Face it, those of us who are uncomfortable with the status quo and want more than the masses are outliers. This is a good thing! Here's what has worked for me...
Rising out of the ordinary and getting ahead is all about demand, not supply.
Supply: You can read all the blogs you want, read technical books, and study new languages and so what? You are supplying yourself with things that may or may not make any difference and no one else cares.
Demand: Find out what needs are not being met at your company. You can easily do this all the time without even being noticed, "under the radar" as they say. (You don't have to go to your boss looking for something.) They are desperate needs not being met everywhere; all you have to do is look. It may be a user, a customer, a way of doing business. Then fill that need. It's that simple. You will force yourself to learn whatever you have to to get that job done. Then do it again. And again. Before you know it, people will automatically know to come to you when nothing else works.
Business is about getting things done. Learn how to do that whether it's officially sanctioned or not. You will quickly rise above the masses and your life will never be the same.
A few notes:
1. Most people won't even realize what you're doing. For those that do, most will approve. For those that don't approve, ignore them.
2. With this approach, you will optimize your learning. You will learn what is needed, not what you think is cool.
3. You will become much more valuable for 2 reasons: you will expand your skill set and you will convert yourself from a doer to an achiever. The difference is subtle but huge.
"Before you know it, people will automatically know to come to you when nothing else works."
And then what? Ask for a raise? In the environment he is describing, it is likely his extra effort will not go unnoticed, but rather, unrewarded. What's worse, this extra effort may even become expected of him, without his receiving any additional compensation besides making his boss look good.
While I do find great satisfaction in making myself indispensable and particularly useful, and in the whole process of learning and implementing new things, I also find extreme irritation if it only works to set a new standard for what's expected of me. That's just my personal experience and personality. Perhaps there are more altruistic types that enjoy feeling like a more efficient cog, but for me, it sucks to feel like a cog at all.
That's not to say all is lost. Certainly being an achiever and an innovator are awesome qualities. Think of your current job as a framework to discover and deploy these things. I neglected to do this at my last job, but keep a list of all of the projects you took the initiative on, what new skills you had to acquire to achieve them, and the net benefit to the company. Myself, I always figured I'd remember all the awesome additional effort / personal touches I put on things, but I didn't, and for me, interview season is right around the corner.
Bottom line, if you're not progressing and learning from your coworkers on a regular basis, it's time to look for new options. In the meantime, give your best effort and take note of your triumphs.
I must respectfully beg to differ. First, it may come with time rather than immediately, but such things often are the path to raises and promotions. Nothing in his original post would indicate it was not so at his company.
Now, if he really feels he has hit a ceiling at his company, that for whatever reason (politics, no room to move up, etc, etc) he really cannot get a raise or promotion there then he may want to think about leaving. But if he leaves just because most of his coworkers are 9-5 dayjob types then he is likely to be disappointed to find that it is the same in most other places.
If he really wants to be challenged by his coworkers and his environment is bothering him, then he needs to leave but he needs to look in very specific places to find that type of environment. He should look at start ups or research labs that are on the bleeding edge.
Otherwise, he should look to himself to find his own challenges and grow in his own ways, hopefully with a community outside of work to help him do that.
That in itself IS the reward.
I'm interested, not doubting.
1. As part of the research for requirements for a new inventory package, I noticed that every pallet was counted by 3 different people and the lowest count was recorded. I worked with plant supervisors to fix the procedures. Management then realized that there was now no need for new million dollar software. They rewarded my effort and concern for the company with lots of great project work and money. Lesson: Look for the obvious first.
2. A user asked me to help solve her forecasting problem. The two of us sat down and designed the software to do it. I realized there was a parallel effort to do the same thing in another division (with an expensive purchased package), so I made my software work for both divisions. It took 3 weeks to write and people were very grateful. I was employee of the month and got a nice bonus. Lesson: Sometimes little things can solve big problems.
