Advises for graduating student
A student came to my office. He said: “I want to let you know that I will be graduated in May but I already have a job offer from a good software company. I am very lucky to have a job in this economic downsizing time but I still worry about my future. In this changing time, everything seems uncertain, and I want to know what can I do to keep my job and build a good career for the future? I hope that you can give me some advises.
I told him: “Congratulation. I am very pleased that you have a good job before you graduate. I am sure that you will work hard and do your best but to keep that job and build a good career, you have to bring value to the company. Today you have the knowledge and skills that your company needs and that is why they hire you but you must continue learning new things and bring new value to your company. With globalization, companies will cut jobs whenever they need to keep their businesses running profitably. To survive, you need to have the most up to date knowledge and skills. Complacency could be a fatal mistake because with the competitive job market, your job could go to somebody else at anytime. Many students think graduation is the end of learning because they do not have to go to school anymore. It is a big mistake because having a degree is only the beginning. The degree opens door for the job but the application of knowledge at work determine your future career. You already learn the basic knowledge in school but at work you have to apply it. By applying it to real project, you learn the skills, the techniques, the methods and the process and building your career. In school, you learn from teachers but at work you learn from your team members.
My advice is you must learn as much as you can from others. This is about knowing your place in the company because no one works alone anymore. Each person depends on others because no one has a monopoly on anything or any expertise. The smartest workers talk to each other, learn from each other, and also teach others. Keep an open mind and observe things carefully then you will learn a lot. Teamwork is a discipline that you have learned in school so apply it wisely in your work place. Do not criticize anyone if you do not want to be criticized. Pay attention to what is going on in your company and the world around you and continue to learn new thing to improve your skills. Talk clearly when you have to but listen to others, even the dull ones, they too have something to say. If you only focus on your office, your team and few friends in the company than your view may become too biased or narrow. You need to broaden your view by reading more technical articles to learn what is happening in the software industry as technology changes very fast. When you stop learning new thing, you will lose your value and this is not a comfortable feeling. A good knowledge worker must keep on learning because learning should never stop. You need to share information with others because you can not improve your skill by do it alone, you need friends. Do not compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter because there is always someone better than you or not fortunate like you. Think of yourself in a new role. Are you a programmer? You need to ask how to be a better programmer then try to learn new skills to make you a better programmer. If you want to be a technical lead then you need to understand more on design, architecture skills. No matter whom you want to be, you must remember that you are a part of a team, and they rely on you for your skills and you also rely on them on their support.
He hesitated:” But as globalization impacts everything. How do I build my career when things keep changing faster and faster?”
I told him: “Stay focus on your career but keep a balance in life. Enjoy your achievement but be humble, it is the most important thing in the changing fortune of time. With globalization, everything will continue to evolve, more buying and selling of products and services around the world because it is all about low costs and high competition. If someone else can do your job cheaper with comparable quality, then you have two choices: Either you looking for a new job or you put all your strength in for the competition. Your strength is your knowledge and skills that others do not have and that is why continuous learning or lifelong learning is important. Everywhere in the world, the global economy is impacting every business, forcing every company to improve the way they do business as the competitive market bring in new companies with new challenges. Customers have a choice to select what products they want to buy and who they are buying it from. That is why to survive, every company has to reduce costs, improve productivity, and raise higher quality wherever possible. As a knowledge worker, your asset is your knowledge and skills and the asset of your company is its people (Collective knowledge). So how does a software company achieve continuously cost reductions to remain competitive? By continue to improve the collective knowledge of its workers to make sure that the company is performing at the top of the scale. Everything about globalization is about bringing down costs, maintaining quality, and speeding the process of service or product delivery. Your software company is a collection of many people working together to deliver a quality product at a reasonable cost to support the business objectives. The quality should never be allowed to diminish, but it is possible that the cost will have to lower because the more people, the more they cost the company. To stay viable is to create business value by always look to where and how you bring value or don't bring value. You should ask yourself: “Are you worth more to the company today than you were yesterday? Do you understand what the company needs to be competitive and are you supporting that?
He asked me: “Does it lifelong learning applied only to software field or others fields such as business and finance?”
I told him:” With globalization, everything changes very fast and every job will be impacted. Technology always changes faster but today almost everything is driven by technology. Business will depend on technology because without computer and phone, you can not do business globally. Regardless of what field you study, in the next five years or so every field will require computing knowledge. As a software engineer, you are already ahead of others. You know something others may not, you have the knowledge that other will have to learn, so as you continue learning new things, you always ahead and that is what I call the technology advantage.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
