What’s the best career development advice you’ve received?
VP - Head of Information Technology in Software, 1,001 - 5,000 employees
The biggest lesson I learned in growing my career has to do with brevity. I'll never forget this situation with my boss where he said, "Executive staff would really like to know what's going on IT. Can you please write up a summary and plan to send it out every other week." When I wrote up a summary, he said, "Nobody's going to read this thing." I had put my heart and soul into writing up everything you would need to know about IT. But to give me some advice, he said, "Let me explain my day to you. I'm flying at 50,000 ft and you're asking me to fly at 5,000 ft, which means I have to change context all the way down to that level. I might do that for you, but I probably won't. And nobody else on the executive staff will do it for you either. You have to bring things up to my level because I change context all day and the cost of switching is really high."That was the best advice I'd received in years. I realized that I have to have empathy for these people who are super busy and only have 30 seconds to read my email. It comes down to telling them a lot less in that email but it takes a lot longer to write. If somebody says I have 30 minutes with executive staff next week, I know that's going to require four to six hours of preparation. I have to keep asking myself, “What's going to make sense to them?” Because it all makes sense to me.
CISO in Software, 10,001+ employees
One of the best and most important was from my first manager at Microsoft:The most valuable people are those who help others be successful. It is not about only making yourself successful.
Content you might like
Director of IT, Self-employed
One thing I do is include them in the meetings about the changes that will take place and get their opinion. I also lay out the pros and cons of the changes and how it will effect us as a team moving forward.Quarterly14%
Twice per year46%
Annually31%
Every 3 years7%
Every 5 years1%
Other (please share below)1%
242 PARTICIPANTS
Community User in Software, 11 - 50 employees
organized a virtual escape room via https://www.puzzlebreak.us/ - even though his team lost it was a fun subtitue for just a "virtual happy hour"
And I did. At one company I was at, every six months I asked, "Can I be a senior IT manager?" And they'd say, "Yeah, sure. Of course." Six months after that I’d ask to be associate director. I worked at this particular company for six years and by the time I left, I was a senior director. That’s when another biotech company hired me as a VP. So the lesson is: if you don't ask, you don't get it.