Don't Be Invisible!

Hacker News is a great source of information, and today they posted a great article about not being invisible.

The core message of the article is to not just do your job. If you put your head down and do your assigned job, don't expect raises. Don't expect to not be laid off. Expect to be dispensable and keep your resume up to day.

From the article:

Azzarello’s career advice for employees is to make sure the work that you do is aligned with the company’s goals, bring your accomplishments to the attention of your superiors, and create a network of mentors who will guide you and ensure that you win a spot on the company’s list of employees who are the leaders of tomorrow. Her advice is tersely described as: Do better, look better, and connect better.

This is great article and I'd suggest you take a few minutes to check it out.

Are You Invisible?


If you'd like a few tips on how to avoid being invisible, check out Career 2.0, now on sale at $15 a copy.

Five Things You Can Do to Boost Your Career

The economy is starting to recover in spots. Are you ready for it? How well positioned are you to take advantadge of the recovery?

When things begin looking good again, will you be in survival mode, treading water until your strength gives out? Or will you have positioned yourself well enough that you maximize your return?

Here are five things you can do today to position yourself as an 'overnight success' in the next year or two.

1. Join your local user group. Whether you're into Java, .Net, Ruby, or Agile, there's probably a great group in your neighborhood already. Meetup.com is a great place to start looking for one.


2. Join a few national mailing lists. Both Yahoo Groups and Google Groups house thousands of mailings on topics from Agile to lean to test automation and more.


3. Attend local miniconferences. Here in RTP we've just had a TED conference, an Agile Coach Camp, a few other evening events, and more. We've got Citcon (CI and test automation) coming, as well as a one day Intro to Agile mini-conference. And those are just the ones of the top of my head! What's going on in your area? Contact your MS evangilist, or tool vendor of choice and ask them when they're coming to town.


4. Speak up! Be active in your local user group's mailing, or your national list. Ask a few softball questions. Ask for help. Answer someone else's questions. But don't sit on the sidelines. Lurking is fine until you learn the group, but get in the game.


5. Pick your favorite tool and write a How To article. Then post it on your blog. (Don't have a blog? Then visit Blogger.com and you'll have one in five minutes!) There are lots of people who want to learn how to use tool X or technique N. Write it up and post it.

At the end of the day, and of every day, you've got to decide if you've got a job or a career. If it's "just a job", then by all means, just survive and try to make it through to the next paycheck. But if it's something you want to truly succeed at, don't hide! Get out and reposition yourself!

Blatant commercial plug You can find even more tips on tuning up your career in Career 2.0: Take Control of Your Life.

You can also check out Land the Tech Job You Love by Andy Lester and The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development by Chad Fowler.

The information is out there. Will you use it?

Scaffolding Your Goals for Success

Here's a great post from the always useful Lifehacker site. The article offers up tips for actually reaching those goals we keep setting for ourselves. I like the scaffolding concept a lot.

Scaffold Your New Year's Resolutions for Lasting Change

What's worked for you? How do you improve your goal's chances for success?

Brilliant Blog Posting on Your Long Term Career Direction

Marshal Brain is a local entrepreneur who's sold a lot of books, has his own TV show, and generally considered a very smart guy. He spoke at Duke on how to make a million dollars.

Do you track this blog? Then read this article.

How to Make a Million Dollars

Tips For Staying Motivated and On Course

This post has a list of techniques you can use to keep yourself on track. There's a bit of overlap with the ideas we present in the Career 2.0 book, but it's well worth reading.

33 Ways to Get and Keep Yourself Motivated

Get a College Refresher on a Budget!

This article on Hacker News is right up the Career 2.0 alley! It's an online service that lets you learn as much, or as little, as you want for a flat rate.

This is perfect the unemployed or the underemployed who want to polish their skills and line themselves up for the job they want. In fact, the first example in the article is someone who did just that.

Here's the article College for $99 a Month

The actual website for the courses is Straighter Line

And of course, a hat tip to Hacker News, a great source of information on a variety of subjects.

Career 2.0 talk in Boston Tonight

I'll be speaking at the New England Java User's Group tonight. It's quite an honor to speak for this group... they're in their 10th year as a user's group!

If you're in the area, please come out. Here's the link.

http://www.nejug.org/events/show/95

Friday, I'll be in Charlotte at Agilepalooza. It's an open space event, but I might try to reprise the material there as well!

Get 10% Off Career 2.0 Through July 31st!

We're running a promotion and offering 10% off Career 2.0 until the end of July. Enter code ‘JULYCONTEST10’ at checkout and you'll save 10% on your purchase.

If you've been waiting for the perfect time to stock up on birthday presents, or just wanting to put a bit of polish on your future career prospects, now is the time!

Career 2.0: Take Control of Your Life!

What Language This Year?

