Ask HN: How to understand the “big picture” of your own work?

[ccdev]

I have worked for businesses that lean towards the very small side. This has become somewhat of a hassle to me, especially when I turned into telecommute work, because I have hardly anyone to talk to about software development process and life cycle, and what impact our work has whenever we finish a milestone. If someone tells me to do XYZ, I just do XYZ without giving it much more thought but nobody explicitly states on the why this is important to company goals.

Now with eight years of work under my belt, people expect someone of my tenure to be able to demonstrate knowledge of the big picture. They will want to hire someone who makes waves.

When I was just starting out my expected career path would have taken me into a senior, then lead developer position, and probably become a software architect. But right now, eight years of work later, I am nowhere near capable to hold any of those roles. I couldn't make waves, even at a small company.

My work history and resume give the impression that my career has stalled. I honestly don't know what looks worse- an inexperienced graduate who's gone a year without work, or an experienced person whose career has stalled and currently doesn't have work.

But anyhow, I'm trying to write some "impact statements" on previous jobs and my mind's drawing a blank. How can I understand how it helped the company when so many aspects were black-boxed from me?

[ziddoap]

>I just do XYZ without giving it much more thought but nobody explicitly states on the why this is important to company goals

Have you gone out of your way to ask about the why? Or asked to be included in the big picture? A big part of furthering your career path is to take the reins, rather than wait to be included.

[aphextim]

Sometimes you just have to ask.

Tl:Dr - Weekly management meetings were held. Was not a part of them. Asked to be part of them and now am included and have a better understanding of the company's operations.

My company hired me to be an internal IT guy as they would outsource everything (which got to be expensive when people just need their excel worksheet restored they deleted or something easy like getting a printer installed).

Started small by learning the infrastructure, applications and how they do business and the workflow. Now one year later I'm in charge of the security systems, server maintenance, remote help and pretty much I'm acting CIO of this general contracting company. It's not a huge company but I have 4 servers and 100 computers to monitor/update and another 50 in the field to keep updated.

I work directly under the President and CEO and although I'm not a specialist by any means in one aspect I am a good generalist in terms of knowing all the software they use and means of the company only one year later.

Now they would hold weekly "management" meetings to discuss progress on the various jobs. Originally I was never invited to these as they didn't see why the IT guy needed to be involved.

After about a year I asked the CEO, "May I be included in the management meetings going forward so I can better assess the company's direction and help plan for future projects?"

Without hesitation he replied yes and I have been attending them ever sense. Although most of the meetings are about numbers, profit and how the various projects are running it helps to see the 'big picture' and where the company makes most of it's money, where it tends to lose money and my plan is to mitigate that impact with the use of technology and better on boarding in areas where technology can prove useful.

Long story short, ask and usually you will not be turned away from wanting to learn/grow yourself in a company.