches that interest them, etc, etc.
Don’t get me wrong here, you still can join a bank or something like that, work there for 10 years, and let them build your career. But, chances are, you will be laid off like everybody else at the next economic downturn. And off you go, hat in your hand, begging somebody else to take you in.
The right answer is to manage your own career. Moreover, the right answer for a hiring manager is to help people to manage their own careers, rather than promising to build a career for the employee within their organisation.
The rule of the jungle is quite simple actually: you don’t really owe your employer anything. You were hired to make them money, likely without an expectation that you will last there longer than couple of years. Whatever they pay you or invest in your development, they will get back tenfold. Which means, you’re more than eligible to pursue your own career development goals as part of your employment. Including resigning if the gig is not working for you.
Remember, that corporates routinely use the term “loyalty” to manipulate you. Don’t let it stop you from resigning and moving on if your current employment doesn’t help you with you career goals. They won’t think twice before terminating you if your goals won’t align with theirs, so it’s only fair that it should cut both ways.
In a short, don’t wait for a manager to feed you your career goals hand to mouth. Manage your own career.
Thinking outwardly
To some people the idea of self-managing their own career seem selfish, so I’ll discuss this point explicitly here. The idea that needs to sink in is that there is a difference between selfishness and ownership. What I’m encouraging you to consider is the ownership of your own career; a.k.a. being responsible for your own journey. Which is different from being selfish.
The point here is that waiting for a manager to “recognise” you and promote you is a weak position. It leaves you at the mercy of the manager’s whim. Which, ultimately, will make you a victim of circumstances, and that in turn will make you think like a victim with all the ensuing self-limiting believes, and inward focus on your own misery.
To have alternatives, you need to start thinking outwardly instead. You own your career path, and you offer services to the employer within that career path. Ultimately, you’re helping the employer to get somewhere by offering your time and skills. If your career goals and the employer needs don’t align, you should not take the gig. That puts you in a position of strength, where you can choose your next steps at your own pace.
This outward thinking mentality will help you to power through the rough patches, be useful to others, and deal with inevitable adversity. This ability to have your own strength and make your own decisions will be highly desired when you get to leading others. It will help you to keep your integrity intact as well.
Ultimately it will give you the option to have more positive impact in everything you do. And that is not selfish, because other people will inevitably benefit from your reaching your potential.
The investment plan
You probably hear this all the time that investing in your own education is the best money investment there is. But, I find that people don’t quite appreciate the true scale of this phenomena. So, let me hit you with some math.
There is a method to the madness, but for simplicity sake, lets say you invest $2’000 annually into your own education for 5 years; or $10’000. And you use that to get yourself to the middle management position with say $200-250k annual salary. Within 10 years, you will make $2’000’000 in cache, give or take.
If we diff that against say a $100-150k coasting along career, we are looking at roughly $100k/year averaged profit for $2k/year investment. I don’t know how much that it is in percent, but it is a lot. Definitely beats the 10% annual return on average index fund investment, doesn’t it?
The point I’m making is that, again, managing your own career, not waiting for a manager’s approval, and lavishly investing in your own education and skill is the best thing you can do for yourself financially. And, I hope by now you can see that it is silly not to do this.
And, if you subscribe to this idea, you need to start thinking similarly about the jobs you take. You want to think of your time as an investment, and you want to make sure it makes impact on your career.
Impact vs. growth
I know, it’s been a long read, so the last bit of advise I have for you is this. Many people when they think about career management, they think growth. Salary growth, number of reports growth, access to budget growth, size of projects growth, etc. I would strongly advocate against this kind of thinking when it comes to your career.
Although natural, this way of thinking will make you focused on your own growth first and foremost. That will bring back that inward focused mindset which will bring you on a defensive all over again, and eventually limit your growth. Thinking only about your own growth is the surest way I know to becoming one of those insecure and always stressed managers who are stuck in the middle of their careers.
Instead of growth you want to focus your career on impact that you make. Don’t think about money, titles, numbers of reports, etc. Think about making bigger and bigger impact you make as you progress in your career. Money and recognition will come as the reflection of the impact you’re making.
There is a simple explanation for this. The reason people are hired in the first place is rather utilitarian. People are hired to get a job done. And so, your usefulness and reliability is what matters. You need to be dependable and capable for the employer. And the only way to do that successfully is to intensely focus on the employers needs and problems. This outward mindset is what will fuel your career advancement.
Or, to put it in simpler terms, think of it as agile methodology for your career. Always listen to the customer problems, never listen to the customer’s solutions.
PS: a word to a hiring manager
Just like yourself, I hire people regularly, and I feel keenly the effects of the war on talent that is raging in the software industry at the moment. So, what I wrote above might feel like I’m arming employees against my own kind. And although, to a degree, that is true, I believe that this is the right thing to do for both sides.
One of the most transformational experiences in my managerial life was the time when I really started to see people I employ as people. Not developers, not engineers, people. While it is neat, and actually necessary, to have an org structure and well defined job descriptions. The actual people, with their unique needs and circumstances rarely neatly fit into those boxes.
I like to think of people I employ as members of the creative class, or unique snowflakes if you will. Each and every single one of them, has a unique life story and goals. Understanding this fact and aligning their goals with their tenure at my company is where the magic happens.
Accepting this fact makes my work way more messier that it would be otherwise, but it also makes it this much more satisfying. Making a difference in someone’s life while you have a chance is a goal worth living for. It requires some creativity, but hey, guess what? You’re a member of the creative class too.
And in that light, there is no us and them. We’re all employees, all on the same path, and in the same flow of life. And that what makes work meaningful.