Wanted to share some advice I received from mentors over the years. These things have stuck with me and helped to shape my career.
1. Andy Gross
Any job you take boils down to solving problems. When building solutions, it's important to have an audit trail. The problem with young people today is that when they are lost, they just keep on going. Young people should stop and ask for directions when they are lost. An audit trail gives you the ability to step back to the point where you first started getting lost.
2. Bill Wagner
The only limits are your own imagination. The one thing that stuck with me over the years was a role playing exercise Bill did with us. We had no idea about how the defense logistics information system we were building would be used. He got into the role of an army operator who had to use the system to requisition new parts to repair a broken tank. Since then, I've always tried to imagine how someone would use something that I built. When I didn't know how someone would use my software, I would stop and ask the person.
Bill also introduced me to a management style that treated a software project as a battle that was being lost.
3. Al Simon
Al explained something about me by comparing himself to me. I was always one who cared little about the bits and bytes of technology (though I've done some impressive technology solutions moving bits and bytes). Al and I are alike in that we both care more about how technology can be used to do things for people, solve real world problems.
Al Simon came off to me as a rebel against authority in one sense. In another sense, he understood how the system worked and explained that to get anywhere in a technocracy, you have to know how to move your ideas through the proper channels.
4. Patrice Richard
She wasn't my manager for a long time but one thing she said to me stuck. She said that of all the things you did in IT, knowing the data was most important. I've made it a point in positions I've had to always play close attention to the data. Being most knowledgeable about the data has lead to good job security and technical position advancement.
5. John Shue and Pete McBean
John taught me something about consulting on my own. A piece of advice he gave me was the importance of knowing your role. A person seeing a problem that needs to be solved can take on too much, try to act God like, and be shot down. A person who understands his role does his duty and stays within his circle of influence. You can have an opinion on the right way to do things but if no one asks for your opinion, you are not God and can't force your way on others higher in the food chain. Pete McBean offered a similar suggestion. He once told me when I was questioning a management decision on our project, "I'm just a worker bee." This meant that he had a job to do and he realized his role was not to make management decisions.
6. Michael Kamfonas
I learned a few things from Michael. When I met him, I was a young hot shot programmer who thought he ruled the world. Michael passed on a few tips to me. One was to above all respect others. I once told him that it must be nice to be on top of the pack of technology leadership at Lockheed. He replied that the problem with being on the top was that you didn't just have to look down for people coming after you. You had to look up , down , left , right , and sideways. He also stressed how important it was to understand how something worked. When you are working on a problem, the most important thing is to know how it works. I've always found my greatest difficulty in solving problems was when I didn't admit to myself that I had no idea how something I was working on worked. Michael used as an example the extreme care that was put into designing a nuclear facility. I myself saw how a small flaw in programming could greatly effect the processing of terabytes of data for the credit card analysis system we were building.
These are a few of the things that stuck with me through the years. I've used this and other advice I've received throughout the years as the framework / code of behavior / culture in my career. It has served me well and I hope to share it with others through this blog and maybe in other mediums down the road.
7. Maki Kato
Always have a side project you're working on. You can get burnt out and disinterested in projects you work on for a living. Personal tech projects keep you learning about new technology or enhancing your abilities in current technology.
