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Dale Beermann is a software architect and co-founder at 
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I have my dream job. I’m not too presumptuous to think this means that I know the secret of getting to where I am, but I did make it here and I do suppose that means I did something right. I recently started reading Employee Evolution, and having a somewhat unique perspective on being a twentysomething who isn’t frustrated with where they are, I thought the rest of the readers may find my thoughts interesting. Looking back on things, I believe that I made two decisions that had a direct influence on how my career has developed. They have taken me through two different jobs and a failed side project. Today, I’m a co-founder at Sharendipity, a small startup where I’m finally excited to come to work every day.
Both decisions stem from the same basic idea: differentiating yourself. I’m sure that there are hundreds of other posts out there giving career advice about how you should differentiate yourself from your coworkers. However, a lot of the posts I’ve read talk about actually getting the job. But once you’ve acquired the job you need to know how to avoid the doldrums of everyday office work. I wish I could say that these points were part of my great plan but they’re only afterthoughts:
Retrospective #1: Take your skill set seriously
My first job out of school was at a medical imaging company. I was pretty happy when I got it since I wasn’t working for a defense contractor or writing financial software. At the time, it really was the job that I wanted. I’d say that the complaining started about six months into it. It wasn’t just me though; everyone complained to each other. We all thought that we weren’t getting what was owed to us. Some of us were probably right, but surely not everyone.
One of the problems I saw was that of motivation. I worked with a lot of twentysomethings but only a select few really took their job seriously. Those that didn’t take things as seriously spent a lot of time browsing the Web and doing whatever else it is that people do to waste their time at work. However, the select few were doing something else; they were building their skill set and along with it their reputation. They took home a paycheck every other week just like everyone else but they were also on their way to bigger things. Looking back on it, this is a principle that I’ve unknowingly been applying since long before I started working.
Towards the end of my undergraduate career, I started to realize that I wasn’t going to get the job I wanted. I thought I had done the right things; the internship, decent grades, etc.. The problem is that college gives you the skills to start a career, not to improve it, and chances are that it’s not the career you really want. So, I went to graduate school. I wanted to study computer graphics and at the time I couldn’t think of a better way to learn it. Looking back on things, this may have been the best decision I ever made.
The skills I learned in grad school landed me a job at the medical imaging company doing 3D visualization. I was pretty happy that I’d made it there, but I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted to get noticed. So, I took on the hard problems and I taught myself things that would let me take on even harder ones. I never stopped working on my skills. If I was bored at my desk, I’d go look for tutorials on the Web to teach myself new things. The result was that I was able to begin building a reputation for myself based on my abilities (I’m sure some of you will comment that our society is not a meritocracy; I simply disagree. Please read on.).
Still, I wasn’t able to build a reputation just by working hard. There were two big differences between those that got noticed for their work and those that didn’t. As I mentioned, the first difference is that a select group of people actually did deserve recognition because they worked for it. Still, not all of them received the recognition they deserved. The second big difference was that those that were noticed were the ones that let management know they deserved it.
Retrospective #2: Be vocal
The second important decision that I made was to begin speaking up, not only about my concerns but about my accomplishments as well. At my first company I saw that a lot of people were complaining to management, myself included, but complaining is a bad way to be vocal; it gets interpreted as being petty. An interesting thing about complaining is that if you back up your complaints with your accomplishments it seems to get interpreted as expressing your concerns rather than just complaining; it shows that you care. I realized that, in my limited experience, the best way to be vocal is by being vocal as an expert and you can’t do that without a solid skill set.
A Final Thought: Work for small companies, but not too small
As Devin pointed out in an earlier post, working for a company of four people can be really hard. As a first job, I think a company of fifty to a few hundred people would be a good place to start. In a large company, it seems fairly rare that upper management is going to be concerned about the lowest levels of the food chain, and a little less rare that your boss is going to point you out to upper management just because you did something well. Still, it’s important to be vocal to the right people and it’s easier to do that in a smaller company.
The distance between you and the executives makes a huge difference because they are the ones that will be able to pull you up. If you’re working to impress middle management, you’ll only go as high as they can go. On the other hand, if you’re making yourself known to the higher-ups you’ll be able to follow them where they go. If they happen to be entrepreneurs, this really means a lot because when they go start the new company they’re going to need good people to help them out. After all, working at a fairly small company, together with a few good decisions, was what eventually landed me my dream job, and I couldn’t be happier.
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Hi Dale,
Congratulations on your achievements. Would you mind giving a little more detail as to what exactly you do? What did you go to graduate school in? I understand that you differentiated yourself, but as someone good at what in particular? I’m just curious.
This is great advice. It’s so easy to get caught up in complaining with co-workers and not positively contribute. And it’s even easier to think your boss knows all that you do. In my first job, I lost motivation fairly quickly because I did both of these things and ended up hating my job even though I went into it believing it was my dream job. I ended up starting over in a new job because it was too hard to move on from all that went wrong with that company. Hindsight is 20/20!
