Career Opportunities with Douglas E. Welch

Grab Over 500 Free Programming Books from GitHub from Lifehacker.com

This story from Lifehacker.com points up just how easy it can be to get an education in today’s world. The article links to over 500 free programming ebooks available for download from GitHub — the home to version control service Git and a social network focused around programming.

Github Web Site

Programming languages are covered, but also books on algorithms and data structures, databases, data mining, machine learning and much more. Hit the link for a complete index and download links.

Whether you are a technology beginner or someone seeking to build their career (or change to a new one) online resources like this a free and easy source of learning materials to help you on your way. Combine these with a mentor or two and you can be learning a lot investing mainly your time.

More info on GitHub:

• What Exactly Is GitHub Anyway?
• GitHub For Beginners: Don’t Get Scared, Get Started
• GitHub on Wikipedia

Link Focus is a series that comments on some of the links I share on my social media accounts and here on the web site. To get these links as I find them, subscribe to me on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and elsewhere. Also look for the “My Favorite Things” posts that appear regularly in the blog. These include collections of links for each calendar month.

Get new shared links as I find them via my social media feeds:

Get this entire series (and added content) in the Kindle book, “Cultivating Your Career Reputations”!

You don’t need a Kindle to buy or read. Kindle book are usable via web browser and Kindle apps for your computer, Android and iOS (iPhone/iPad) devices.

Today marks the beginning of a series of columns on what I consider a very important topic…your reputation. You will notice above though, that I use the plural form, reputations, in the title. While we often talk about one, monolithic, reputation, I believe that there are a series of reputations that make up the whole. Each column in this series will focus on one particular reputation that makes up your overriding reputation. By examining each one in detail, I hope to provide you specific areas where you can alter and improve your work, your actions and your thoughts so that your overall professional reputation grows.

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It is often said that you can’t “do” projects, you can only do the individual tasks that make up the project and achieve the desired result. The same can be said for reputation. You don’t build your reputation as a whole, you cultivate the smaller reputations that create it. Each individual action builds your reputation in unique ways and each requires some thought in regards to how they relate to the whole.

Over the next several weeks, I will be focusing on the following reputations, and perhaps more, as I am sure that each column will effect those that come after. That said, here are the major points I will be covering in the coming weeks.

A Reputation for Fairness

Do you deal fairly with those around you? Are your choices self-serving ones, driven by politics, fear and greed? Do you expect more from those around you than you yourself are willing to give?

A Reputation for Honesty

Do you tell the truth…all the time? Do you hide problems until it is too late? Do you face up to mistakes and are you prepared to correct them? Do you simply tell others what you think they want to hear?

A Reputation for Decision-making

Do you make decisions quickly or are you mired in the depths of analysis paralysis? Are you prepared to make mistakes, as everyone does, knowing it is a natural part of success? Are you prepared to decide, even when it means you might fail?

A Reputation for Empathy

Do you truly feel for those around you? Can you place yourself in their shoes when it is time to make tough decisions? Are you isolated, Marie Antoinette-style, from those around you, making decisions in a vacuum, where your only thought is how it effects you?

A Reputation for Clear Thinking

Is your thinking muddled and confused? Can you find your way through the confusing fog of conflicting goals, data and thinking? Do you allow others to tell you what to think instead of thinking yourself? Can you keep your head when all about you are losing theirs?

A Reputation for Trustworthiness

Can people trust you…all day…every day…no matter the temptations that you might face? Do you abuse people’s trust while exhibiting little of your own? Are you a hard-bitten cynic who expects the worse from those around you?

A Reputation for Helpfulness

Are you ready to chip in and help someone, even if it isn’t “your job?” Do you look for opportunities to help others, even when they might not realize they need help? Do you accept help from others easily?

A Reputation for Clarity

Do your co-workers understand your projects, your goals, your directions or is your work a constant litany of misunderstandings, recriminations and a struggle to make things clear?

