This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz
by Matthew Bass.
Original Post: Keynote Feedback
Feed Title: Career 2.0: Take Control of Your Life
Feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/career20
Feed Description: Jared Richardson and Matthew Bass are writing a book about refactoring your career through learning, writing, speaking, and networking. This blog will document their progress.
The most frustrating situations I encounter teaching in the JUG and the community college are those of the legacy COBOL / RPG developers desperate to upgrade their skills. Of course, they want to do it fast and easy. Unfortunately, like the 60 year old who never saved for retirement, they haven't been investing in their Knowledge Portfolio and have only their initial, 30-year-old "one-time" investment to work with. Now they face the prospect of downsizing or their job being outsourced. Some have been told their legacy programming jobs are scheduled to be eliminated - as soon as they finish training their outsourced replacements! (This is perhaps the ultimate slap in the face from companies who only wanted them to be "good enough, but not so good they could leave.")
Many got into COBOL 20 or 30 years ago straight from college. They mistakenly believe just taking a course or two will prepare them to compete against experienced Java and web developers. They're overwhelmed by the prospect of learning object-oriented programming, a modern programming language, and development methodologies.
Nearly everyone in our field knows someone like this. They got out of college, then coasted through their careers. They worked hard everyday, but they never looked around to see what was going on outside their team. Eventually, it always catches up with you.
1st: Getting know (Visibility) I specifically got an extra $20 / hr bill rate based on visibility. The client did not normally pay high dollar rates... they did a google search on my name which resulted in a number of hits. Their jaws dropped and they said we need you.
To your point... I didn't write a book... this were articles, blogs and speaking engagements
2nd: The other point is you just don't know what will be popular... here is a link with a comment which just makes your day.
Definitely continue to encourage people to write about everything they do. "Write about everything you do." Or, "Don't do anything without publicizing it / writing about it."
and
You mentioned several times that people can't know what's gonna be popular on their blog. So true!
* I recommend talking even more about the "no pain, no gain" stuff you discussed. When something's hard, you're learning. Otherwise, you're coasting.
* You explained that if you really want to know a topic, write about it. Right on! I couldn't agree more. You might *think* you know a topic, but when you start writing about it, I'll bet you learn more about it than you've ever known. You don't even know what you *don't know* until you start to write about it. :-)
Hey Jared, I was just thinking about your "Career 2.0" talk and a thought crossed my mind that I thought I'd run by you. How about "Creating / Editing Wikipedia Entries" as an "action item" for becoming a recognized expert on a topic?
Absolutely! That's a great way to get your name out there.
I realize this is a long post, but I've meaning to share some of these for a while. Keep the feedback coming.
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