Roman's miles

The upshots of 5766

Today is the first day of a new, 5767, year on the Jewish system of chronology. I've been traveling last weeks too much: the Vegas TechEd, a group regional meeting (in Vegas too), and teaching a course in Copenhagen so couldn't blog as much as I wished but resetting the targets in Jewish new year is my young custom I didn't want to give up.

So how successful the past year was for me? Maybe it wasn't the best year of achievements but I still liked it - would give B+ to it. Here is a short personal debriefing on what I've got.

• I decided to devote every year to developing one skill or aspect of my character the most. It can be anything from any realm: spiritual or physical world, family life, career building, sport, education, etc. The point is to name the year after the selected aspect and spend most of attention to developing it. The last year happened to be the year of the soft skills. It's a too wide term and too much work to be done for a year in order to put a "V" next to the item of the soft skills in the private stock list. The last year was for barely for the  communication skills. I spent many calories of mental energy growing (let alone polishing) my speaking skills. As a formal result I enrolled to a toastmasters club  and recently completed the first level. I tried to speak as much as I could and wanted not to miss any opportunity to stay in front of an audience and speak. Not formally, which is more important, I recently have started getting complements after my presentations so I feel and see the results of the investments. However, becoming a master of speeches and presentations is a long way and I don't mean to remove this item from my skills-stocks for next couple of years.
• Another area of the soft skills is writing. I started blogging around a year ago and I may say the experiment became a modest success. I got a few permanent readers and the blog is listed on blog-rolls of a few sites of my gurus (Lisa Haneberg, Johanna Rothman, and a few others). Making the blog popular wasn't a primary target (I still have an inspirational target of getting to 100 readers by the end of 2006) but I didn't want to filter the topics or make the blog focused on one area. Instead I wanted to share with the readers what I care about as Roman Rytov and not as a career adviser, a software developer, or a frequent flyer. So the blog will remain a private unfocused blog without a target to become another means of income (though if it will one day by accident I'll be just happy:-)
• I've made a big step on my way of formal education and got accepted to a Professional MBA of GSU and have become a student again after a 12 year break. A new category was made for blogs about my studying so keep tuned - we have a boot-camp in the mid of November.
• My group at SAP was named one of the most influencing the acceleration of MDM (our new product) and being a group lead since last September I can count it as part of the year's professional success. The biggest portion of the success is there because of the wonderful team I've been working with and I want to thank my colleagues for that from this page: Kristin, Gilles, Alon, Avi, and Noam - thank you, guys, for your passionate and professionalism that you showed in 5766. I'm sure you won't get similar Kudos from anyone in the company but unfortunately we don't get our bonus at the end of a Jewish year:-)
• Not all of the planned things succeeded as I originally wanted. I couldn't complete my marathon due to an injury I got and I stopped blogging on that for a while. I dreamed of training my memory (maybe to compete one day in something like this:-), I hoped to start learning German but, apparently, will have to postpone it until I finish the MBA, I wanted to speed up reading but can't get more than 2 books a month (at best), I wanted to spend more time solely with family but rarely could do it without a notebook. The good thing of that is there are yet many things to improve and the new year won't be boring at all!

• Now a few plans for this, 5767, year. I've named this year the year of planning and execution. This is the skill that hinders me from reaching new targets. I want not to plan and execute as much as I can but to have the best correlation between the both. I'll update you on how I undertake this challenge and I'm sure it won't be easy (the process, not updating). Some of the failed items from the above will be added to the second-tier targets of the year. Many of the passed year's targets will get there too. I think I may write a separate blog on that soon.

Now I want to thank you, my readers, for inspiring and supporting me in the past year. It was a great experience and with your help I found a new recipe of fighting depression (or just boosting the mood) - getting a comment on how one liked a post is a tenfold more effective weapon in fighting depression than any food, music, or action. In such moments, when my tank of desire to write (read - think, create, and share) is instantly filled  I feel the happiest man on Earth and I want to thank you for staying on the wave and reading my blogs. Shana tova and happy new year!

Technorati tags: target, gtd, jewish new year

Evolving from a software engineer to ... Part III. Building the path.

In the previous two blogs (Introduction and Counting options) I've started contemplating on why one may want to start looking for something else besides a new technology and what options she can consider. This time I want to share with you my thoughts on how to approach the question in a practical way. You may build great theories and visualize the future in your dream but one day you ought to start planning and executing (in a plain language - deciding what to achieve in a 5-6 year span and start pursuing the target).

