Optimize Your Support Network for Growth

In Chapter 2, we discussed how to choose the best path for learning, training, and certifications. In Chapter 3, we will focus on how to optimize your support network for growth. The areas we will cover include taking responsibility for your career, finding support for what you need, holding crucial conversations, developing good negotiation skills, and handling feedback, including criticism and lack of support. There are many people that can help you grow in your career – parents, bosses, leaders, friends, and significant others – but the key word here is “help.” They can be awesome assets and supporters, but they can’t advance your career for you! This chapter will show how you can hold the crucial conversations you need to grow while taking responsibility for your career.

The agenda of this chapter involves the following main topics:

• Taking responsibility for your career
• Finding support for...

Taking responsibility for your career

Your career is YOUR career. The only person that is fully responsible for everything that happens for your growth and for your opportunities is you.

That does not mean that you shouldn’t request or accept help. It just means that you should see other people that are willing to help as helpers. They can help you advance and they can make your path easier or faster. But the reality is, no matter whether you receive help or not, it’s always your responsibility.

What does it mean to take responsibility?

The most basic thing about taking responsibility is to stop blaming others since the most common way to avoid responsibility is to blame others for difficulties or challenges in life.

My company doesn’t give me opportunities.

My boss doesn’t send me to events.

My colleagues don’t help me.

Or even my significant other is not supporting me.

The economy. The inflation. The government.

All of these are ways to avoid responsibility and blame other people for our problems.

That is not to say that there are no difficulties. Of course, our life is full of challenges and difficulties, and often our friends, family, and even company can be a hindrance or an obstacle to our growth. And yes, inflation, the government, and other regulations are out of our control.

But every time we consider that it is their fault and not our responsibility, we end up not being able to do anything. If it is them, there is nothing...

Finding support for what you need

Keeping our responsibility in mind, the reality is that we do not advance alone. Having help and support will allow you to advance faster. That’s why it’s very important to find the support you need.

Finding support is, in most cases, not finding someone that will do things for you, but the right people that can guide and direct you to the best solution, which you will work on implementing yourself.

There are many ways to look for help. You can reach out to friends and colleagues, ask for help from family, get support from your boss, and even request official support from your company.

Those are the normal ways.

Today, the internet is a great place to find help, even from people you don’t know. You can follow experts. You can read books, subscribe to blogs, and watch YouTube videos:

• Read books
• E-learning
• Attend conferences
• Subscribe to blogs
• Watch YouTube videos

When you follow people...

Asking for help

When you ask for help, you are asking the other person to take time from what they want to do, to help you do what you want to do. It is reasonable that people prefer to do what they want, instead of what you want!

So, when you ask for help, try to help the other person to help you.

That may sound strange because you are the one trying to get help. How can you possibly help the other person?

Make sure that the other person has a number of reasons to help you and the least amount of resistance.

When you ask someone for help, make clear that you just need them for a few minutes. They won’t need to spend a long time or make a big effort to help you. Ask for five minutes from them, so they can point the way or help you unblock.

Also, you may want to try a “no” oriented question. People have less resistance to saying “no” than “yes.” Experiment with “Would it be a ridiculous idea if I asked you to help...

Holding crucial conversations

The best help someone can give you is to have a deep conversation with you, about your current situation and where you want to go. If you have a chance to have a conversation like this, not only should you take it, but make sure you make the best of it.

The more you understand what the person is telling you, what the tip is, or how to apply it, the better results you’re going to have. So, when asking for help, make sure that you ask lots of questions.

Many times, I’ve had people approach me and ask how to do a specific thing and I tell them and can see they understand what I’m saying, but they still don’t see how to apply it, or even don’t believe it is possible.

Usually, the reason is that they don’t see the connection to their current situation.

I may linger for a bit, to see if they will ask follow-up questions, and most times there aren’t any. So, I ask questions instead, to try to uncover...

Developing good negotiation skills

For your career growth, negotiation is one of those skills that are fundamental but largely neglected. This is probably because it is a skill not usually associated with technical jobs, and only thought about when we are negotiating salaries.

But negotiation is a skill that we use daily, every time we have priorities and expectations that involve other people.

We negotiate even during our free time – where we will eat on the weekends, where we will spend our vacations, the responsibilities we have at home, how much time we can spend with friends, and what we will do during that time. When we are working, we negotiate what feature needs to be implemented, who will implement it, and how it will be implemented. When we negotiate our career development, we determine which jobs we will take, what salaries we will be paid, which projects we will work on, which responsibilities are ours, which mentors we will have, what bonus we will receive...

Feedback – dealing with criticism

When we talk about negotiation, we have to talk about feedback.

Not because feedback is a type of negotiation, but because feedback is an important part of working with other people and trying to achieve results together. To work together, we need to correct each other.

Also, feedback is very important for self-improvement. It’s incredibly hard for us to judge ourselves on the things we do since many things we do are not clear and objective. Receiving feedback from other people, such as our peers, and our bosses is extremely important for us to understand whether we’re on the right track.

But feedback also hurts. Not positive feedback, of course. That is always fun to receive. Negative feedback shows that we have been wrong or mistaken, and that hurts, but negative feedback is crucial.

If feedback is important, then negative feedback is even more important! It may be nice and fun to know that we are right. But it can...

Interviews

Nikita Koselev

While writing this book, we spoke with Nikita Koselev about his experiences living and working as a developer just outside of London. Nikita shared with us the ways in which his community has supported him. In this interview transcription, Nikita introduces himself and provides some context for his current situation, before delving into the topic of building a community of his own as a support network and the impact it has had on his life.

Q: What led you to get into computer science or to become a developer?

A: Oh, well, two things. One is that I’m into computers and anything to do with them, and finance. And the second thing is food because I’m from an extremely poor background. From the age of 15, my family could not afford to buy yogurts. So, they were buying chocolates 3 months past due, and stuff like that. And my dream was: I will become a software developer, and then I will eat only yogurts because that’s the selection...

Summary

In this chapter, we discussed how to take responsibility for your career and how to take action. We shared how to actively ask for help, how to listen and ask good questions, how to have crucial conversations, how to effectively negotiate with other professionals, and how to take feedback in the right way. Using these skills to optimize your support network for growth will enable your technical career to grow and thrive.

In the next chapter, we will share how to acquire the right soft and hard skills deliberately. In your technical career, you will need both soft and hard skills in order to succeed and continue to advance.