A Reputation for the Big Picture…and the small

Are you able to see the Big Picture of a project and all the individual pieces that make up that project? Does your focus always fall on your area of strength, allowing other segments to falter and fail?

A Reputation for Balancing Work and Self

Is your work your life? Do you understand when it is important to make decisions for your own benefit, even when it might conflict with your work? Is your work life as fulfilling as your home life? Does your family support you and do you support your family?

All of these smaller reputations, and more, make up your “Reputation” with a capital “R”. Each can raise or lower people’s opinion of you and directly effect your ability to succeed in your career. They also point the way when building a career or finding the next job. Do the reputations you cultivate match with the business where you work? Does the company regularly violate your beliefs about important reputations? Are you trying to develop a reputation that goes against the very structure and history of your industry?

Join me over the next several weeks as we do some hard thinking, together, about the nature of these reputations, as well as how best to build your reputation.

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“It is impossible to achieve a straight bearing north in any career. Jobs pull you in all directions — North, East, South, West. 

You will constantly be adjusting course to follow your Career North.”

                  — from “Career Compass: Finding Your Career North” by Douglas E. Welch

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From Cultivating Your Career Reputations…

“Why is it so easy to avoid making decisions? Simply because, by avoiding decisions we think we are avoiding failure. If we never choose one project over another, we never have to explain why a project failed. If we never write the book, we don’t have to explain why it wasn’t better. We risk nothing because we never make even the simplest decisions. Of course, I am sure you can already see the fallacy behind the concept. If you fail to make any decisions, you are risking your entire job at a very fundamental level.” 

Money should never the sole reason for doing– or not doing — anything. Seek balance in your life of all things — money, happiness, love and life!

“Knowing what you want to do is as important as knowing how to do it”

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As we develop our careers our focus narrows more and more over the years. We find our niche and develop it more and more carefully. We specialize in fewer and fewer skills until we have our career honed to a razor-like sharpness. This has long been the way of developing a great career and yet this method holds some pitfalls. When we increasingly specialize in one narrow area, we are in danger of closing out ideas, innovations and activities from other disciplines that could lead to great advances in our career.

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One interesting aspect of my own life and career is that I greatly enjoy investigating areas of interest well outside my career focus. Whether it is helping others develop podcasts about creativity or mortgage loans, digging in my garden and investigating my bird and bug life or learning about the intricacies of running a restaurant, I enjoy it all. I immerse myself in these widely flung areas and feel much the better for it.

While there is certainly an aspect of fun involved in this immersion, over the years I have seen concrete effects on my career, as well. Each time I delve into one of these new areas, I develop ideas and actions that help to build my existing career. This is the great power of immersion that we sometimes ignore – at our peril.

Why is it so useful to look to other industries, businesses and ways of life? Simply, these areas are so new to us, and we are usually so ignorant of them, that we see everything with fresh eyes and an open mind. We might be amazed at the complexities involved in ordering food for a small restaurant, but we can also learn something there about our own ordering processes. Perhaps we are confused about how an artist creates their work and works towards a one-person show that their local gallery, and yet we can find deep lessons in PR, marketing and organizations. Maybe the banking industry confuses the living daylights out of us, but having a friend lead us through the process illuminates our own finances and how they are effected by the outside world.

So, the next time you are feeling a bit tired with your work, or even outright bored, here are a few methods of immersing yourself in another world, if only for a short time.

• Visit the newsstand

This exercise has been around for a while, but it is still very effective. I do this myself several times a year. Visit your local newsstand and spend some time at the magazine rack. Now, pick 5 magazines that you, otherwise, would never read. My own collection has included magazines on wooden boats, print design magazines, home decoration, photography and more. Remember, these should be magazines you don’t know, or perhaps haven’t looked at in years. At the very least, they should be in areas dramatically outside your career interests and activities.

