Building a Technology Career

I recently read through what Eric Bloom had to say about building an IT career. Eric Bloom is the president for Manager Mechantronics and he’s got some insightful advice. I think he’s also got some advice that steers a lot of people wrong in how to build a Technology Career. While I am not going to knock Bloom for his opinions and thoughts because some of them have merit. I am going to give you a first hand account on how I’ve found career success – I’ll leave it to the reader to draw their own conclusions on what’s the effect from a guy who’s worked his way up, vs generic advice from a high level executive.

In the Beginning…

The first technology job that I got was with a company the PYXIS innovation inc. I met a lot of really smart people there and learned just how little school actually taught me. I had a lot of fun working with PYXIS and participating in a start up that truly was trying to change the world for a better place via Digital Earth. This is was a really cool company, I learned a lot working for these guys, at PYXIS started out as a C++ developer working with some of the smartest guys I’ve ever worked with throughout my whole career, they taught me just how much I didn’t know even after studying computer engineering. It was a great company & lots of fun. I learned about technology, software development, business, venture capital, marketing, quality assurance, working with partners and vendors, how to secure government contracts. PYXIS really completed my education, I thought my education was complete after 4 years, I was really wrong, it was complete after another 3 years at PYXIS.

After PYXIS, I moved onto a couple of contract positions which were interesting but bad at the same time, I ended up working for a “company” that would get me a contract, the difficulty with this process is I was really somebody else’s cash cow. I was making 60,000$ a year but being billed at 100,000$ year and this company that I was working for really didn’t do much. This experience really opened my eyes and showed me the downside of contracting and how manipulative contracting can be. I was young and inexperienced, as well as desperate for money to pay the bills, so I took just about anything and everything that came along. My advice would be if you’re a young developer, technology person… avoid contracting! Contracting can be lucrative and have its benefits and I’ll come to that later, however unless you’ve got years of experience, find a company you like working for and work hard for them.

Maturing a Technology Career

The one aspect that being a contractor did do for me is it developed my confidence, the people I was writing code for viewed me as an expert. When I figured I was done with contracting and wanted to get back into working for a company, I found a job posting at triOS College, the posting was for a Web Technologies Game Development instructor, however the board that I found the posting on had cut the “Instructor” off and I threw my resume into the pile. When I was contacted for an interview, I was told the position was actually for an Instructor position. I had never taught software development before, but I thought what the heck, why not give it a shot. Two weeks later, I started teaching Web Technologies. The interesting thing about teaching at triOS at the time was that I was teaching adults who were being “retrained” through government retraining programs and they came with life experiences, most of all they could detect BS so here I was in my late mid – late twenties teaching fully grown adults, the experience was a little overwhelming to say the least.

Teaching at triOS was fun most nights, however I learned a couple of valuable lessons. First of all, if you want to be really good at software and development programming, teach software to a group of students. You have to have all the answers, you have to be able to troubleshoot, debug and review their code as well as know the content inside out and backwards. The second lesson I learned coming out of triOS is that I am a really bad teacher, I don’t have the patience to teach, my students referred to me as the “Prof” because everyone thought I should be teaching in university. The third important lesson is that not everyone that is in software or wants to get into software is really cut out for it. I still see people who squeak through the cracks. It’s hard to see someone who wants something and see that they’re really not cut out for it. Teaching was fun but I found myself falling behind what technology was doing and wanted to get back into development experiences and write software again.

I moved onto working for a company by the name of Padre Software Inc. Padre was the dream nerd’s job, I thought that I had fallen into a sea of technology gluttony. At Padre, the projects were interesting, from a technology point of view, I got to work on a rapidly evolving technology set, further more the projects were always different. I worked for Padre for two years, traveled to the states with them, saw a lot of really cool places where our clients worked and direct application of technology that our clients were involved with. At Padre, I learned an ton about architecture and designing good software, because each project was assigned to a developer and the developer would be responsible for building the solution and working with the client to design the software to meet their needs. I got to work in a ton of technology stacks and spaces, C++, C#, Java, embedded, Websites & Web services.

It was about this time I realized I wanted more, I worked with a couple of colleagues that I respected tremendously but they were writing software and that was good for them. I decided that I didn’t want to be in my 40s and only writing software. I loved software, I loved technology and building things, however I needed to move on to place where I could grow and explore new areas. I saw a posting at McAfee for a Web Developer and I thought that McAfee would be a place I could grow my career and move onto bigger and better things, my only issue with Padre was there were only 4 developers and there had only ever been 4 developers, I didn’t see a whole lot of career growth opportunities there.

