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Technology and life with Eyvonne Sharp

The Second Act: Thriving as an Experienced Technologist

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When people embark on a tech career, there’s a plethora of available advice – some good and some terrible. Most advice centers around getting training and certification, developing hands-on experience, and finding a role in which you can grow. This guidance is helpful for the first decade or more of one’s career. As I once told an aspiring young developer, “No experience in tech is bad experience” in the early years.

At a certain point, though, even the most eager and talented technologist reaches a boundary by merely learning more. Even though there’s always more to learn and explore, ever-deepening technical capability without scaling your knowledge through others will meet a law of diminishing returns. Your ability to grow and learn as an individual no longer has the same outsized impact on your career it once had. Eventually, you no longer get more opportunities because you know more than the next person.

And so, what are the options? What change is necessary to grow in effectiveness and opportunity? Some choose management as their path to growth – they formally step into a leadership role in their organization. This will require a step back from daily deep technical work and will demand entirely new skills. Formal management roles, often unpalatable for deeply technical people, are not the only option. The other path will require the technical individual contributor to transform into a technical leader.

Many people wrongly believe that leadership requires a title, positional authority, and the commiserate ability to hire, fire, and make salary decisions for others. At its core, however, leadership is the ability to influence people to move in a particular direction. A technologist who profoundly understands the tech and can marshal people becomes a powerful organizational asset and will unlock career opportunities previously unimaginable.

Think of the technical people you admire — Kelsey Hightower is a great example. For all of his technical knowledge and hard work, his work in the community — public speaking, mentoring, human interaction — has elevated his career. As you catalog the people you admire, you’ll realize they all exhibit this trait. You know their names precisely because they’ve worked to influence and grow others.

Some of you will be nonplussed by the idea of engaging broadly and focusing on other people after a decade or more of deep technical work on yourself. You may tell yourself that you’re not good at it, it’s not what you want to do, or you “just don’t like people.” Your life and career are your own. However, you will limit your career opportunities as an expert-level technologist if you don’t learn to lead and develop others.

There’s no single way to scale your knowledge and experience — and you don’t have to be an extreme extrovert. You can:

  • Write articles or blog posts or build a formal or informal community of practice at your job.
  • Join and then lead a community user group, attend conferences, and organize a meetup.
  • Seek out peers and schedule one-to-one conversations to learn and share knowledge.
  • Build documentation and then share it broadly within your company.
  • Write a book or develop training content.
  • Develop and maintain tools that codify your knowledge into repeatable processes.
  • Identify the areas where you have significant expertise and invite colleagues to shadow, reverse shadow, and then deliver by themselves.

I’ve personally seen technologists apply one or more of these strategies to become technical leaders and enable thousands of other engineers. These activities will scale your expertise and cement you as an expert of experts.

5 Key Strategies to Thrive when Working from Home

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A couple years ago, my employer piloted a “Work from Anywhere” program. With a new baby and a 75 minute commute, I was a perfect candidate. Now, two years in, I can’t imagine making the daily trek to the office. My productivity has soared and I have a much better work/life balance.

But, working from home is a serious adjustment. It took me six months to develop a solid rhythm. During that time, I learned these key strategies to make working from home more productive than working in the office.

  1. Eyvonne's Home Office

    Eyvonne’s Home Office

    Create a dedicated work space — When I first started working from home, I portioned off a part of my bedroom as a work area. I had everything I needed and thought it was working well. A few months ago, however, we rearranged some rooms, bought a new desk, and I designed a dedicated work space. I hung some pictures I’d taken and painted the room a warm color. Now, when I “go to work” in the morning, I enter a comfortable space dedicated for work. When I’m done for the day, I leave that space. The physical separation provides a level of mental separation I didn’t have before.

  2. Follow a morning routine — Over time, I’ve learned my work day goes better if I start it right. For me, that means getting ready for work like I do when I go to the office. I wake up in time to shower, put on makeup, and prepare for the day like a normal human being. Although the wardrobe consists of a flannel shirt and yoga pants (let’s not go crazy here), I still start my day as if I were going to the office.

