A Bit of a Delay

I’m not following my own advice for regular updates, and I apologize. Life and work have been rather busy this last few months with issues in both areas.

I’m dropping this note to let you know I’m still thinking about the blog and I have some drafts and ideas to move forward. I’ll look to update things more regularly from this point forward.

A Fresh Start

That was the title of this slide:

It's from a Baseline slideshow that talks about staffing across the last 6 years and how even though many companies that shrunk their staffs after 2007 have hired since, they haven't necessarily hired the same people back.

That's an interesting statistic to me. It does mean a third of the companies did hire back old staff, which isn't a bad number. In baseball, that's all star territory for hits. If you have some knowledge of the systems, you might get hired back.

However two thirds of the companies did not hire back staff. There could be a number of reasons for this:

• The company is crappy and workers didn't want to come back
• They let the wrong people go, and those people found other jobs
• People already had a job and didn't want to come back to a company that had let them go
• Their skills weren't worth hiring back

There could be other reasons as well. However from the employee standpoint, unless you are in one of the first two categories, you would want the company to make an attempt to hire you back. Especially if you needed a job. It's not that you might need one when the company is hiring right now, but you might need one in five years, and institutional memory can be long. The last thing you want is for your application to be discarded without consideration because of bad feelings or poor performance.

You can't leave every job on your own terms, but you can do a professional job, and ensure that the decision to let you go is a hard one. You can also ensure that if you decide to leave, that they want you back and would hire you back.

The grass isn't always greener on the other side, and having a company that would be happy to hire you back is a great safety net for your career.

Asking for a Raise

I ran across a few tips on how you might approach your boss for a raise this year. It's been years since some people got raises or bonuses, but more people are reporting that they are receiving them this year, so maybe it's time you asked.

The important thing is in the first section. Have you done anything that deserves a raise? Anything out of the ordinary? Lots of people expect some kind of raise for doing their job, but that's a losing strategy for the business, and for you. If you are just doing the job, at some point it makes more sense to hire someone else and train them rather than continue to give you raises.

The advice in asking is good. Schedule the meeting, have your documentation and make a request. All that depends on you having done something, and documenting that you've done it. That's what most of this blog is about. Doing something and documenting it.

Give

In the volunteering portion of my talk, I give some reasons why volunteering is a good idea. I see this as doing more than you need to do, without being asked. When you volunteer to help others, whether this is work related or not, it shows:

• you are motivated
• you choose to do things without being told
• you want to make something better
• you are willing to help
• you can do more than you have to.

There are probably more reasons, but those are some that I give.

I ran across a piece on giving, showing others believe in this advice as well. Giving is a positive exercise, and while you will feel good, it shows that you are someone that is less likely to take more out of job/life than you put back. You will likely be an asset more than you are a burden.

Think about giving at some point in your life. It might not be now, but I do believe that you should give back to others when you can. At work, however, you ought to think about doing this quarterly, helping others when you can.

Standing Out

I saw this post on 10 Tips for Programmers to stand out at work. It’s a good piece if you’re a programmer and want to move up in your company, or get more money/responsibility/whatever from your current employer.

However it’s also a great post if you want a new job. The same types of things you would do inside your company are valuable in presenting yourself to prospective employers. All of these items are good ways to show that you are really a professional.

A Journey

We are all on a constant journey, but the best of us push forward regularly, even if that means finding another job.

Read this piece on How to Keep Your Best Programmers. I found it interesting and I agree with lots of it. However the important thing here is to think about what your journey is and work towards it.

To help you on your journey, document your progress in a blog of some sort. Network with others to find opportunities or ideas that might help you move, and have all of that ready as your brand for the next step of your travels.

A Reset Button for your Brand

We don’t have it, but I think this piece has a good idea in some ways. Perhaps we should have a reset button for children when they become adults. Often the things we might do at 15, or 17, are not the things we would do when we are 21 or 22 and entering the workforce. The things we might do before we enter military service are often not what we would do later.

We might, but in that case, does a brand reset matter? We’d just rebuild the same brand.

We don’t have those things, however, and in the technology world (and perhaps others soon), our brands, our reputations, and our history will follow us around. If that’s a good brand, we may have more, or better, opportunities. If it’s a poor brand, we may have few.

Do good work. Do professional work. Build a positive brand.