Work Life Lessons
I came across a “10 things” post on AppleMatters and it is 10 Things Every Programmer Should Know For Their First Job. While I’m not a professional programmer, I have had similar insights when getting into what I do.
- Being liked is easy - So true. Even without “bribing” people with candy, it’s fairly easy to make people like you. Just don’t act like a jerk.
- Being respected is hard - I think it depends on who you’re earning respect from. Same level co-workers are probably the hardest. Your supervisor/boss would be the next hardest and so on. As long as you do your work and complete it on time, it’s easy with the boss, but with same level co-workers, folks who do the same or related things you do, it’s harder because not only do you have to finish projects on time, you also have to be competent.
- Everything you learned in college is useless - I agree somewhat. Designer friends of mine have told me that most everything they learned in school was useless in the work world. For me, what I learned in school and what I got my (lowly) degree in had nothing to do with what I’m doing now, which is web development. In fact, instead of doing my homework, I was building web pages and when my mother caught me, she reprimanded me and said I’d never get a job doing what I’m doing instead of my studies. It’s funny how life worked out.
- Never stop learning - This is so true. In the tech industry, no matter what specialization, things evolve and if you don’t keep on learning you’ll get so far behind you won’t be as critical an asset you could be. The workplace is one of the best places to expand your knowledge. Your co-workers should be more than happy to help you and with the crash course training, learning something is easier, for me at least.
- You live or die by your text editor, so choose wisely - For me, it was all about do I know how to code by hand or do I use a WYSIWYG editor? vi, Emacs, Pico, notepad, textedit, 1st Page 2000 (not to be confused with Microsoft Frontpage, ick). It didn’t matter, so long as I was the only one inserting code and not having a program do it, I was happy. And that increased my chances of getting hired.
- No one really cares what college you went to - Not completely true. Where I ended up no one really cared, but I could have had an easy entrance to Intel if I wasn’t lazy. The college I went to had an excellent track record for getting their tech/electronics graduates into Intel (fab plants). And I know at least one person who has been hired just based on the college they graduated from.
- Silence never goes out of style - Word. Another easy way to break into the group as the new guy? If the company holds a gaming night, attend. Try to beat the crap out of everyone in Quake or Motorcross Madness or whatever games they play. Whether you can or can’t pwn people, just have fun and you’ll mesh well pretty quickly.
- You will meet odd, strange and unpleasant people, deal with it - So true and you know what? There are always worse people out there, so be grateful.
- Make friends with IT - Mother is god on the lips and hearts of all children. IT is god in the workplace. Get on their good side and you’ll get cool stuff.
- You will never escape office politics - Sooner or later, the game catches up to you. I disagree that it has anything to do with geeks/programmers not being people-persons and that they can advance into management. The game isn’t how well you communicate with people but how you can manipulate them and avoid being manipulated. Some people just prefer to get things done.
