* 11/19/2006 update: Shoutouts to Career Intensity readers. Welcome!
This past week I started as a security researcher at my company’s R&D dept. a.k.a. Websense Security Labs or known more internally as Security & Technology Research. As with any new job or career, the question is not whether or not there will be a learning curve, but how steep the learning curve will be. Hypothetically, even with a job whose essential functions you already know like the back of your hand, there will still be some variables outside of your control, such as getting to know the people you will be working with. The classic story of the rockstar programmer who can’t get along with all his peers and eventually pisses everyone else off comes to mind — which for the record, isn’t a cool thing to do.
In my case as an example, I’m trying to figure out departmental boundaries lines for task coordination, so that effort isn’t duplicated and nothing is missed because each thought the other person was doing it. How many times have you heard “Oh, but I thought you were working on that?”
Anyway, I’m not going to pretend I’m a know-it-all. The one thing competent people in my field can smell from a mile away is people who fake to know it all. I won’t go into the excruciating details of how people cover up their incompetence or personal insecurity with layers of carefully crafted politically-correct-but-not-quite nonsense because I’d rather talk about something else that isn’t a waste of time — like adaptation skills.
I like to pride myself in my polymorphic adaptation skills. “Polymorphic” is a term borrowed from computer science; “adaptation”, referring to the ability to just adapt. Aside from sounding really cool (heh), it just really means that you adapt to whatever environment you suddenly find yourself to be in — be it the deserts of Sahara or tall forests of the Amazon. You morph into whatever you need to survive in the hotzone you are dropped in, and morph as many times and take as many forms as necessary (wear as many hats), to get the job done right.
Here’s my checklist to address the inevitable learning curve with any new career:
- Be upfront of what you know, how well you know what you know, and what you don’t know. Admitting what you don’t know and what you know little about isn’t a sign of weakness, but an acknowledgement of your shortcoming. Nobody is perfect, everyone is bound to lack something in some area, and admitting your weakness is the first step. You won’t take the time to address a problem, if you don’t acknowledge that the problem exist. Personally, I think it’s also a sign of confidence — that you are not shy and insecure about your shortcomings, and you are willing to take on your problems head on (vs. covering it up with political nonsense and pretending to know everything). Pretending and covering up is actually a serious problem for the company. Imagine you got away convincing others of your ability to build a rocket, and they put you in charge of building a rocket that will fly all of mankind to a new planet. Hmm. What will you do then? Will you still try build the rocket and cross your fingers when everyone gets on board?
- Take on whatever role you need to get the job done. Wear multiple hats and morph into whatever best suits the current environment. To develop a web application, put on your web programmer hat. If the web application requires some knowledge of server system administration, then put on your sysadmin hat and work out the system problems. If the system is fine but the network is down, put on your network administrator hat and troubleshoot the connectivity problems. It’s easy to place the responsibility of getting things done on others by providing some politically-correct-but-retarded excuse like “Oh, but my job description didn’t say I had to do this-that, so technically I don’t have to. Why can’t Joe do it? It’s his job anyway. I can’t get my job done because Joe needs to do his job first. I’ll wait ’til Monday.” — but that’s not we call “going the extra mile” is it? Take on the responsibilty if it is within your means, save the excuses for your dog. Delegate when you need to but be prepared to do the groundwork if someone drops the ball.
- Determination to do whatever it takes. Put in the hours and effort, and give it your absolute best shot at attacking the problem. Read up on whatever the subjects you need to know (techies usually say RTFM) and ask for help from co-workers when you just need someone to explain to you how some internal processes work. Another way to think of this is in terms of supply and demand. In a free market economy, you pay more for what is scarce, and less for what is abundant. If your job were easy, then everyone would be doing it (since it’s easy to do), thereby making the labor pool abundant, and driving down the cost of the job. Still want an easy job?
- Do not fear the unknown. It’s how a person reacts to the unknown, and how he reacts to the things that he is uncomfortable with, that makes the person. Don’t shy away from challenges — take some time to figure out if it is a battle you care about winning, and if it is, throw everything at it and hammer away. If it isn’t, why waste your time? Move on to identify the next challenge to take on.
We can never really be prepared from that which is wholly new. We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves. It needs subordinate self-confidence to face drastic change without inner trembling.
– Eric Hoffer
The Learning Curve
And if you are a super achiever, your graph looks more like this:
