Hey everyone and welcome to Developer Team.
My name is Jonathan Cottrell and my goal on the show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective and purpose in their careers.
We've talked a lot about resumes on this show and there's a good reason for that.
A resume does tend to be the first step, the kind of top line item for getting your foot in the door at a new job.
But it also, you know, this resume-driven development, as we've coined this before, tends to also fit well with improving your career outcomes.
All right.
So we're going to talk a little bit about how you can go about this in a more effective manner in your career.
But I want to focus in not just on the importance of your resume, which we've talked about this, the fact that resumes, they are one part of the process of getting a new offer, looking for a job.
Of course, It's almost equally, or perhaps more important that you develop the relationships necessary to get referrals.
And so resumes are not the only way in, but they tend to be the first way that you get filtered out.
All right.
So we focus on the resume, not because the resume itself is so critical, but rather because the outcomes you require in order to have a good resume are will build your career.
So what does that mean?
It means that in order for you to build a good resume without having to do a bunch of gymnastics and, you know, kind of taking credit for things that ultimately probably you shouldn't take credit for, instead to build a good resume, you actually need to have impact.
You actually need to do things in your current role, or do things in your side projects and your hustles or whatever it is that you are building your resume from.
That show real impact.
All right.
So we've talked a little bit about this before in the past about how do you show impact on a resume?
Broadly speaking, this is proof.
This is proof.
You want to be able to explain what did you do?
What did I impact?
Right.
And show the numbers.
This metrics is some kind of measurement, some kind of proof that the thing that you're saying you did happened.
Right.
And the proof is, of course, people can't really easily go and validate these numbers.
But if they ask you about it, you pressure test the assertions that you've made.
It's likely that they can uncover if you're lying.
But in order to have proof on the table, you need to actually accomplish these things now.
One of the problems that I've seen as a manager and also as an engineer is that very often our work doesn't really line up super well with the proof.
Why is that?
Most of the time, this is the result of not setting clear goals.
All right.
So this whole picture that we're trying to paint here is when you focus on improving your resume.
You are focusing on showing how you met important goals.
If you do nothing else, if you take nothing else away from this episode, take this away.
That when you improve your resume, you do so by focusing on big, important goals that are measurable.
You want to be able to show that you met the goal.
So how do you get there?
This is a fundamental kind of practice.
Okay, with your manager and your next one-on-one, or maybe the next one, or the next one.
As soon as your manager has time to talk about this and can clear their schedule long enough to discuss this with you.
Talk about the measurable goals that you are tracking towards.
Now most of you are probably going to have this discussion and the goal that your manager is going to give you initially is to deliver X project by Y date.
That is in almost every role I've ever held as an engineer or as a manager.
That was the way that the company kind of sets goals, deliver some project scope by some project date.
And there's nothing necessarily wrong with that goal, but imagine putting that on a resume.
What does that communicate to an outsider, to an onlooker?
All right.
So In three to six months, the same thing would be true for an internal manager.
This is why it's so important to get more specific about the measurability and impact of your goals.
The impact is not that you delivered something.
If that was true, then we could deliver whatever we wanted to.
Why is it that you're doing what you are doing?
What is the characteristic of that project that makes it important?
What business impact is it gonna have?
Tell me the metrics that you can use to determine what impact this has had.
Now, if you're listening closely, you'll recognize that there's a little bit of risk in this for you.
There's a little bit of risk because what if the project fails?
What if we go through all this work And even though we delivered excellently, the project fails?
There is risk there, right?
The business impact that you would otherwise want to outline on your resume is not there.
There are other metrics that you can focus on, although business impact is top line.
It's going to be the most impactful thing you can put on your resume.
It's going to be the most impactful thing you can talk about to your future managers when you're having career conversations.
What else can you put on there?
Well, if you needed to cut scope, if you have to find a clever solution, a clever technical solution, if you need to reduce, if you're a manager and you want to focus on reducing cycle time for your teams, if you want to focus on internal culture, these are all things that you can derive goals around.
So this connection here is, it's kind of the total system that we're talking about here is in order to have a thriving career, which we're proxying to a good resume.
But truthfully, this is really about having a thriving career.
In a role.
In order to have that It's critical it's necessary to be able to measure your impact in the work that you're doing.
The most likely way you can measure impact on the work that you're doing is to set goals and then track towards them.
The most likely way you're going to set goals and track towards them is by having a critical conversation with your manager as soon as possible about those goals.
If your manager is not able to set those goals, if they can only tell you that the only goal they have is to deliver the project.
Track that goal, but also propose your own.
There's nothing to stop you from doing that.
In fact most managers, myself included, if a report comes to me and they say I have a goal for myself, I have a goal that I think is important, that I think is going to advance my career, This is going to probably impress your manager to begin with, but it's also going to kickstart that conversation where the manager may not have all of the domain knowledge even that you have as an IC on a project, right.
If you have that knowledge, you bring it to the table.
You say here's the goal that I'm tracking towards your manager.
Very well, may just adopt that goal and hold you accountable to it, right?
So...
The important kind of total feedback loop here is your manager.
If they're like me, if they're like most managers, they want you to succeed.
They want you to grow.
They want you to get a promotion.
They want good things for you.
If my ICs are succeeding, that reflects well on me as a manager.
So there's kind of mutual benefit when you succeed.
So your manager is interested in your success.
How do you succeed?
You build your career off of these measurable impact, off the measurable impact that you would otherwise put on a resume.
This is why we say resume-driven development is a completely valid way of thinking about setting goals for yourself.
Because most of the time, those goals are going to be beneficial to the company, beneficial to your manager and, ultimately and most importantly for this conversation, beneficial to you in your current role and in future roles.
So have that conversation as soon as you can with your manager.
Explain that you want to set goals to ensure that you are successful in your current role, that you want to be able to measure those goals, that you want to show the impact of your work and you want to show it on their behalf.
This conversation could totally change the way that your manager looks at your relationship, but also it can change the course of your career.
If you genuinely put effort into this specific thing of measuring goals, tracking towards them and actually accomplishing them.
Putting something down, keeping track of this is a critical part.
If you have some major impact but you don't even remember what it was And that becomes kind of useless for you in conversations about what you're capable of.
Right.
You could say, well, I worked on some project.
Well, what did you do?
I just kind of I submitted code.
Right.
I was a critical part of the conversation.
Well, everybody on a project may be a critical part of it.
What did you do specifically?
What value did you bring to the table?
Your job.
Your future jobs are dependent on you being able to tell that story.
How do you tell that story?
The best way is by showing proof, showing proof, having those measurable goals so you can put them on the table.
Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea.
Hopefully this was a challenging subject for you.
If you haven't done this, it can be very easy to go many years without setting any goals at all.
Most of the time, we're just kind of waiting on somebody to tell us that we're doing okay.
We're waiting on someone to give us a positive performance review.
We're waiting on feedback rather than proactively going out and saying I'm going to track this goal for myself.
I'm going to take control of my career.
That is my charge for you today.
If you're not in control of your career, no one else will be.
You're going to get taken advantage of.
People will.
Ultimately, they may want to work with you because you're an enjoyable person to work with.
You may be good at your job.
They may recognize that.
But ultimately your career progress, your career success is mostly dependent on your action or inaction.
Thank you so much for listening.
And until next time, enjoy your tea.
