Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional
We are John White and Nick Korte, two technologists with experience in IT operations and sales engineering who started this podcast in 2018. Our mission is to accelerate the career progression of technical professionals, increase job satisfaction, and give listeners the career advice we wish we’d been given earlier in our careers. We find guests who either have experience in tech or with a perspective that would help the technologist or someone looking to get into the industry. Interviews with our guests are usually released in multiple parts to showcase career inflection points, point out patterns we’ve seen elsewhere, and dive deep into lessons learned along the way.
Episodes
Do you know anything about Bugzilla? Sometimes the answer to a simple, unexpected question like this can change our direction. Max Kanat-Alexander, our guest this week in episode 285, once answered this question with a resounding yes because of something he’d done earlier.
Max spent time triaging bugs for the Mozilla project while in college and had learned how to use Bugzilla. He would later...
Have you developed a personal narrative covering the important accomplishments in your career? Contrary to what many people think, our work does not speak for itself. We have to speak for our work. Jason Belk, our guest in episode 284, used writing to prepare his own narrative before sharing it verbally the first time, and he has continued to iterate on that narrative over time.
In this episo...
How could the skills learned as a video game tester be applied to different roles in technology? Understanding and documenting the steps needed to reproduce an error in a video game aren’t so different from understanding the steps to perform a specific task like removing malware from a laptop or replacing a hard drive. Jason Belk, our gest this week in episode 283, has consistently utilized t...
When should we adjust from focusing in a specialized area to something more broad? Amy Arnold left technical consulting because she missed working on “all the networking things.” The former network engineer who worked in public sector would boomerang back for a time before taking a role at Fortinet in pre-sales. The theme of technical exploration in Amy’s career story continues this week.
In ...
When something related to your current job or a job you think you want isn’t for you, how do you know? And how quickly can you make that decision? Much like quality of service is applied to enterprise network traffic, we can apply the same sort of prioritization to our technology careers through the process of technical exploration and curiosity.
Amy Arnold, our guest this week in episode 281...
When a people leader is laid off, they have a choice – stop everything, or continue to lead, even as you exit. Marni Coffey continued to model strong character and supportive leadership for her team until the end of her last day with PepsiCo. This is the mark of a great leader…a leader whose greatest skill is empathy.
After taking time to recharge and reset, Marni needed some help to mo...
Why is moving from individual contributor to technical lead or team lead such a hard leap? For Marni Coffey, it was about learning to develop the people around her. Developing others is something Marni chose to do as a team lead, and as a people leader she continues to do it. In Episode 279, you will hear how Marni approached the first set of one-on-one career conversations with members of h...
If asked about your greatest skill, how would you answer? Could you even answer the question? Our guest this week was asked to name her greatest skill in a job interview, and the answer is one of the most important skills of effective people managers.
Marni Coffey is a Senior Manager for Business Systems and Indirect Sourcing and Procurement at McKesson, and her greatest skill is empathy. I...
Have you checked out the Packet Pushers Job Board? According to trends Ethan Banks of Packet Pushers is seeing, companies need experienced senior technical people who are comfortable working with a complex IT stack. If you are one of those people, you are in demand, even during times of industry layoffs.
It’s challenging for the business owner to continue doing the work they love because a...
We often talk about lifecycle management in technology, but every job and personal or professional project has a lifecycle that needs managing from beginning to end. When we start a job or a career, we don’t know when the end of that lifecycle will come.
This week in episode 276 we’re joined by Packet Pushers co-founder Ethan Banks. As we talk through the lifecycle and evolution of podcasts ...
What if deep down you are afraid of achieving a goal? Could the fear of success be the very thing that motivates you to abandon your goal? What could you be getting by not finishing?
With the finish line in sight, perfectionism throws up its final roadblocks. To reach the end, we must address the fears of what’s next, what now, and the fear of things not being perfect once we achieve the go...
Could you be making false assumptions which only serve to keep you from achieving your goals? Secret rules take self-reflection to discover, destroy, and replace with rules based on the truth. In addition to getting rid of secret rules, we can collect data to measure progress toward a goal. Even though our efforts working toward a goal won’t be perfect, data allows us to better understand ...
In order to finish the goals we begin, author Jon Acuff says we need more time to work toward each goal, the motivation to keep going, and to maintain focus amidst any possible distractions perfectionism may throw at us along the way.
Based on that, what will you intentionally decide to bomb so you have more time? How will you stay motivated to accomplish your goal? And how can you avoid di...
What if the reason you aren’t completing the goals you start working toward is really a symptom of being a perfectionist? Maybe you don’t think you have a problem with perfectionism. Think again, friend.
According Jon Acuff, author of Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done, perfectionism is the villain we each have to overcome on our quest to complete more of the goals we start. In episode...
Why would someone return to a company referred to as “the hurt locker” after a stressful first experience? After moving on from “the hurt locker” to decrease his stress level, Justin Kelly, our guest in episode 271, received a unique opportunity to work inside the special operations division of his former employer as an automation developer. In contrast to his first stint at this employer, ...
What do drumming in a heavy metal band, achieving Cisco networking certifications, being part of a supportive technical community and family, and going back to school to study Windows and Active Directory have in common? All of these elements contributed to Justin Kelly landing his first role in tech. Justin, our guest this week in episode 270, is a CEO, a co-founder, and an advocate of cont...
What if you could increase your earnings potential based on the things you know and the things that interest you? Erik Gross, our guest this week in episode 269, shares the Most Valuable Knowledge Framework to help anyone identify the combinations of skills and interests which would be most valuable on the open market. Erik will share examples of using this framework when deciding to start ...
The entrepreneur, business owner, and people manager are faced with difficult decisions as a part of leadership whether it be deciding to abandon a goal or eliminate jobs through a layoff. Erik Gross, our guest this week in episode 268, highlights the importance of learning from our failures while also owning the decisions that led to those failures. Listen closely to the way Erik owned his ...
As a boy learning about computers, as a Nuclear Engineering student and instructor, and as a franchise owner and successful salesperson…the early career experiences of Erik Gross, a senior technologist and our guest this week in episode 267, contain a theme of learning. Erik learned resilience, adaptability, mental toughness, business operations, empathy for the beginner, how to teach others...
Sean Tolram, our guest this week in episode 266, became a people manager because he truly enjoys helping others. In this episode, Sean will describe the gaps he needed to fill after taking on the role of managing technical people, the mindset shifts he adopted, and the impact of mindfulness principles on his team’s performance which eventually led to becoming head of mindfulness. We will al...
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