  3. Communicate well with coworkers — I’m fortunate to work on a team in which several members work remotely. This supports a culture where team meetings have a virtual as well as a physical, presence. Make use of all the tools at your disposal: email, instant message, team tools (slack, spark, etc), video conference, and even the telephone. In a large organization, you’ll likely find pockets of people who do not embrace a work from anywhere culture. Check meeting invites in advance for an online meeting room or teleconference bridge. If there isn’t one, offer to set one up. Be proactive, but not pushy, to be sure you’re included in conversations and make a contribution where your input in valuable. Over time, others in your organization will learn to account for contributors who work remotely.

  4. Develop household boundaries — I have 4 children ranging in age from 17 – 2. Just as if I were at the office, my children who require childcare are cared for by someone else during work hours. My school-age children arrive home before my work day is done but we’ve developed some systems so they know when they can come in the room and when they need to be quiet.

  5. Get familiar with your mute button — Household noises like the doorbell or a barking dog can be a distraction in meetings. When you’re not talking, develop the habit of using your mute button. However, be mindful that your mute button can fail you. While you should always be kind to the people with whom you live, understand that discipline or harsh words to your family while you’re on a call could have professional consequences as well as personal.

Working remotely, while not for everyone, has improved my productivity and my home life. I can’t imagine going back to my extended commute and the inflexibility of working at the office every day.

What about you? Have you ever worked remotely? Are there other strategies that have worked for you? Next week I’ll share a specific trick I use with my elementary-aged daughter to reduce conference call interruptions.

Why Every Great Network Engineer is also a Good Project Manager

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Much to the dismay of  network engineers, our projects do not exist in a vacuum.  In an organization of any size, IT silos separate technology ownership into groups of subject matter experts who are responsible for a small piece of the technology pie.

Any time we undertake a sizable network project, we will need the cooperation of other teams.  We will need to clearly explain the purpose of our project, enumerate the tasks that need to be completed, and assign owners and timelines to each task. Once tasks are created, followup is required.  You’ll need to know if your colleagues are on track, if they’ve run into issues, and how any delays will impact the project as a whole.

In short, you cannot implement a successful network project without a clear understanding of all the work required to make the total implementation a success.

Even a project that is straightforward from a technical perspective, for example creating a new wireless SSID, may require significant coordination.  Has the new SSID been tested on the various clients that will connect to it?  How will the SSID be distributed to clients?  Will users be notified of the change and if so how, when, and by whom?  Who will users contact for help?  What are the boundary use cases?

You may see all of these questions and respond with, “But I’m just the network engineer.”  Or, “Don’t we have project managers for that?”

I understand the sentiment.  But in the reality of IT project implementation, no one understands the intricacies of the work to be accomplished more than the technologists doing the work.  While your PM may be familiar with organizational structures, paperwork requirements, and communication channels, they likely will not know the tasks that need to be performed or the duration or potential impact of those tasks.  Project managers can contribute to the success of the project by following up, managing communication, and keeping an up to date task list.  But as a network engineer on a network project, you must take the lead to keep all moving parts of your project well-oiled and in sync.

I’m not suggesting you pursue project management certifications or spend hours learning project management tools. Simple tools you use every day, like spreadsheets, Evernote, documents, and text files, can provide a simple framework to keep track everything you need to be successful. Most importantly, you must own your role in the project.

Ultimately, when a network engineer is the technical lead on a project, the network team will receive either kudos or chastisement based on the overall success of the project — regardless of how or where problems occur.  You cannot argue that all of your configurations were correct and your implementation was flawless from a network perspective when the user experience was poor. Leadership simply doesn’t care.   It is therefore in your best interest, and the best interest of your organization, that you learn to manage your projects effectively enough to ensure their success.

Thoughts on moving from SMB to the Enterprise

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After working in small business IT for over a decade, I made the leap to a large healthcare enterprise. Although I had been very successful in providing solutions in the SMB space, I didn’t know how well my skill set would transfer into a larger environment. Three years into my experience in the enterprise, I’ve learned there are several similarities and a few differences between SMB and enterprise IT.

Read more on my post at Packet Pushers, or listen to Lauren Malhoit and me discuss over at Adapting IT.