Here's a good blog post on one developer's thought process on which language to learn this year. Maybe it'll help you pick one, and maybe help motivate you as well. :)

http://piskeris.dk/blog/2009/07/03/language-of-the-year/

An Excellent Career Oriented Webcast

Pragmatic authors Chad Fowler and Andy Lester have an upcoming webcast that's bound to be a great source of ideas and advice. They both have career oriented books in print.

The webcast is titled "Radical Career Advice in a Down Economy" and is free for all registrants.

Matt Stine gives props to Career 2.0 on DZone

Matt Stine recently posted a very thorough review of Career 2.0 over on DZone. It's great to hear from people who are getting motivated to change their lives after reading the book!

Career 2.0 in the Book Zone

Ken Sipe's Guiding Principals

Ken Sipe, fellow NFJS speaker and Very Smart Guy, wrote up the principals that guide his career. They've served him very well, and we'd all do well to learn and apply them also!

Personal Career Guiding Principals

How to Become a Software Engineer/Programmer

I don't like simple "link posts", but this was such a great blog posting, I had to share it. It's a nice collection of career advice.

How To Become A Software Engineer/Programmer

Hat tip to Hacker News. HN is a great source of information as well!

Career 2.0 Books

Mark Mzyk posts a quick review of both Career 2.0 and Chad Fowler's recent masterpiece, The Passionate Programmer. It's a good blog entry if you've been considering either book.

http://www.programmersparadox.com/2009/06/07/career-20/

Discovering Toastmasters in Memphis

Matt Stine posted a review of Career 2.0 and the talk I gave on the topic at the Memphis Java User's Group.

It's nice to hear how he's getting involved with Toastmasters now!

Career 2.0: Toastmasters

Choice Over Fear: Shepherds, Wolves, and Jobs

A mutual friend introduced me to a great blog entry and I had to pass it on. It's from another North Carolina resident, but we've never (to my knowledge) met.

Denilson's blog entry is titled Layoffs, sheep, shepherds, and wolves and deals with the choices we all face. It's a long entry, but I'd encourage you to read it through.

Here are a few excerpts.

Behaving like a sheep is about making as few choices as possible, settling into a stable situation and hoping things will not change. Sheep intentionally put their fates at hand of shepherds and unknowingly at the mercy of wolves. Time after time, sheep seek seemingly safe settings and stay there until the inexorable dangers of political and economical instability surround them again. Sheep regard being outside a wolf’s stomach to be a good life, and being inside the wolf’s stomach the result of random and cruel chance.

......

At the root of sheepish thought is the belief that we cannot influence the events around us. That is partly true, but we do have control over our preparedness to face those events.

....

If we wait until disaster hits to start making choices, we may find out that there are only bad and worse choices.

.....
A botched project will not be followed by another chance, but by a round of layoffs.

If you enjoyed reading Career 2.0, I think you'll enjoy The RTP Scrolls as well.

Career 2.0 Facebook Group

For those of you who spend time on Facebook, a friend created a Facebook group and passed on control to me. (Thanks Shawn!)

I've added a number of links to reviews of my Career 2.0 talk and the book. I'm hoping it turns out to be a useful resource.

http://tinyurl.com/djm99y


http://www.facebook.com/pages/Career-20/56836381471?ref=ts

Enjoy!

What's Your Language This Year?

LOTY. Learn a new language each year. This has been a persistent theme for several years... I first heard of this reading The Pragmatic Programmer a decade ago. It's golden advice if you take it... I haven't as much as I should have!

Today you have an opportunity to put the advice to use and learn one of the new JVM languages. Venkat Subramaniam's new Scala book just went into beta! (link). This means you can read it now, and offer feedback on the parts you don't understand or have trouble wrapping your head around. And Venkat can fix the book before it goes to press.

In other words, you can get Venkat to write the book you want to read. ;) It's not quite that cut and dried, but it's a great start. If you're considering Scala as your next Language of the Year, this would be a great way to begin.

Programming Scala

Be the First Crab!

After the Boston No Fluff Just Stuff conference, Karim Bahai heard the keynote, got the book, and started a blog. His first blog entry is worthy of a link!

The blog is called "first crab" and I'll make you read his blog entry to find out why! ;)

Enjoy!

FirstCrab.blogspot.com

Learn Git

In several areas of the open source community, Git is the hot new source code management system. It's been popular now for a while, so it's not just a flash in the pan. It's really worth learning, especially if you're in the Ruby community.

If you're wanting to learn git, here's a great whttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifebsite:

GitReady

But more than just learning, use the site as inspiration. If you've got something you know how to use, something as simple as source code management, start writing tutorials. Put a site together around it.

Who knows? Maybe you'll be the next website someone else blogs about. :)

btw, I found this link on a reddit post. I want to get involved... Lots of great fodder in here!