Lie Loudest
One of my favourite quotes is this:
We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves
... and I think that this quote can be readily applied when evaluating one's own career. An ambiguous statement perhaps but, let me attempt to drill in a little. I'm basically a guy who is motivated by food and shelter so, for me at least, there's 2 factors that I try to focus on when I think about my career:
- What skills will I need to be doing the job that I'd like to be doing 7 years from now
- What positives am I getting out of my current job which will help me attain item #1
Now, if I'm being honest - truly honest that is - with myself, I must accept that, logically, to answer point #2 I must have already answered point #1.
When answering point #1 I try to place skills into fairly high-level baskets like:- Managing staff
- Managing resources
- Manging budgets
- Managing projects
- Designing frameworks and architecture
- Lower level coding
So, in my own case I already know that, there are certain things that I need to be learning today which will help me to get to where I want to be tomorrow. I know that I need exposure to managing things; I need exposure to different kinds of and different styles of architecture; and I also need exposure to solving some moderately hard problems. Now that I know more about what I need, I can start to look at how to go about getting it.
In my case, I believe that I should be getting 60+% of this goodness from my current job. That is, for me to be happy, my job will need to fulfill at least 60% of the things that I need to be doing today to get to where I want to go - otherwise, I'll just have to work too hard.
What if I feel that I'm getting < 60%?
If I'm getting < 60% then, I have to ask myself this... am I making the most of my opportunities to exert my skills and influence here? If the answer is "no" then I'd need to do a whole lot of planning around how to map my existing talents to the needs of my employer. If the answer is "yes" then, my entire focus would be on getting my CV in the best possible position to sell myself to my new employer :-)
But, when doing the math, make sure you remember the quote:
We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves