The Advice I Would Have Given a Young Me in Tech.
Writing a Talk About Lessons Learned From a 20 Year Tech Career
This past week, I've been working on a talk to give at "The Pasifika Tech Network" meetup this Thursday.
I wasn't sure what I was going to talk about when I organised and set the date (May 18th), but after a deep and pretty vulnerable discussion on our Discord server about salaries and careers, I knew I had to talk about how to navigate a tech career and share the lessons and advice I've gathered from my 20-year tech career.
I really felt for the people in my network who shared their experiences and the challenges they face with current salary negotiations, family responsibilities, and pressures at work.
Getting into tech isn’t easy, especially as a Pasifika person and a minority in the industry. It's not an industry familiar to our community, and we lack role models whose paths we can follow. We don't have the alumni network of Computer Science from the University of Auckland (at least I didn’t) to provide guidance on the tech career road-map. On top of that, being young and inexperienced, without guidance from people we trusted, and now you’re stacking a bunch of already “hard things” on top of each other.
And even once you're in, you’re still the odd one out.
You have to read the room and make sure you don't unintentionally make anyone feel uncomfortable. I remember someone accusing me of being "intimidating" when they were asked why they hadn't followed up on an issue with me in a ticket before closing it. We had never exchanged any angry or heated words. I've been mistaken for the coffee machine cleaner while waiting to make a coffee, asked for ID coming back from the bathroom by a lady I had literally just been in a meeting with, and stared at with disbelief when people I've been helping on a complex technical issue over email come see me in person.
All of this happened in the tech industry, where I worked with "engineer" in my job title.
I don't rehash these to try them in the court of public opinion, and this probably isn't the most enlightened or progressive view - but “shit happens”, and this is real life. So, I get it.
I just wish I had a bit of a heads up on some of this at the time, y'know?
To be honest, I get tired of the inequalities and disadvantages perpetuating through generation after generation, and the best we can do is conduct more research and studies to tell us what we already know. I read a story on Twitter about a Pasifika PhD candidate who overheard a mother giving advice to her daughter as she was applying for jobs after graduation. The amount of insight and knowledge the mother was able to share, based on her own experience, was awesome for her daughter. It made me realise that we often overlook the fact that inter-generational wealth isn't just about money and the opportunities it brings. It’s also the knowledge of employment systems and navigating it all successfully. This knowledge is an enormous, unquantifiable advantage.
The sheer lack of guidance, knowledge, and mentorship is a significant disadvantage - for anyone sure - but I feel more so for Pasifika in the tech space.
How do I know?
Looking back over my career to write this upcoming talk, I see several periods where if I could have been there to give "past me" some advice and guidance, I would have gotten here faster and with a lot less wear and tear. I never negotiated my salary until very late in my career. I didn't even know that mock interviews were a thing people did to prepare for the real thing. I stayed on the same salary for years without any increase, despite taking on more responsibilities. There was no additional compensation. There were so many points early in my career where some guidance or just someone who knew the game and wanted to help would have put me years ahead of where I was.
Luckily for me, someone eventually did.
The difference to my career before and after that point is literally night and day. His advice, references, and guidance set me up for my first six-figure salary in just one move. He showed me the contracting game, how to set up a company for tax and GST, negotiate contracts and rates, which technologies were in high demand in different companies, and how to navigate managers, executives, and other engineers.
I say "lucky" because it was sheer luck he was contracting to a company I was working for, so we worked together, and he knew what I could do. But that wasn't enough because he didn't have to help me out at all. We weren't in the same networks, he's kiwi, and for anyone who knows him, he's a pretty grumpy bastard who doesn't suffer fools. He didn't owe me anything. But he changed my career, my financial situation, and, by extension, my life.
My career experience has taught me many valuable lessons, and the number one, most impactful piece of advice I can give to advance your career is to find a mentor, a guide, someone you look up to in your field. Look for someone with a resume and real-world experience that you aspire to. Get them to take you under their wing and mentor you, or at the very least, learn from them in any way you can. Of course, there is still a lot of hard work that needs to be done. I have spent countless hours learning and building tech skills across a lot of areas. However, with a mentor or guide, you can direct your focus and energy more effectively and achieve a greater return on investment for your time and effort.
I’m sure you’ve heard this advice a lot - “get a mentor!” - so I don’t know what to tell you other that I’m living proof, the same me, with all my tech skills and passion, would most likely not be where I am now, without one.
Probably more importantly - for some of the young parents in my network who are striving to succeed in the tech industry, finding more efficient ways to exchange value in their limited time will make balancing a family and a successful tech career more feasible.
I have more tech career advice for my talk, but I’ll save that for another newsletter.
Thanks for reading!
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Learning
Things I’m actively studying or learning this week…
Studying for the ‘AWS Certified Security - Speciality’ certificate - 64% through the course: DNSSEC using Route53.
Building
Things I’m building or working on this week…
Hashicorp Terraform + Proxmox to deploy VMs (in my home lab) - Didn’t work on this…maaaaaaybe this week.
Hashicorp Packer + Proxmox for Cloud-init VM images for the Home lab, this week- finally got this working…
Interesting Reads
Articles or other writing that stood out to me this week…
Another one from Abi — great article, builds on all the other things that affect developers and producing high quality code.
Community
Other projects in community I’m working on…
Pasifika Tech Education Charity - Providing Tech Learning Opportunities for the Pasifika Community — Term 2 “Tech Workshops” kick off this week!
Pasifika Tech Network - A Network for Pasifika Tech Professionals & Learners — we’ve got a Tech Meetup coming up May 18th!