3. I noticed that warehouse pickers were bending and climbing ladders a lot, so I suggested modifying our inventory system to place the most popular items in bins between the knees and shoulders. The change took one week and made us 10% more efficient (a lot of money after a few months). I would have never thought of it if I hadn't been walking around, trying to understand how my software was being used. Lesson: Give yourself the chance to find opportunities.
Did you build anything that you later spun off into a better job or a side business?
Yes. Everything I learned using these methods went into 2 businesses: a small business software package and a consulting practice. If I hadn't stretched myself, who knows what cubicle I'd be sitting in today.
The thing is, how do you get the right people to notice when you fix things like that which really are a problem?
I have a real problem doing this, it feels like so much boasting.
But on the other hand, it does get discouraging if there is no recognition for when you go above and beyond, when you just know that the extra effort you put in is a big reason things are not falling apart.
For most of my 20's, my life revolved entirely around rock climbing. 4 nights a week in the gym, and a roadtrip every weekend. Vacation time saved up (and exceeded) for trips to Europe, Asia and the Desert Southwest in search of good rock and good times. My friends were all doing the same thing, and those were actually some of the best years of my life.
Now, I'd deeply into building software products to maximize my free time. Not surprisingly, the skills I'm using today are the ones I picked up during those years of paying the bills. The outside pursuits are still a major part of my life (I'm typing this from the climbing mecca of Kalymnos, Greece), but now I have several months a year to pursue them instead of just a few weeks.
So maybe you should take another look at those guys. They just might be leading interesting lives while you're not looking.
At the time I would look at people who only had their career and career related activities and friends to be missing out on more interesting pursuits.
Stop trying to change, or more importantly, judge, people who just don't care. If it's just a job to them, that's fine. Changing diapers is much more immediate to them then github.
If you feel stifled, seek out user groups in your area, spend more time learning on your own and stay active online. Not much else you can do.
I suspect most people on this board, most certainly including myself, are not like that. But we are the minority and I have nothing against the majority that wants to do that.
As to practical suggestions for the OP to keep growing: Find a community of people like you. My expertise is in SQL and I used to attend the local user group meetings (it now conflicts with my night classes in grad school). I still both write for and read sites like www.sqlservercentral.com where I can participate in the community in a virtual sense at least.
Also, you may want to consider going back to grad school, if your schedule permits it. It gives you a ready made community of smart people pursuing things at least vaguely in your field. This is more important than the classes or the piece of paper at the end, but that piece of paper can make a nice addition the next time you are in the job market.
It can be hard if you don't feel engaged with your co-workers but it happens. Set your goals and areas of ownership, develop yourself to support them and start pushing to see if you can progress your career. If they aren't a good baseline to compete with, you have to make your own structure.
If you have a baby on the way pretty soon you'll be in coast mode anyhow (I mean this - if you're still working, some days you'll barely have the energy to focus on your inbox, let alone productive work)
After this stage in your life, re-assess. Maybe your work / life balance is different, maybe you'll be more risk tolerant and change jobs / roles, maybe you'll just be happy. Mostly choice, and hard work.
In regards to the after hours stuff, it's doable as well. It sounds crazy to try and launch a whole side project until you actually do it (even with a baby on board). I noticed you knocked back a suggestion to do an off hours project / startup before, don't rush to close the idea off.
To give context: professionally I put in about 47-60 hours a week depending on what's on, and I brick in every single free hour around that (as stamina and life allows) on side projects. Before I started doing that, I said it couldn't be done, and would park my ass watching TV or generally doing nothing instead.
Figure out what you want, don't measure yourself on others, and go for it. =) If it's what you have now, there's nothing wrong with that.
- Catalogue what you've actually accomplished in terms of stuff created / learned / produced
- Hack it all up into "stuff I will use", "stuff I will reference" and "stuff I will archive"
- Set some hard lines and hard times against deliverables with actual boundaries / units of work - what will you finish, by what date, where does it fit, what's the next stage?
