I saw an interesting LinkedIn post on Kyler Murray and how he goes about approaching the game of American football. I don’t know if this meme is true, but certainly, his efforts to prepare have been a reported issue during Murray’s career. The post actually deals with sales and analyzing the reasons for deal success or failure, something I’ve been able to witness at Redgate the last few years. It’s interesting to me to see the sales process examined, though I don’t make sales.

Incidentally, one of the comments is one I appreciate, referencing Kobe Bryant and the Mamba Mentality. I like the approach of working and asking questions to become better.

Most of us technical people aren’t thinking of sales, but do we break down and re-examine how we do our jobs? Do we aim to improve the skills we have and develop more depth in the areas we work? I know lots of technical people like learning new skills, but is looking at the improvement (or refinement) of existing skills on your list?

My experience has been that most people don’t look to grow deeper in many ways. They learn a thing and then often use that skill, but don’t often re-examine to see if they could actually do that thing in a new way. Technology changes, and it’s easy to think that the way you write SQL or build servers or implement security is good enough. It can pay to not only learn new things, but re-examine your existing patterns and practices to see if there are better ways to accomplish those tasks.

This is where the one year of experience repeated ten times comes about with candidates who don’t interview well. They’ve been repeating patterns without improving them.

I promote the idea of regularly improving your skills, sharpening your tools, and growing your abilities in a way that provides value for your employer and ensures you have a successful career.

This is going to be more important in the future, especially with AI impacting the way many managers view technical work.

Steve Jones

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