You're A Contractor

"If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands." --Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

If you're not reading Hayim Macabee's Effective Software Design blog, you probably ought to be. His Continuous Learning post is an important read and got me thinking. The article is about how important it is for software developers to never stop learning and improving their skills. Which is true and something worth reminding people about periodically. But as I read, it occurred to me that continuously learning is only half the answer.

I started out in ColdFusion professionally, back when ColdFusion was actually a profession. (Sorry, Ben) There are a myriad of reasons why ColdFusion isn't a viable career option, some fair, some born of real misconceptions, and all irrelevant, for practical purposes, to a developer who has realized that he's in a dead end specialty. The reality of the situation was that I was working in a rapidly shrinking circle and it was time to get out.

Learning a new language isn't difficult. Getting someone to hire you for it is something else altogether. My employer at the time was generally unwilling to pay for training and even less willing to put new technologies or techniques to use. I had to rely on personal projects, online learning, a ton of reading, and the one Java bootcamp I could convince my company to send me to. I eventually found myself in a position where I was competent in both C# and Java and felt I could handle a development position using either language. But with no professional experience in either, getting a recruiter- much less a hiring manager- to agree was a challenge. And so I found myself in a Joseph Heller Catch-22. I couldn't get the professional experience I needed to get out of ColdFusion without first getting out of ColdFusion.

I have a lot of people to thank for helping me break out of that career black hole. A recruiter who knew me well enough to trust me when I said "Just get me the interview. I promise you I won't embarrass you". A hiring manager who believed me when I said "Learning C# is easy and you don't have to teach me how to be a software developer." A technical lead that didn't believe me when I said that and sat for almost an hour making me prove it. And finally (Warning- blatant sappy moment) a dad that taught me to bet big on myself.

The problem I had at the time was that the way I was viewed professionally did not match what I needed it to in order to advance my career where I wanted it to go. It was +Tom Searcy at Hunt Big Sales who put the problem, and the solution, in sharp focus for me. Everyone is a contractor. With that simple phrase, he put into focus everything that had been a problem for me when I was breaking out of the ColdFusion world. Ultimately, I work for myself, you work for yourself, and it's up to you to make sure that how you are seen professionally is how you want to be seen. This isn't about "job hopping" and this isn't about always being prepared to switch companies. This is about making sure that you can direct your career the way you want to direct it.

You direct and take control of your career path by both learning what you need to know and by getting seen being the kind of professional you want to be. Neither step is useful without the other. It hasn't been a good idea to try and bluff your way into an IT career for a long, long time now. And it does little good (Trust me!) to know how to handle the position you want if no one sees you as competent. You must do both. Hayim Macabee has outlined some excellent ways of handling the former. Thankfully, there are now more ways than ever to manage the latter.

Social Media

Not so much Facebook as Google+ and Linkedin, although that might just be my personal preferences. If you want to be seen as a skilled software developer, start by looking at the information people can readily gain by looking you up. Does it show you participating in software development discussions? Are you interacting with others? Asking questions? Offering advice? Joining, or even starting, conversations?

No? Then why not? A duck doesn't have to tell people that he's a duck. He quacks.

Projects

It used to be that recruiters and "resume specialists" would tell you to leave personal projects off your resume because they were no more relevant than hobbies in the job search world. Whether or not they still do, personal projects can be made relevant to how you are viewed in the industry. We all know that developers learn by doing. Now, it's easy to show people that you're both learning and doing. Got a project you're working on? Put the code on GitHub. Tell people what you did, why you did it, and ask them to use it. Is anyone going to hire you over a project you put out on GitHub or BitBucket? No. Probably not. But if you use these tools, then you are getting seen acting as the kind of software developer you want to be. It's part of managing your professional perception.

Blog

Go start one. Now. No- wait. Finish reading mine, then go start one. Be seen publicly talking about the things you want to be known for. Then tell me about it, and I'll put it on the list of things I read. And then I'll write about the stuff I think about when I read what you have to say. Talk about the subjects on which you want to be known as an authority. Then go talk to other people on their blogs.

Software Developers have to be continuously learning. But that's half the issue. If you want to be a duck, it's time to get out in public and quack.