I've spent last months talking to my colleagues, bosses, and a few gurus I was lucky to hear an answer from on how they perceive the problem and its solutions. Also a few bloggers (Skip, Arun, and Daniel) left quite lengthy comments to my blogs. So in this blog I'll express the thoughts of many advisors I was happy to discuss the matter.

Before we shoot the bullet points one general comment. You have to decide what to want. I know, we started from here that it's obvious that nobody would ever make this decision for your life but after many words added to the blogosphere we're still there. It's your life and your decision. A few strategies though on how to find the right decision.

• Clustering professions.  All the options from the previous blog can be split on two major groups: you work within a team (managing people if we're talking about advancing on a career ladder) or working more a solo role (like a freelancer's consulting position or any manager that doesn't manage people). They may intermix (like managing people in consulting) but the stems are still separate. That's the first attempt to decide what you want - or maybe what you don't want. If you love working with people and are a team player maybe consulting is less attractive for you than, let's say, a product manager's position.

• Balancing the skills. You may scale your skills and find ones where you're strong and others, required additional development. You can accentuate and strengthen the strong ones or tighten up the weakest. Depending on how far you've done on the career path one of the tactics may be more applicable than the other. If you're under 35 then you have more time and freedom to try and experiment than one who's in his fifties. The eventual output for the mapping the skills may make you a sound guru in a narrow area or a shallow expert in many wide areas.
• Range of the investments.  The previous point deserves a bit more attention. Don't overestimate the importance of trying other things but keep in mind the departure and destination points. If you've spent 10 years in R&D and feel like lacking experience in business development maybe it's a bad idea to seek for a full-time position as a bused guy because you'll start all over again. Your existing experience won't apply much and other folks being in the profession for some time (even the same 10 years) are in a much better shape than you. It's OK to change the profession but apparently will be a way too far step aside just to gain experience and taste it from inside.
• Time of the investments. I'm not sure this point can be described precisely with numbers but when you're 25 or 45 your options vary. I'd suggest that by 35 you have to possess clear understanding on what you want if you haven't reached yet some significant toll gates. If you're in the mid of thirties you probably should more widely experiment with the options.

We're completing the series on the same point. Make a decision! It's again the same advice. Your life - your turn. Think about it a lot, read all you can, listen to all you respect, consult with anybody whose opinion makes sense for you, try to find a mentor (it can be much simpler than you think), make a two week disconnect-from-all vacation and make up your mind. You still can make a mistake but it's much better than going with the stream and do nothing. Experiment, change, and try again but manage it as the most critical project in your life.

"Life has no rehearsals, only performances"

Technorati tags: career, shift, change

Evolving from a software engineer to ... Part II. Counting options.

I the previous blog I wrote what questions and concerns came to my mind when I was lost in thoughts about future career plans, appealing positions, and challenging professional adventures. In this blog I'll try to list some options I've found beyond the pure coding positions. I count here what directions we can trace when coding is not enough. Confession: I don't say that such a phase is in a higher level on professional evolution but when it's happened (for a variety of reasons) you can't analyze how you "sank" into a situation when coding is boring, instead you're looking for  options to get further. For those who want to remain in the coding area and go the path I mentioned in the last blog (developer-architect-CTO) I hope every position on the right to his current is known. So the only uncertainty for beginning developers can hide behind a question  what a CTO does. These folks I point to a great blog on that by Skip.

Back to the list of options for others who's thinking of leaving the comfort zone of coding. The list is far from being complete, of course, but without a list it's impossible to prioritize, exclude, and project. So let's start (worth or reminding: we're off the purely technical thread here already).

• Project manager - a guy who manages. Shocked? Well, he manages a project (not people, or a budget, or a product). Checks that resources that given him in charge are sufficient, alerts higher management to shortages of the former ones or sliding on the schedule, removes roadblocks on the team's way, leads, motivates, cares about, and controls the team.
  
  Challenges: regardless of the project or the team size projects (in the software industry) rather fail than succeed. Planning and successfully compelling a project on time is not an easy task.
  
  Advantages: marching in step with project success and complexity one can gain and polish organizational and managerial skills. It's a management position and a bright experience may spring-board a good project manager to next levels on the career ladder.
  
  Disadvantages: the duties are confined by management only (no professional growth),  the subject of managing is projects (and hence project's resources, not people that have their own boss), often an always-under-pressure working mode.

