Davai Blog

If you are hoping for a long and fruitful career in IT, you should start picturing yourself as a continuously absorbing sponge. Everyone starts off in a particular area, be it as a C coder, an open source web developer, or a COBOL programmer (shout out to all four of you out there! I previously worked with COBOL, so I feel your pain), but within five years most move into some sort of managerial position. As a manager, you are going to be dealing with people who specialize in a different field than yours, and you will still be required to speak their language, but not vice versa.

According to my CV, I speak “some” Spanish. This is of course a slight exaggeration, but there is “some” truth to that. I can’t put together two simple sentences without making up a few of the words (el cliento quiero una web sita), but if Mr. Rodriguez comes to me in panic mode, I can tell that he is upset about the server being down and I can let him know that Bubba trabaja to fixar el problema. In these kinds of situations, my Spanglish allows me to do my job.

As a manager, you need to know the Spanglish version of everything going on in your industry. If you have been coding in Java all these years, and now suddenly you must deal with C++, database, and online marketing experts as a manager, you have to make sure you don’t look clueless when they try to demonstrate something or ask for your opinion. You don’t need to be aware of all the details, but you must appear to know what you’re talking about.

I’m (again) going to be honest. I have been coding in C# for a number of years, and many consider me to be an expert, but I haven’t touched the stuff in more than a year. I’m pretty sure that today the “expert” in me can’t put together a bug free “Hello World!”, but if I am managing a project in C#, I can keep track of what’s going on and make appropriate decisions. The coders won’t think I’m a doofus, either, which is a plus.

Story time. I was recently demoing an information system at McGill University, and I had the chance to talk to a number of Computer Science people from various universities. I mingled and had little chit-chats with people on topics ranging from what’s cool about Python to how it is dumb that students in software don’t really learn about databases. I didn’t know most of what was talked about, but I knew enough to sound like I know the stuff. At the end of the day, I walked out of there with an offer to teach Introduction to Information Systems at UQAM (Université du Québec à Montréal). No joke. I am still studying the stuff myself, but nobody knew that, so I said I’ll consider it. Professor Alex, anyone?

Anyway, the point is that you should stay in touch with the world. Don’t focus on one field and work towards being the greatest of all time. There will always be someone better (unless you are the greatest of all time, then ignore what I say), so you should instead focus on being able to work with the greatest of all time and do your job as manager.