You see all sorts of advice for folks who are looking to get into IT. OK – you got the job, have the T-Shirt and are working away, enjoying the ride. What should you do as your IT career advances?
This was the question I asked Orin Thomas during one of our weekly 1 on 1s. Orin is a good friend of mine who works with me at Microsoft as a Principal Hybrid Cloud Advocate. We collaboratively created a keynote on this topic and delivered it in July 2023 to the audience at TechMentor – Redmond. I say Hybrid because Orin lives in Melbourne, Australia and was unable to make the trip due to budget constraints (don’t get me started).
The profession of working in IT is very BROAD and the tribes within can be quite polarizing for some folks. If you know me – I come from the “IT Pro” camp: a troubleshooting IT generalist with a systems design & management background who has evolved to be more “T-Shaped” in certain depth areas.
This will be a multi-part post cut from the longer full keynote. In this post we talk about the myth that IT is perceived as a career for the young. IT moves at a fast pace and involves dealing with constant change resulting in the necessity of continuous learning and adaption. When you compare working in IT to other knowledge-based professions – you can gain a lot of insight into how to be successful and have a career that can span an entire lifetime.
These will be posted in short digestible chunks. I hope you find these useful and they trigger some introspective thoughts on how you have handled YOUR career in IT. Feel free to comment and share your story / observations along the way.