• Product manager/Product definition*. Obviously, somebody who manages a product. The best description of the duties and requirements I've seen is written by Ken Norton. The range of duties and responsibilities may vary depending on company size and structure but this time your baby is a product (not people or a program). Regardless of the company size the position implies high responsibility and influence.
  
  *In my experience product definition team members were subordinates of a product (or solution) manager. I'd say product definition team's member is a journeyman of his product manager. Usually they did more focused work for the product manager where relationships between them were akin ones between developers and a team lead in R&D.
  
  Challenges: More than enough. The product is your baby and you define its fate. For all goods and bads happening with the product you're the address for praises and complains. You'll have to know and believe what the product should be and steer it through attacks of marketing, sales, investors, disappointed customers, happy customers, programmers, and so on.
  
  Advantages: A highly influential position with concrete, tangible results. A mixture of skills  and knowledge required to take such a position and being grown during the job is extensive indeed: business sight, planning, researching, strategic vision, still very technically-minded orientation, negotiation skills, leadership.
  
  Disadvantages: Since the role is very influential it comes with lots of responsibility and hence potentially stressful. For "generals" willing to command all the branches of army (read: marketing, sales, operations, R&D, etc.) a product manager may look too "shallow" . For these guys the only way is one level up - to the CEO.

• Consulting. You work for a company that "sells" you to teams either developing custom projects or customizing and configuring integration and application solutions. Typically involves customer interactions and traveling.
  
  Challenges. Even though you work for the company you have to be competitive to cope with the tasks. At the same time you're a solder of the army conquering billable hours (although there are some exceptions) of the client and you'll be lacking time for studying and preparation.
  
  Advantages: Shifting from development to consulting is like changing profession. You'll get exposure to customers, most likely will get many opportunities to grow soft skills, and, of course, you're supposed to earn much more money.
  
  Disadvantages: Risk to be outdated with the knowledge, possibly exorbitant travels, if technically speaking the topic is not challenging you may miss your development time very soon.

• Independent consultant/freelancer. Quite similar to the last one but not fully. Independent positions always get paid better and various risks involved with the independence are higher too. The shift from an in-staff position to a freelancer always leaves what you're doing for living the same - otherwise who will pay you for something where you're not an expert?
  
  Challenges: Be on the edge - whatever you're paid for today may not bring the same income tomorrow. Now it's up to you to invest in new things and take care of your learning plan. Customer relationships may be another challenge (depending on whether you did it in the past or not) - you have to hunt for new projects and customers.
  
  Advantages: You own you! With all ensuing consequences from here: higher income (even if not via a higher wage but absolutely via less taxes),  flexible working mode, flexible locations,  selectivity in choosing deals if you break out the mediocre zone.
  
  Disadvantages: You own you!  Sitting on bench now eats money from your pocket. Lacking time for studying new things may have a very detrimental effect in the future for new projects or high rate. Living in an always-hunting-mode can be stressful.
  

• Business development/marketing/sales. That's quite a radical shift from the R&D branch. Positions here deal with building value propositions, planning partner alliances, positioning products or services from a business perspective, and to pave the way for successful sales.
  
  Challenges. You hardly have a clue on the matter if you've been coding all your life. I deliberately put this position to the list simply to identify the business direction and meant to unite here the "fluffy" group of marketing, bizdev, and sales roles (as they look from behind a debugger) to show that this leap is possible although a very long one.
  
  Advantages.  If you hate coding that much that a role of a CEO, a CIO, or a business consultant keeps coming to your dream you should start meeting the business area from one of these roles. If your technical background overweights the lack of experience in business then you may find a path to jump on this train.
  
  Disadvantages. Even with 10 years of coding experience and taking positions of chief architects you start this way from scratch. You learn and earn your experience from level zero. Also your dreams may turn out to be illusions and from inside the business tasks can be worse than the used to seem from outside.

I tried to highlight major directions for career change. My experience doesn't allow me to claim any finality on the options but I hope the list is sufficient to brainstorm various trajectories for transcending the technical land. You're welcome to throw other destination points on the map and in the next blog I'll write about building a route minimizing risks.

Update: Building the path is the third blog in the series.

Technorati tags: career, shift, change

The greatest FF plugin. Ever!

Have you seen it? AllPeers is a new extention to Firefox allowing to share any files with anybody from anywhere! Can you imagine that now you can send anything to your peer without network restrictions? Of course, your peers have to use the same network. No VPN nightmares? No limitations on file size?

I've just installed it and haven't played much but it looks very intriguing. Interesting to see how it works behind the extention and if admins will be able to block it.

Technorati: allpeers, firefox