Bonus Episode 4

Last updated Sep 4, 2022 Edit Source

Original Recording Date: 2018-12-10 

Topics 

2:59 Community Resolutions – collected from Twitter, Slack, and other online communities 

• Responses 

  • Certifications 

    • Looking at these as a way to increase potential opportunities 

    • Goal Setting a la  Joseph Griffiths episode 18a 

  • Skills development 

    • Focus on specific products (VMware, Kubernetes), scripting skills, etc. 

  • Career advancement/refinement 

    • Be more effective in your current role 

    • Make a move to an area with overlapping skills 

    • Revisit  episode 7 on training adjacencies 

  • Health and personal issues 

    • Getting more sleep can solve a number of problems 

    • Working on family issues 

  • Non-conformist responses 

    • Warning – a very broad goal like just continuing to grow professionally makes it difficult to show progress toward the goal 

• John and Nick dig into the semantics of terminology (resolution vs. goal) 

10:35 Annual Career Checkup 

• Source:  Manager Tools Annual Checkup 

  • Endorsed by John as an amazing 3-part podcast 

• Analyze Yourself – Focus on the Present Situation 

  • Questions 

    • First - Understanding Your Talents 

      • What am I good at? 

      • What activities come easily to me? 

      • What things do people say that I’m good at? 

      • What easy things do I think other people make big deal of? 

    • Next 

      • What do I enjoy doing? 

      • What things could I do that all day every day? 

      • What things do I look forward to doing? 

    • Alternately 

      • What things do I hate doing? 

      • What things do I put off? 

      • What things do I avoid doing entirely? 

    • Reactions 

      • John Troyer: Eat the frog first 

      • John gives tips for avoiding procrastination 

      • Listen to  Datanauts 144: Managing Work Stress and Cognitive Biases 

  • Take  DiSC to see where you fall 

    • Dominance 

    • Influence 

    • Steadiness 

    • Conscientiousness 

  • Update Your Career Management Document 

    • “Kitchen sink resume” as opposed to one targeted at specific job 

    • Natural language 

    • Lots more detail 

    • Responsibilities and projects 

    • Skill acquisition 

    • Maintain and add to it continuously 

    • Backup this document in multiple places!!! 

  • Talk to your boss about your aspirations and intentions 

    • The feedback and guidance can be extremely valuable 

    • This is part of building rapport 

• Know your worth 

  • Periodic research  

  • Salary / non-salary items 

• Enhance your value 

  • What are your competitors doing? 

  • What are the other companies in your industry doing? 

  • What are other people in your profession doing? 

  • What ideas will translate from somewhere else to your team? 

  • What does your boss think enhanced value to the business means for you? 

• Invest in your future 

  • Continue to learn 

    • Company vs. self-funded training 

  • Join a professional organization 

  • Invest in your network (personal, social, professional) 

    • Volunteer internally and externally 

    • Coach your kids 

      • Can be a networking opportunity with parents 

      • Learn to organize 

      • Learn to direct skill acquisition 

    • Be a mentor / get a mentor 

    • Contact a headhunter 

  • Learn from everyone you are around in any situation, and look for ways to apply this newfound knowledge to other areas. 

  • Get the experience earlier, and make the mistakes earlier. 

29:04 Our Resolutions 

• John’s Resolutions 

  • Planning to work through the annual checkup 

  • Find a formal mentor 

  • Coach someone into VMware / their next career every quarter! 

  • Learn something new 

    • R? 

    • Hugo and Clarity? 

  • Write a series of blog posts about how I approach career development and the books that make me think that way 

  • Do a series about career advancement in chronological order 

    • Self-assessment 

    • Goal setting 

    • Tasks 

    • Resume 

    • Interviewing 

    • Negotiation 

    • Acceptance of new role 

    • Transition 

    • Success 

  • IT Ops to vendor Systems Engineer 

• Nick’s Resolutions 

  • Exercise – two workouts per week with more movement in general 

    • This reminds John that he wants to go swing dancing more 

  • Be more like John White (intellectually speaking) 

  • Launch of home lab 

  • Blog more than once per month 

  • Renew  VCP (maybe NV, maybe DCV, maybe both) 

    • This reminds John to stop talking in acronyms 

• John takes a minute to endorse his new Intel NUC for home lab purposes