A great question that we always are asked when talking with people all over Central and South America is "What advice do you give to people who are just starting their careers?"

My mind races back to my own start. For context, that was before online shopping carts, subscription fees (to anything other than the BMG Music club), smart phones, and almost before the creation of the Python programming language. I got a little lucky and accepted a job out of college as a Java Developer for a telecommunications company.  Even though I had never written Java code, I was happy to get a chance to learn. My first assignment was to help to build a monitoring platform to track network device performance. The platform would be on display 24x7 in a NOC (Network Operations Center). Users of the platform would have the ability to troubleshoot devices that had performance issues and potentially fix them from the tool. Kind of like an internal version of today's NewRelic or DataDog. 

I was a developer and so I assumed that my responsibilities on this first assignment of my career was to ‘write code.’ I couldn’t have been more wrong. The very first planning meeting I attended had Gantt charts on display and Project Managers to manage the Gantt charts. I remember trying to understand what the project was all about. I was asked how long certain tasks would take. I was asked to design solutions to problems that I didn’t understand. The Project Managers were complaining because the project was already late and the stakeholders were already threatening to cut the budget. All of this was completely foreign to me, and a very hard introduction into the world of building custom solutions.

But it was also a gift, a gift I didn’t realize at the time of that very first planning session. What was my actual job? It was to learn, adapt and provide value, and that's the advice I give when asked the question.

• Learn - new technologies, systems and ways of working
• Adapt - to teammates, process and changing landscapes
• Provide Value - given the items to learn and the items to adapt to, what is something that I can do to provide value and actually solve a problem for my team?

The size and shape of the items learned and adapted to have changed over the years. If you’re doing it correctly, its an ever expanding list. These actions are table stakes and if you’re not expanding, you’re not going far.

As for the ‘provide value’ aspect? Thats the thing that will make you a leader and someone that gains the respect of teammates. Have fun with it, its a choice, a journey, and its not hard. Even sometimes bringing the donuts is all that it takes.