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Freedo & his space

Diary 30th Aug: 2 factors greatly impact career

I tend to say, yes, it's still a diary, but seems have to postpone it...

During communication with bunches of candidates, 2 feelings are getting stronger & stronger, about IT career:

The number 1 issue is: how much attention do you pay to fundament & fundation.
According to my understanding, 4 aspects: the algorithm, data structure, OS and database.
A lot of people do not won't to treat these 4 aspects seriously, because found without good understandings of these 4, they still could do their jobs and even do good jobs. So why need to learn from A,B,C?
Yes, you are right, even in Microsoft, for e.g. as a test engineer, on developping test tools, it's not necessary to always put algorithm in consideration for everytime.

But I try to say is, let's look after 5 or longer years...
You are still young now, fresh graduated or less than 3,4 years' experience, but after 5 years', you getting married, you will "create human", be a husband, be a father, getting to lose control of weight, lose control of your free time, then I ask: Will you be available to come back and pick up <c++ primer> again? Will that be a suffer experience for you?

If you are fortunately enough, I'd rather to call that is a fortunate, to be a team leader even manager after 2 to 3 years work, I don't think that's a good thing for you...
Simple, to be in management role, means you have to spend more time on team, on people, your knowledge of algorithm doesn't grow itself.
It's proved our current computer science education system is a mess, that mean the knowledge you received from school maybe not sufficient, you need to spend 4, 5 years' at least to probe deeper during work, no good for you to be in lead position too earlier, unless you don't want to touch coding in the rest of your career.

You will ask: how if I insisted to be a lead, to engage senior role at earliest, the answer is simple: either you be a director above quickly or you will be out. This could be guaranteed in Microsoft.

Consider for your long term career, that's why some of good candidates whom are capable for our positions are rejected.

No 2, Self critical & self-aware.
Have seem quite some smart candidates, represented themselves very well, with fast response, good at persuading, but asking about their weakness, they could hardly come up with a clear answer or when point out some mistakes in their answers, they will naturely say... oh, that's because .....

We don't need smart but excuse people...
You can not go further with out self-awareness, that will also harm to the team.
Know you are not know.

There are some guidelines on hiring people for hiring managers from Microsoft,
Until the answers are solid yes, the candidate can be hired:

- Can I learn from him (the candidate)?
- Will I be glad to work for him?
- Will this hire benefit whole Microsoft?

tags: career life career advice

@ 20070831 04:41:00 with 2 comments

20070904 22:42:00: by guest 青色风筝 from http://qsfz.spaces.live.com/
Thank you.can you talk sth about the relationship between coworkers or personnel and leader.

20070906 05:11:00: freedo from
Ok, will do that late. :)