Job Hacking

Targeting your audience

I've written more than a few posts about resume writing, with one clear point being to think about what the Hiring Manager wants in the ideal candidate, and then write to that audience.

Today, FTE 1.0, one of the funniest HR Blogs (or is it HR Art?) out there had a post which made me think twice about this point of view regarding resumes. My take is that it makes your resume creation choices that much more important - which boss do you want to work for?

And for you bosses out there, it should help you improve what you ask your staff to do in any given role.

re: 10 Mistakes Every Leader Should Make... plus 1 more

There are plenty of ways to mess up as a leader. But there's really only one way to fix that, and that's admit it, move on, and learn from it.

Dan McCarthy has an insightful post on mistakes leaders make. I mean, hey, they're all true.

In the technology biz, there is one other I'd add to the list: Decide to take your IP to China to have a company there produce the product. Just don't do it.

Why you aren't a Software Engineer

From time to time, someone asks me for career advice. Then, I cringe. Why? Because on a very fundamental basis, I do not know what you want or what motivates you.

But, I will tell you that the one role I know of which is only increasing in demand, stature, and compensation is Software Engineer. (Note that I did not say Project Manager or Program Manager, or QA Engineer, or Technical Support, or Product Management, or Technical Account Management. These are all fine things to do, but they do not hold a candle to Software Engineer for overall job creating and market demand).

It's not so hard to figure out why.

First, just about everything we create has a chip in it, and usually more than one. Just about everything we do is dependent on a CPU doing its job, running the software. No software, no computer doing things for us. And, the technology is not static, and so when a new chip comes out, a new operating system with new features to exploit, more software is needed.

Second, becoming a Software Engineer is hard work. There is math involved, but most of it is new to you. Lots of typing. A lot of failure - until you figure it out. Constantly iterating, learning how to do new stuff. Then, once you've mastered one technology, one language, you gotta go do it again. So, you take all those algorithms you learned in VB, C++, Java or Python, and then go try them out in Ruby. Or, you jump to a new Operating System and work on figuring out how to do multi-threaded programming, or how to create in a very constricted memory space. Whatever. 

But remember what I said about the hard work.