Two approaches to building a career

Hello! My name is Larisa. I once wrote articles about internships and interviews with Google. Since then, I still work at Google, I continue to write on interviews and Google, but recently I have been more and more fascinated by the topics of career and self-development. Today I present to your attention one of my articles on this topic.

The idea below, by the way, is not mine. Scott Adams wrote about it in his book “ How to Fail ”. But it is incredibly useful for those who want to increase their professional value, so I'll tell you about it now.

The essence of the idea

There are two ways to become a successful professional. One very common, in which everyone believes, but which is almost impossible to implement. And the second, which is much simpler, which is very real for all of us, but which people rarely use. I suspect that because here for many people as in the joke “And what, was it possible?“.

Method 1 : Become the coolest in any area. You can not the most directly cool, but, for example, enter the top 1% of professionals in the field. For example, a good book by Igor Mann “ Number 1 “ was written on this topic.
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With this, in general, it is difficult to argue. Being one of the coolest specialists in some field (like, for example, Herb Sutter in C ++, or Jeff Dean for large scale infrastructure - if you don’t know them, google it, legends and everything) makes job search and career building much easier . When everyone knows you as one of the coolest, then you're in the house.

And the closer you get to the “coolest” position, the better your professional position. You may not be Bjarne Stroustrup, who created C ++, but you can keep your own blog about C ++, speak at conferences of various sizes and even write a book about it. You are already gaining a certain aura of coolness, and this, of course, is a plus. The further, the more steep. This leads to the obvious conclusion that the system is working, and this is the right vector of development - we are increasing our momentum and steepness.

The problem with this method, however, is obvious. To get into Top is very difficult. You can try 10-20-30 years, without any guarantee that you will ever be invited to a larger conference than “C ++ for Gadyukino programmers”. Not to mention that the whole world will know about you.

Fortunately for those who do not want to work hard for decades for an unspecified result, there is a simpler way.

Method 2 : Mosaic Talents (Adams is called Talent Stack). By talents I mean skills that can be mastered, not innate talents.

Something like this. You do not need to be the best in anything. You even need to enter the top 5-10%. But if you have several talents with whom you enter the top 20%, and all these talents are in demand in the professional market, then life is a success!

For example, one of the creators of WhatsApp (which Facebook bought for $ 19 billion a couple of years ago) could not get a job on Facebook and Twitter before starting its own company .

But in his case, he possessed at least several talents (I personally do not know him, but I suppose that this is so):

1. He knew how to program and understand programming. He was probably not the best programmer on the stream at the university, and was not even a strong enough candidate for Facebook and Twitter to hire him. But he had the skills to start working on his project.
   
   
2. He possessed mental stability. First, he did not put an end to himself after failures, but began to look for other options. Secondly, in order to become a co-founder of a successful company and successfully sell it for a record amount, mental stability is needed. But he is certainly not the most stable person, I think that he is far from a Zen master.
   
   
3. He had an entrepreneurial spirit and a business ability. They are needed in order to understand that an idea is promising, to work on it for a long time without giving back in a situation of uncertainty. And she needs to bring the project to a successful end, and sell well. But I doubt that he is the coolest entrepreneur of all. Surely there are a lot of people who have the best abilities.

I think that all these skills were well developed. But he is unlikely to be in the top of the “coolest” for any of them.

Programmer Skills

I think that for a programmer, in addition to programming knowledge, these skills can be very useful:

- (by default) Programming;
- The ability to sell;
- The ability to convince people, lead, inspire, work with people, be a good manager;
- The ability to communicate with people, joke, rally around themselves, defuse a tense situation;
- Understanding the product, users, market (what the Product Manager usually does);
- Design, the ability to draw, UX;
- Knowledge of computer security, machine learning or some other narrowly sought-after field;
- The ability to write well, structured and fun;
- Entrepreneurial spirit, the ability to see unrealized opportunities in the market;
- Understanding money - investing, accounting, calculating byutzhetov;
- The ability to speak well in public;
- Knowledge of foreign languages ​​at a very good level (the more, the better) - imagine what opportunities open up before (not the coolest) programmer who speaks, say, Russian, English and Chinese;
- Knowledge of psychology and the ability to use it, aka persuasion skills;
- The ability to find and maintain contacts with people;
- The ability to dress well, confident gait, knowledge of etiquette, the ability to behave in any society.

The list is probably incomplete, but I think you understand the approximate idea. Imagine a programmer who has all these skills at a decent level, at least top 20%. It would be just a super programmer, some kind of =). Personally, I have no doubts about the success in life of such a super-programmer. Yes, even if not all the skills, but at least 3-4-5 in addition to programming. Anyway there would be a bomb!

Conclusion

I do not know about you, but personally, the second method seems to me much more logical and simple. Enter the top 1% even for 10-20 years may be unrealistic. All plow, no guarantees, break through the unit. Directly professional Hollywood turns out :)

But mastering several of the skills listed above at a quite decent level is very possible. Plus, this approach is very variable. If something is not given to you, it means nothing. You can focus on those aspects that you develop easier, and still achieve success.