Tag: career

This is a strange time for many technology professionals and their employment. It seems many organizations have open positions and are struggling to fill those slots with qualified candidates (one look at this). At the same time, many other organizations have followed the large technology firms (FAANG, MSFT) and laid off large numbers of their staff in the last year.

At the same time, with the hype and rapid growth of GenAI systems, we have companies that are looking to machines to fill some of their labor needs. Salesforce noted that they did not expect to hire more software engineers in 2025 as their plan was to use AI tech to help them write enough code. They’ve seen productivity gains with AI tech, so they aren’t adding more developers. They still need human developers, just not more of them.

While thinking about the labor market, I ran across this report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the US, which tries to project jobs across many different industries in the future. They typically are careful and conservative, and while they show growth in the need for database administrators and database architects (and software developers) they also admit they can’t quite tell what impact GenAI tech will have on the labor market. They do think there will be an impact, but for now they have the need for data professionals growing faster than average.

Why is it hard to get an IT job? I know plenty of people looking for work that have struggled to find a position that suits them. I think there are a few things at work here. First, many companies have been burned in the past with unqualified candidates. We know hiring is hard, and we will make mistakes with some hires. With the focus on cloud, new technologies, DevOps, and more, companies want to hire skilled people who can hit the ground running.  I also think the supply of workers is high and companies are more choosy about who they hire.

Lots of companies are also investing in their own workforces, upskilling and re-skilling them in new technology. It’s often easier to train someone whose work ethic, soft skills, and other factors are known than hire someone new who might or might not be a good cultural fit. I know that I often see budgets for conferences and classes are low, but there are plenty of companies still sending people to classes, conferences, or providing opportunities to learn.

If you want a new job, or you’re struggling to find one, I can’t stress enough the importance of working on your own skills and showing prospective employers that you are investing in yourself. Take stock of your skills and work on projects, experiments, build things, blog about them, and show companies that you have the skills they need.

Don’t forget your soft skills as well if you’re investing in yourself. Learn to communicate well, both written and verbal, as that can often set you apart from other candidates. As someone that has interviewed others, those skills sometimes are more impactful than your technical ones.

Invest in yourself now, and you’ll be ready for the challenges you face in the future.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.

Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

The short answer is of course, most of us can learn and improve our skills to become better developers, engineers, DBAs, etc. While we might not be able to become the 10x engineer that many aspire to be, we can certainly become a better employee inside of an organization.

There’s a piece on becoming a more effective engineer, which is actually titled know how your org works. It a piece from an engineer that started with a tweet: The text was:You can either complain and pontificate on Twitter on how the tech industry *should* ideally work, or you can learn how your org *really* works and what’s rewarded, and optimize for that. Or quit and find another job. This might sound cynical – but it’s what it is.

That sounds a little harsh, but the reality of how your org works or is structured or interacts is a reality. We all have hindsight to look back and wish someone (including us) had written code better. We might be sure if we could change one thing, or add/remove someone else, or make some other change, then things would be better. We might feel that there is a simple solution. Those things might be true, but they aren’t the reality of the situation.

Learning to be more effective an engineer in your situation does involve learning to work within the reality of your position in your organization. You need to learn to work well with others, to understand what needs to be completed from the perspective of you and your group, and what the organization places importance on getting done. That last one might not be what the organization expresses, as there can be a big disconnect between words and actions.

You also need to learn how to deal with uncertainty. Often when we build applications, we don’t have all the information, and we can’t get it. We can’t necessarily count on everyone we work with to have the same shared understanding or work at the same pace. We have to learn what levels of trust we can extend, work within ambiguity and be prepared to change our plans in response to how things work.

In other words, most organizations have a lot of chaos and to become a better engineer you must learn to navigate the chaos and still get the things done that others notice.

The piece has a section that soft skills are hard skills, which is true. When I see people who are very effective engineers, they can be the brilliant, 10x engineer, but that’s rare. Usually it’s the engineers that have strong soft skills in both working with others and understanding the power hierarchy in the organization that succeed.

Of course, some organizations are full of bureaucracy, favoritism, and disfunction that it’s hard for anyone to become effective. It’s amazing these places continue to exist, but they do. I’ve been in a few and I’ve left as soon as possible, which is my advice to you. Don’t work in a dysfunctional environment. If you can avoid it. If you can’t, then work to leave.

Effectiveness is part being better at coding (or tuning or admin or whatever), but it’s also part learning to work well with the rest of the organization.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.

Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.

I caught this post about a career presentation from Kendra Little and it resonated a bit with me. The summary of the post (it’s a bit long) is that there is valuable work that supports and benefits a team of people, called glue work. However, glue work isn’t necessarily technical and it isn’t necessarily recognized as valuable by management. In fact, it might unintentionally lead you from a career in engineering to one in project management.

I haven’t been someone who has been marginalized in positions, who has been taken for granted or expected to do certain tasks. I think some people get taken advantage of, and this is especially true for women, who both volunteer more and are volunteered by others more for these tasks. While I have been quick to document decisions or actions, and sometimes help out with project work, I do that in addition to any technical work. I’ve felt that as a developer, my job is to produce code. If I can help with other things, then I’m a Developer+, but I ultimately know that code my clients can use is what matters.

I think that people sometimes mistake valuable work for the team with valuable work for the people looking at the team. They know teams fall apart because someone doesn’t do the glue work. Or they have a s*** project manager who isn’t managing the project. I think that is very common, and because many of us have an “I need to succeed” mentality, we sometimes stop coding to pick up other tasks, essentially volunteering to be the pseudo-project manager or team manager. That’s fine, but if you fill your days with non-coding tasks, you are not moving toward senior engineer status.

At the same time, I know that many of you don’t want to work long hours, nor do you want to let tasks drop that need to be handled. There’s tension there, as either the employee feels overworked and taken advantage of, or they work themselves into burnout.

Sometimes there isn’t a choice and your boss might expect you to work extra hours on tasks adjacent to or related to your work. I have seen a few people work for one of the big-name tech companies where employees had tasks outside of their normal work that they were expected to complete outside of their core 40 hours. If you have a boss like that, I’d look for a new position. That’s my advice. I’m happy to work extra hours in limited doses, but not on a regular basis.

I’d say the same thing if your fellow employees don’t step in and do their share of the load of glue work. If we’re a team, we all do those things. If we don’t, we’re not a team, and I don’t like working in places where we aren’t a team.

Whatever you decide to do, make sure that you are clear on what is expected of you to get that raise/bonus/promotion and focus most of your efforts there. It doesn’t matter what you think is important; it matters what those who make decisions about your career think is important.

Steve Jones

Listen to the podcast at Libsyn, Spotify, or iTunes.

Note, podcasts are only available for a limited time online.