Hi Liz,
I thought about addressing your question in the original post but it started getting really long, so I took it out. I went to graduate school in Computer Science. At the time I was really interested in real-time graphics programming so I taught myself everything I could related to what I wanted to do. This helped me a lot as the 3D Visualization Team Lead at my first job. I realize, however, that it’s not as easy to pick a topic and study it depending on what field you’re in. Still, I think that you can become an expert in other ways as well. A lot of companies budget money to send employees to conferences or even just to buy books or related materials (mine did, but never advertised that fact), so let your boss know that you’re interested. Another suggestion would be to really understand your market by knowing who your competitors are by watching the news and tracking how they’re doing. You can use this information to compare your company to others and speak up in meetings about what other people are doing.
There is one commonality between these ideas, being to use the expert knowledge of others to elevate yourself. It can be hard to get your boss to take your own ideas seriously, but backing up those ideas with other references that are already considered expertise will help support your case. I hope that helps.
Dale,
Great post–great advice.
Yes, complaining only brands you
as a complainer–and who wants that as a label?
Don’t bring problems to your
boss–bring solutions. Bosses
are already dealing with a ton
of issues and problems. If you bring them one
more, you’re not helping them.
Say, hey we’ve run across this, but
here is how I think we can fix it.
Or, if the culture of the company allows
it, fix the problem and then tell the boss
about the situation.
Dale,
This is really good advice however after 44 years I have something to add. One thing to note is that Dale is now a co-founder of his own company. Today is different than the past when our parents, parents could stay with one employer their entire career. Those days are long gone. Having one customer (employer) is not a good way to go in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong as this has so far been my sole means of income. Luckily I have been good at saving money so in a little over a year, I will also have my own company with all the good, the bad and the ugly of it. Compounded interest is highly underated. The more one saves today, the more choices one will have later. Hard work is not enough as one needs to find out what one is good-great at and then find a way to make enough money to acheive one’s lifelong goals. I have one year, five year and 20 year goals written out to make sure my ship is pointed in the right direction. The details may change but the destination stays the same.
Henry
What a great point, Tim. Even in college (Alpha Kappa Psi) there were those that only knew how to communicate problems and areas of weakness. Never able to think up solutions or offer their insight as to how to fix it.
Those people never did well. I doubt they do in business world, either.
I read this before work today and it made all the difference. Somehow my Monday wasn’t quite as Monday-ish as usual.
Thanks!
Thanks for the kind words everyone. I was wondering to myself how this would be received. I’ve never really been one to give advice so I’m very glad that people seem to think well of it. And of course, thanks goes out to Ryan, Ryan, and Devin; they’ve built a great site. I hope more people will continue to share their thoughts.
Dale,
Great post. I’ve always thought and said that “building my skillset is critical.” But there was a time when I stopped - almost completely. I got stuck, pissed that I was on a shitty project doing something that I really didn’t want to do. I crossed my arms, stomped my feet and whined to all of my friends. Instead of being proactive and building up my “closet skillset”, I surfed the net and contemplated the amazing things I WOULD be doing if I weren’t stuck. I wondered at what level my nunchacku skills would be if I were practicing them all day long. Probably pretty good.
I got really hung up on the idea of “Discovering my strengths”… (which, by the way, I find to be a fascinating and on-point concept and approach to life and success, but the book isn’t worth your poodle’s week-old terd.) I got so hung up, I stalled. It’s like I was at a fork in a road without understanding which path to follow; which path fit my ’strengths’ best. So, I just sat down and waited. I waited because I was afraid that if I went down the wrong path I would have to return back to the fork to start over. I hadn’t really considered that there might be other paths down any of those roads that could allow me to cross between them… or somewhere entirely new that I may learn to love. But, if I had committed to a direction at least I would’ve been making progress, right?! More importantly, I would have gained experience.
Well, I just recently have TRULY “discovered my strengths”, but it took a while. The concept of the book - for those of you smart enough not to read it - is that you should ONLY focus on your strengths. Literally, 100% of energy on your strengths. Find other people to compensate for your weaknesses, and that is the key to success my friend. Well, I clearly know what my strengths and weaknesses are after reciting my ENTP Myers-Briggs readout every night before I go to bed… the tough part was answering this omnipresent question in my head: “how do I succeed without paying any attention to paying bills, checking things off my todo list, answering all of my emails, etc.?” Clearly administrative tasks of the like are not my forte, as they say in French (but with the accent).
The culmination of this late-night and gin-induced rambling has led to this: table stakes. It’s all about table stakes. The question I’ve REALLY been toting around in my head is “to what point must I develop my weaknesses?” That’s it. Develop strengths to 1,000% capacity, but I ALWAYS wondered about weaknesses. You can’t entirely abandon them, right?
Develop your weaknesses ONLY TO PROFICIENCY that will allow you to GET BY. And that… is… IT! Then, turn around, say “fuck em”, and go do what you do best!
Dale,
Sorry I couldn’t chime in earlier, I have been on a business trip through the weekend with limited or no connectivity. Great post and congrats on sparking some of the best dialogue I have seen on our site. I particularly like the point about being vocal. It’s amazing what speaking your mind can get you. Most people fail to realize that the worst thing that can happen when you speak up is someone says no.
Best of luck with your startup.
-Ryan