Now, sit down with the magazines and a notepad and just start flipping through the magazines, absorbing the pictures, the titles of the stories, the advertisements. I can guarantee you that you will need the notepad, as ideas will immediately start coming to you — “Maybe you could use that type of design in your product. What don’t we use that method of marketing? Wow, I’ve never heard of that before!”

• Go to a meeting of other professionals

I love hanging out with my fellow attendees of our local BarCampLA group. BarCamp is an un-conference that we put together about every 6 months, much like thousands of other groups all over the world. We also get together once a month for Geek Dinners, which are just an opportunity to hang out and talk about everything that is happening in our lives.

These meetings are important to me because they allow me to interact with people from all different careers. The person to my right might work for an Internet Service Provider, the one to my left is an artist selling their work on the Internet and the one across the table may be an expert in marketing who is working on their next big company. Sure, in this case, we all have some sort of tech background, but within that realm the diversity is amazing.

• Talk to your friends

Do you have friends in industries totally different from your own? Most of us do. Why not ask them some questions about their work and career? I think you will be surprised by what you hear and how it might relate to your work, regardless of the differences in your career. Even better, they will probably learn something from you, too.

If you want to get out of a rut, or simply grow your career in new and interesting ways, try immersing yourself in another industry, another area, another job.. Seek out other like-minded folks – maybe even start your own group. You never know what you might discover.

***

If you want to truly endear yourself to your family, your co-workers, your boss, you business partners, your investors, everyone — endeavor to never ask the same question twice. When you ask a question of anyone, no matter who, make sure you capture the answer to that question for future reference. Even if you think you might never need that answer again, write it down. The fact is, you never know when or if a question is going to pop up again, so always err on the safer side and take notes so you never have to ask that question again.

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Why is asking the same question twice (more) such an issue? The problem doesn’t reside in the question itself but rather what it says about you as a person and your relationship with others. First, I think that asking the same question multiple times shows a lack of respect for those around you. You think it is easier to ask the person each time you need the answer instead of taking the time to learn the answer yourself. Instead of letting this person be a teacher or a mentor you are using them as the human equivalent of a filing cabinet. Even worse, your repetitive requests for the same answer impacts their work and takes their time away from solving the problems they need to solve. In some ways it shows that you think your time is worth more than theirs and that is simply rude.

Second, asking the same question more than once exhibits poor organizational and work skills to those around you. In any work situation, you want to demonstrate that you have the ability to grow in your work. You want to show can learn new skills and grow as an employee. Constantly asking the same questions makes it appear you either can’t, or don’t want to learn. Either of these is deadly to your career. Your managers will begin to question your worth and your co-workers will start to shun you. In many ways, you’ll simply become too much of a burden to keep around.

So, how do you retain and learn from all your questions? You first need to capture the questions and the answers you receive. I still carry a paper journal around for just such occasions. Even though I am big user of technology, it is often easier to jot down notes using pencil and paper than pulling out your smartphone or computer. Sure, you can enter the most important items into some computer system later, but capturing your questions and answers is always the first priority. Yes, it is easy to get wrapped up in solving a problem and forget to record the solution, but you are doing no one any favors when you do that. Help yourself and those around you by capturing this important information so you never have to ask for it again.

You also want to think about the answers you receive and see what new knowledge you can gain from them. Often one answer has many different applications in our lives far outside the area of the original question. Too often we move so quickly through life that we don’t take a moment to actually learn something. We ask the question, get the answer we need and then dash off to the next problem in line. If we don’t take a moment to actually think about our life and work, take a moment to actually learn something, we condemn ourselves of an endless treadmill of one question after another. Ask questions in order to learn something, not just solve the problem at hand.

I am sure we have all met, and even worked with, people who constantly ask you the same question again and again. We all know how frustrating that can become and yet we can sometimes do it ourselves, if only in smaller ways. Don’t ask the same question twice, if you can avoid it or unless you have a very good reason. Capture the answers you receive, put them to use and learn from them. If you do everyone will benefit – you, your coworkers, your business, your family. Most importantly, it will one more method of building the career that you deserve.

***