This piece first appeared in the June 23, 2022 edition of Human Infrastructure Magazine, the Packet Pushers weekly newsletter. Subscribe for free and get feature articles like this one along with industry announcements, engineering blogs, and nerdy memes for the lulz.
While attending Covid Cisco Live, I had two different conversations with a striking commonality. People don’t want to put in the work to bring about a result that’s important to them.
The first conversation was with a CCNA instructor who’s worked with thousands of students. He made the point that, while not easy, the CCNA certification has never been easier. Yet, students often ask him, “What’s the minimum I have to do to pass the exam?” Braindumps are also endemic in the certification world, catering to those folks who want a shortcut.
The second conversation was with a consultant who builds serious networks for significant clients with demanding business requirements. He observed that the IT folks he works with at his clients don’t want to do the basics of planning for business continuity, let alone the research required to understand the architecture and equipment he would propose.
You might think that that’s why they hire a consultant, right? But if you’ve ever been a consultant assisting a large IT shop, you know that the client needs to be closely engaged with a complex, business-impacting technical project. Working with a hands-off client is a frustrating experience, because as a consultant in that situation, you feel like you’re making decisions the client should be making for themselves.
In my inbox, I receive pitches from marketing and public relations folks every day. Many of these pitches have been released with little effort to communicate well. The alleged human (hard to tell as AI-based writing is on the rise) on the other end of the message writes in generalities, saying almost nothing about the announcement itself.
Sometimes I’ll read a pitch two or three times, trying to determine if someone like you might care about it. Often, I’ll give up because the pitch is inscrutable. That’s a shameful thing to have to say about a communications professional–that their communication is devoid of meaning. Minimum effort output like this is commonplace, though.
Want To Stand Out? Put In The Work
Would you like to stand out from your peers? Would you like to impress the people you work for, or perhaps the people you’d like to work for? Put in the work. A technology career can be financially rewarding, often with no university degree required. However, the body of knowledge required to build a useful skill set is large. Getting your head around the contents of any certification blueprint takes time and tenacity. There is no effective shortcut to technical competency.
Putting in the work to achieve a goal is a form of self-sacrifice. To get the thing you want, you need to give up something else. Gaming. Streaming. Going out with friends. Money you’ll spend on training material and labs instead of something entertaining. Comfort because you failed an exam, and have to study harder just to take it all over again. In other words, getting the career you want will take a significant amount of time that you might rather spend doing something else.
Are you willing to put in the work? If you are, opportunities will come your way. Opportunities for leadership. For new roles. For greater responsibility. For better compensation. If you aren’t, you’ll be among the ranks of techies on cruise control. There’s nothing wrong with either scenario. IT teams need steady folks on cruise control. But if you’re frustrated because you want more, know that it will take hard work over a long time to get where you’re trying to go.