Growing Up

After I started at McAfee, when the initial awe & shock of a new company had really worn off, I found myself in a unique position. I was on a brand new team of web developers. This was interesting, for me because I had never worked full time as a web developer, the position was originally called web services so naturally I thought I’d be working on web services however that turned out to not be the case. I got exposed to areas of web development where I had to brush up on my skills and fine tune some areas to really know & understanding them well. I also learned that I suck terribly at UI & UI technology. I understand the concepts, I just stuck at making it look good or really interactive. If I was told what needed to happen, I could do that however if you asked me to figure it out well the results varied to say the least. I also learned that I wasn’t a very good web developer. I found web development incredibly boring, after one webpage is done what really changes. I am sure there are people who are really good at web development and really enjoy it, I am not one of them but I’ve worked with a few of them and they have my utmost respect.

While I was at McAfee, I learned to learn about me and what made me passionate. This is where I really developed a passion for software security and building secure software. The more I got into software security and building secure systems, the more I wanted to know and the more I started seeing the gaps in not only the software I had previously written but the software my colleagues were writing. I made a pitch to my managers to move me into a security engineering role, it was an interesting role because nobody was really sure what it involved or how to define it or how I would define success. It was a slow process at first, building the required knowledge in the required technologies, reading books, attending seminars, going to conferences. However, with every little bit of knowledge, I became more successful. I started to find allies within my space I got to work with a very intelligent web architect and if I could have reported to him, I probably would still be working for McAfee today. This web architect taught me a lot about security and how to get security ingested by the business and get the business on board.

In my Security engineering role, I was a security consultant advising developers on what to do and what not to do, I was a trainer, I delivered all kinds of security training to the development organization as a whole, I was a white hack hacker and penetration tester, testing, scanning, breaking software and filing bugs, I was a developer writing POCs and tools to enhance the security space, I was a mentor training others on the security team, I was a security advocate, advocating security with managers and ensuring that the code that was being shipped was secure, most of all I was a problem solver, it was a great time. After 3 1/2 years with McAfee having a lot of fun. I began to realize that I wanted to truly play a leadership role within an organization and it was time to move on. My main reason for joining McAfee was for career advancement, and I made some lateral moves but I really hadn’t advanced.

Bringing it All Together

About the time that I realized I needed to look for something else at McAfee, an interesting opportunity presented itself with Sun Life Financial. A major group within Sun Life Financial wanted to build their security development program from the ground up and they were looking for an Application Security Manager to help them do this. Initially, I was skeptical that I would be successful however this was the fastest interview process in my life and within about 1.5 weeks, I had an offer in my hands, of course, I’ve accepted and in the middle of building a security program which is not all that different then building your technology career.

Thoughts for Career Success

1. There’s lots of developers and technology folks out there, figure out what you want to do and where you want to go with your career. I initially thought I wanted to be a team lead, or an architect, however there are so many people that want the same thing.
2. IF you want to be a team lead, manager, or architect, figure out what sets you apart from the rest of the field to help you get there and focus on what sets you apart and further develop that.
3. Seriously thinking about specializing! I cannot stress this enough, I specialized in security and it has been a huge boost and a huge asset in helping me build my career. The security space is only going to get more complex. I am not advocating everyone become a security expert, specialize in an area you’re passionate about.
4. Figure out what you’re passionate about
5. Learn how to tell your story. Learn how to articulate where you are, where you want to go and how you’re going to get there, part of being successful is telling people where you want to be successful in your career and how you’re going to do it.
6. Learn how to define success. Once you get your foot in the door in the position you want, you need to be able to communicate up your management chain why/how the organization is better off with you in this position – Metrics (That you can play a role in defining) are useful here. Make sure you get a say in how you’re going to be measured otherwise it’s a recipe for disaster, you could be measured against things completely out of your control.
7. Don’t be afraid to move, It’s your career, own it. I have never found career advancement by staying at the same organization, maybe that’s my fault I am not sure. However I have found it by not being afraid of the future, and making a move when I think it’s the right time.
8. Don’t forget about your family, they’re your biggest assets. I would not be nearly as successful as I am without the support of my very loving wife, and without the motivation of my wife and children. I get up everyday and am motivated to provide for them, that drives me to work and remain motivated at work.
9. Be honest, people are reasonable and fair.
10. Be professional and don’t close any doors behind you unless absolutely required.

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