| Excellent post. Still, how do you advise one go about "making sure your day-to-day responsibilities don't take up much time, refusing to work on projects that will pull your career in the wrong direction"? On the first, it seems that the solution a lot of people take is to have short job tenures, because (in the absence of mentorship or high-level interest in career development) responsibilities accumulate while learning opportunities tend to get rarer, so a lot of people leave once the responsibility/learning balance tilts out of their favor. The problem with this strategy is that, at some point, having a string of 6- to 18-month job tenures starts to look really bad. The second is even more tricky. Most people aren't in the position of being able to "refuse to work on" bad projects, especially since it's obvious what the person's doing. It seems like this is a recipe for getting fired (which may help a person's career in the long run by preventing a rut, but is something most people would rather avoid). On top of that, there's the even harder question of how to know that the direction a project will pull a person's career in the first place. It's rarely obvious. Sometimes, doing the grunt work makes a person more trusted and puts him in line for the best projects. Sometimes, it leads to more grunt work and otherwise goes nowhere. These depend on the individuals involved and it can't easily be broken down into simple if-then rules. The strategy that most people seem to follow is to change jobs frequently until they find a fit. The problem with that is that, although the "job hopper" stigma is much less severe than it was 20 years ago, it still exists. "[P]erhaps most importantly, understanding how connections are really formed" How are they really formed? There are a lot of pet theories on this one, but it's not clear which of them (if any) is right. And people tend to be different enough that I'm skeptical that there is a general-purpose answer to the social engineering problem. |
> making sure your day-to-day responsibilities don't take up much time
What do you do when you've finished a reasonable amount of work for the day? The average person will ask for more work or do more grunt work. Instead, don't. You'll get much further in your career if you have an amazing side project and produce 20% less other work, than if you produce more day-to-day work but don't have any highly visible projects.
> refusing to work on projects that will pull your career in the wrong direction
You can't really outright refuse if your boss asks you to do something-but projects are frequently assigned on a semi-volunteer basis.
> On top of that, there's the even harder question of how to know that the direction a project will pull a person's career in the first place. It's rarely obvious.
I agree, it's not obvious. As a general rule, try to work on projects that give you the opportunity to be in contact with a greater number of people, especially people in senior positions.
> How are they really formed? There are a lot of pet theories on this one, but it's not clear which of them (if any) is right.
This is difficult, but the good news is that you don't have to be perfect-even a little effort here yields significant returns. The average programmer could benefit massively from an hour a week of studying psychology or practicing meeting people.
For a 20-something the goal is to get powerful, successful, competent people interested in your career. This is hard and there's no silver bullet. A major part of that is to give off the impression that you'll be successful no matter what, while at the same time benefiting from their advice and replicating their ideas. There's also a massive element of luck at play. I've spent a lot of time working on this, and I still wouldn't be able to come up with any sort of consistent method-just things that increase your chances, bit by bit.
Finally, I'd like to note that despite my claims of how difficult some of the above goals are, making good strategic decisions saves you huge amounts of time. Allocating your time in a job wisely will quickly mark you as someone "up-and-coming", and help you rise to interesting work quickly. 100 hours invested in networking will save you years over your lifetime, in terms of advancing your career. A great mentor can keep you from accidentally committing career suicide. And so on.