Who are you? Have a vision.

In a series of posts, I will share what I have learned taking the form of career guidance. While my advice is centered on people in software development and IT, others may find it applies to their field of study as well.

There is a great scene in Fantastic Mr. Fox, where Foxy asks Kylie and himself, “Who am I?” Foxy begins life stealing chickens but gives it up to settle down with his family. But he finds himself in conflict as he wrestles with his true identity as a fox. So much is wrapped up in that simple question, it can take a lifetime to answer.

I dwell on this question myself a lot. I am a computer programmer. I have been programming since the 80s. It is core to my identity. Answering this question for myself has been a long journey. I have found some of my experiences to be particularly helpful.

I recently left a steady comfortable job working for a fortune 500 company as a cloud architect to become an SRE for Stack Overflow. My days were mostly easy and fun from a technical perspective. I had a lot of autonomy, and I was top tier for technical leadership. The money was good. Most of the people were great to work with. It was comfortable, but like Foxy I was wrestling with my identity as a computer programmer, a coder if you will. So why leave? Knowing when to leave is knowing why you joined in the first place. How do you address this?

While I painted a rosy picture of my last job, there were thorny parts. If you are like most, early on in your career you have idealized all parts of work in your head: the people, the place, the opportunities, the work itself. Everything should be perfect. Any problems are issues to be dealt with or annoyed by and should be fixed. Fixing it comes in a variety of forms, complaining to the boss, coworkers, going to HR, or most drastically leaving for greener pastures.

When you are younger and early in your career, it is okay to move around a little bit. You haven’t learned all you need to know. It can also be helpful to see the inside of a bunch of different shops to gain a deeper understanding of how work is accomplished in our field.

When you move around a few times you will start to notice the same thing shows up. That thing is the thorny parts of your job. So what does this have to do with leaving? If you look at the arc of a career I would expect most would want to see a progression. If you keep leaving jobs out of frustration it is as if you are trying to run a marathon, but get tired of the aches and pains in mile 3 and start over again the next day hoping it will be different. My point is there are always going to be hard parts to your job. If you want to build your career, you need to learn to live with the parts of your job you don’t like.

Transitioning between companies or even starting your first job you can deal with these hard parts of your job by having a vision of your future self. I don’t want to be prescriptive. But I found this should be an exercise in self reflection. A who am I moment. But it isn’t meant to be a series of goals you seek and accomplish. You should be setting goals for career development with your company. This is different. This is deeper. The question who am I is really asking who are you at your core. The answer is meant to be a definition of how you see yourself. Answering this question is a little bit like chasing the wind because it should create an idealized version of yourself. It can be short, or long, but it should be a narrative in your mind of how to respond when things get hard. Without it, the flawed version of yourself is doing all the responding.

To better illustrate how this works I am going to share with you a vision I have for my dog. This might sound unusual but is necessary for my dog to become a happy, healthy dog for his breed. He is an Australian cattle dog. This translates into a smart dog with a lot of energy. This also translated into a tough puppy to raise. Most people think of a puppy as cute, cuddly and playful.

Oso is cute, and playful, but not cuddly. He is what I like to call aggressively friendly. And because of his high energy level he never wants to settle down or sleep in your presence.

Okay, again why do I need a vision for him? When I selected the breed, I knew I was going to face some difficulty raising this pup. My vision for him is a happy, healthy, mature, well-trained dog who can keep up with all my outdoor activities. Oso could become a companion for the next 15 years, a dog that can run 15 miles with me, bike with me, hike with me, walk with me and ride a paddle board.

I see him as a dog that will keep me healthy in the process because my vision of myself for him. He is a dog; he can’t come up with visions or have existential thoughts. I need a vision for him so I can be a loving owner that is committed to keeping him exhausted by running him everyday, training him, caring for him, loving him, and giving him the outlets he needs to spend his energy. I want to give him what he needs as a dog bred to herd cattle in Australia so I can enjoy his companionship in my activities for many years.

I knew this vision wasn’t something he could become on day one. This is what we work toward. Even when he is mature, there will be difficult days. We all have days in which we don’t live up to the idealized version of ourselves. On days when Oso is just hard to deal with or I don’t feel like running him, I remember the vision and my commitment to him. We take small steps towards the vision. Knowing those difficult times are part of the process puts them in perspective. Otherwise, all you have is this romantic idea of what you want your dog to be. The minute they don’t live up to your expectations you are frustrated and want to give up. Then everyone suffers. Even on days when he chews your expensive wireless headphones when you weren’t looking, the vision stands.

Expectations != Vision

In your career, on days when your job is difficult and very frustrating if all you have are expectations of what a job should be, you will feel like giving up. If you expect to show up on day one and feel like a veteran programmer, you will be quickly disappointed. If part of your vision for yourself is to practice and learn your craft daily, then it is easier to deal with those hardships. You know you are taking steps towards that vision.

There is a corollary to dealing with hardships with a vision. To quickly ease hardships such as overwhelming deadlines, we tend toward taking shortcuts. For example, if you want to always have documentation to hand off, then your vision should include something about documenting as you go. If you don’t include something about completing all aspects of a task in your vision, the flawed version of yourself will take a shortcut, thinking no one will notice.

When I joined The Hershey Co, my vision was simple. I wanted to be a hard worker, someone who thoroughly learned the technology he used, developed new skills, took on new challenges with every new project, left the environment better than I found it, someone that did a complete job when handing it off to the next person, someone who felt good about the work, never said no to people when they asked for help, changed the culture for the better, worked well with others and invested in relationships.

You will notice there is nothing in there about earning raises, being promoted, learning X technology, etc. Those are goals, specific things you are working on which are great to have, but are often not achieved and commingled with the goals of the company and your boss. Don’t let those goals define you. Remember the vision is how you define yourself, how to go about achieving goals, working on a project, relating to others, etc.

• Write it down
• Internalize it
• Live it
• Don’t change it
• Allow it to grow you

If you are still tracking, you will notice I didn’t answer the question, why leave nor why join a company. In my next post I plan to discuss why I left my job, how to evaluate when it is time, and good and bad reasons for leaving and how it relates to joining a new company