Your second job -- hacking your career

How to get your second jobHacking your way into a career in software

A career in software

A Job vs Career

• A job is something you do for money.

• A career is what you’d rather do for money

You are the sole motivator of your career

• Schools are responsible for certifying a standard set of skills

• Employers selfishly lead you towards skills they need

• Mentors will push you in the direction they think you should go

If your career isn’t going where you like, it’s your

responsibility to fix it

All job interviews are trying to answer three questions:

• Can you do the work?

• Are you excited about the work?

• Do we want to work with you?

You get your first job…

• It’s mostly luck

• You are a risk

• Expect a big reality check

For your next job…

• You want to have more control

• You want to be an asset

• You want to describe the arc of your career

To hack the career you want:

• Find a focus

• Learn the craft

• Become valuable

Finding a focus

Why focus?

• You can’t be good at everything

• Focus leads to satisfaction

• Focus helps you chart a course and stay on it

Lifestyle focus

Industry focus

Technology focus

Cultural focus

Track focus

• Engineering

• Architecture

• Quality Assurance

• Operations

• Management

Focus means ignoring things that matter and concentrating on things that matter

more

• Focus too tightly and you may find it difficult to move forward

• Focus too loosely and you won’t move at all

Learn the craft

“As aspiring Software Craftsmen we are raising the bar of professional software development by practicing it and helping others learn the craft. Through this work we have come to value:

Not only working software, but also well-crafted software

Not only responding to change, but also steadily adding value

Not only individuals and interactions, but also a community of professionals

Not only customer collaboration, but also productive partnerships

That is, in pursuit of the items on the left we have found the items on the right to be indispensable.”

Software craftsmanship is building stuff you want to work

on with people want to work with

Everybody starts as an apprentice

Apprenticeship Patterns

http://is.gd/apprenticeshippatterns

“Expose/Confront your Ignorance”

“Be the worst”

“Learn how you fail”

How to learn a craft• Build a lot of things and throw out the ones you

aren’t proud of

• Find information sources you can trust in a medium you prefer

• Build a dialog with people you respect

• Ask high leverage questions

Become Valuable

Be disciplined

Be honest

Merge with the culture

Deliver what’s needed

Not merely what’s asked for

Learn to communicate with non-engineers

Don’t be a DIVA

Let your enthusiasm spill over

Hacking a brilliant career

• Find a focus

• Learn the craft

• Become valuable

We would love it if you’d build part of your career

at CommerceHubhttp://commercehub.com/careers

@DataMiller @CommerceHub