Finally, and the biggest thing for me was: if you can hardline at work, be a professional and produce lots of good stuff on a dealine (assuming you do), you can do that for yourself as well.
Sometimes (as a non-startup type guy) I found it easy to go to work, push past pain barriers, bust serious ass and make some pretty incredible stuff happen, then come home and have a completely different - lazy and shabby - attitude.
As soon as I decided to carry that attitude towards my own goals / projects, it turned a lot of stuff around. I had two or three projects that were half parked for nearly 8 months that I set completion goals for and cleaned up in about 2 months.
Felt great, and made me realise how much you can actually produce when you have a clear idea of what you want to get done.
For a long time, it upset me to see my intelligent friends do this. They couldn't wait to get out of college, get a job with a big company, put in their workweek, and that's that. No desire to do a startup, and learned what they needed for the job.
It's just what it is, there's no reason to fight it, just understand that sometimes having that huge disconnect between work and life is optimal for them.
While true, I think "disconnect" has unnecessarily negative connotations. You could equally say, "some people are happy when work doesn't dominate their whole life." Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on what you want out of life and what you want out of your work.
Add to this, no knowledge whatsoever of sites like hacker news, stackoverflow, etc, and a home development machine that is too slow to run Visual Studio. But of course, the air of confidence (due to his own ignorance) earns him immediate respect from management. Now that is a depressing situation.
Knowledge of the existence of stackoverflow is now my ultimate litmus test, I try to sneak it into the conversation as soon as possible - if the person has never heard of it, that's a pretty good indicator of how much of the say is hot air.
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I have a really comfortable web development job, albeit not very exciting, at a medium sized software company. That's why, like most people who probably read this and similar sites, I try to evolve professionally in my free time - read technical books, blogs, pick up languages, etc.
I consider myself good at my job, and average compared to the industry. I constantly run into articles where people praise their co-workers, regale on how exciting their job is and how much they learn every day... I find that almost everyone I work with (company of +50 people) just comes to work to punch a ticket, go home, repeat. This is not an "old" company (avg. age <35), yet people are satisfied with what they picked up so far, and don't feel the need to grow as a professional.
When I mention things like github, Erlang or HN, for example, I get vague stares - nobody's heard of them. I understand people have families and non-work related hobbies (I do too - a lot), but for me coming to work just to pass 8-10 daily hours in closing bugs, adding features and resolving tickets is just dull.
Yeah, I get it, that's what work is all about. Don't get me wrong - these guys are good in what they do (mostly C/C++ Devs), but I've got nothing to learn from them, nothing interesting to chat about (I don't consider diaper changing talks exciting) and I keep fighting through the day to make work interesting by coming up with new solutions to old problems (a cliché, I know, but this is really what I do). Even my team members/boss who do web-development aren't different than the rest (a bit worse, actually). On the plus side, the salary and benefits where I work are great.
I have a baby on the way and an unemployed wife, so I can't really afford to be cavalier on job search at the moment.
Maybe I'm just selling out, and this is definitely a vent post, but does anyone here feels the same at their current job, and if so - what do you do?
Also, I live and work outside the US, if it makes a difference.
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Anyway, we are a small development firm that works with design partners and other clients, we build software for them, and we have a CMS platform that we tailor to their needs too. This is a big reason why the environment at my office is different than yours (we have a team of about 8 right now). Each person has to pull his weight for things to turn out well and we each recognize it, so many of us try to get to the level of expert in our own specialties. If expertise is recognized or rewarded then it provides an incentive to for self cultivation.
If you don't mind me asking, what is the specific area of software development your group works in?
Being married and having kids can be a benefit. I've found a greater need to manage my time and narrow my focus, being more decisive about what I'll do than dive all into it.
Before I was married, I'd go off on tangents, code for a few days, then look at the project and go meh. For me, I waste less time because my time is more precious.
Zed Shaw has a good discussion of why and good videos on why at his set of blogs: http://www.zedshaw.com/essays/
Meanwhile, get all the sleep you can (with that kid on the way), do NOT start a startup now (with a kid on the way), but start job hunting on the side for something you like better.
As to the coworker issue, realize that you'll be having those "diaper-changing" discussions soon enough. It's actually quite refreshing.
As to self-betterment I'm in TOTAL agreement. I don't typically stay with a company where I'm not challenged intellectually. There are two things that facter into my place to work:
* Quality of Life * Professional Development
Salary is really a non issue at this point. I've taken positions where I've made less or lateral moves just because of an increase in quality of life and working with smart people. Unfortunately, now is not the time for you to be making that move. Focus on your family. When your spawn is about 6 months, most of the big issues (like possible cholic and weird sleep patterns) will have passed. You'll have to deal with teething but each iteration gets easier for the kid.
If you plan on having a second kid, talk with your wife about planning that around your entreprenureal goals. In our case we ended up having our second when our first was 21 months old. Now that he's 6 months old, I actually have free time again to work on side projects after hours. Just realize that unless you have local family support, two young children are very difficult for one person to manage.
The point I'm trying to make is, speak to your boss and explain how you feel. They can try to change things to suit how you would like to work.
Ultimately I'd like to be working for a start up, but deep down I know I'd be frustrated unless it was my own start up - so I plan to work, build up money from the job (while bootstrapping ideas / learning new tech / reading great info) then launch my own startup in a coworking hub where I can speak with like minded people daily.
What happened was quite the opposite: the codebase was very inconsistent and there were lots of parts nobody understood. All these conflicts and lack of integration also lead to a lot of bugs which management thought were just part of software engineering. Micromanagement was also rampant and caused significant mental stress.
What I am trying to get across is that having overly enthusiastic co-workers is not always a good thing either (the grass is always greener on the other side.) Don't listen too much to what other people are saying about their jobs. Try to figure out what you are missing (I was missing the need to be part of a community and do innovative stuff) and try to find a way to get that (I got involved in an open-source project where I found I could contribute and be part of the community and do good things.) If you do good things long enough, you will be noticed and eventually land one of those rare jobs where you are paid to do what you love (gotta put in the wood before you can get heat from the fire)
You can find the book here: http://www.amazon.com/Leading-Change-John-P-Kotter/dp/087584...
And he has a blog here: http://blogs.hbr.org/kotter/
I did... 12 days ago.
I had numerous discussions with my manager (even a few partners) over 6 months who ignored them, under the fear that the CTO would attempt to stick me in another group (which would cause some partners to raise hell), because any other group would welcome me with open arms. Knowing this, and that I probably had no real way out of the group I was in, I did the only thing that made sense to me:
I quit.
I would not recommend this course of action considering your other obligations, but ultimately, it's probably the solution that will work best for you. You need to find people who are passionate about their work as you are, as they're the group you'll best be happy working with. The only difference is you should ensure for a smooth transition with no breaks in income, instead of the route I took (which I'll admit, was a dick move at the time).
I can't content myself to just cruise along, either, but I'd be annoyed if someone tried to change that about me. Therefore I have to show them the same respect: if they want to just cruise along and take the easy way, that's their right to do so.
I'm being too negative though, lets say that really no one in the company is interested in going the extra mile nor staying relevant in the industry, TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT! If no one some off as the "wow I can't let this employee go!", then the position is right there for you to take. Make something of it and take advantage of your situation. That being said, you're having a child soon... let us know if you still think everyone should keep up the pace after the baby is born ;)
Keep learning, growing, connecting. If you do, one day you will be doing whatever job you want to do - something you are passionate about, and your co-workers will be doing the same job for the same money.
Just submitted "How to Take On a Passion Project When You Have a Job"
http://www.good.is/post/working-better-how-to-take-on-a-pass...
