Hi. Today (or whatever day you are reading this—even tomorrow), I’m going to give tech students advice. Chances are, you want to get the right advice as a student. (Unless you fear that I would hate you forever if you didn’t read my blog.) Well, you’ve come to the right place, but first a review of one of my past daydreams.
When I was a teenager (or was it in my early 20s?), as soon as I got admitted to KYU, I was convinced that by the end of the four-year course, I’ll be busy making very important decisions in the Switching Centre of either MTN or Airtel. Heck, I could imagine myself deciding whose calls go through and whose get dropped (especially those from schools who beat ST. JOSCOOM in football games when I was still there) while eating Nang-Nang, especially for brunch. A lot of my daydreams in those days involved Nang-Nang.
Nang-Nang
Towards the end of the second year, I realised that all was not going according to plan. So I started seeking career advice. Believe me, dear reader, when I suggest that getting the right advice as a student is a pain in the neck, especially in the field of computer science and engineering. When I had first encountered an “engineer” (yes, in quotes), I was not prepared for some of the preternatural concepts he threw at me as part of his advice. Most of the people I sought advice from resorted to obfuscation when confronted with sharp questions. At my first job (rather graduate training) I noticed how many things there are that many engineering departments don’t teach just because they consider them to be vocational but not academic.
Anyway, over the last eleven or so months, a few students did occasionally call and message me asking for career advice even though schools were closed. Since most of them have reported back for studies, I thought I’d write up my basic non-technical advice which they can read, laugh at, and ignore.
I, too, have no idea what I’m talking about when I give advice to students. I’m so hopelessly out of date that I’m not hip and cool and trendy and all about the latest technology, but rather a retro lover. I still have my disco pants (I’ve never stayed more alive than I was in 1997! LOI was our national anthem). So you’d be better off ignoring what I’m saying here and go do something better with your time.
Here’s my three-pronged advice for you (… what can I say? You get what you pay for):
- Learn to write and talk before graduating.
- Learn microeconomics before graduating.
- Invest regularly in your knowledge portfolio.
Yes! That’s it. So, what did you expect? Something long, hairy, and complicated?
Learn to write and talk before graduating.
Bwa ha ha ha ha! It seems like this is not really advice. If that made any sense at all, you’re probably already a member of Uganda Youth Creative Writing, and if it didn’t, you probably think I’m dumb because you’ve been writing notes and exams since your early school years. Well, it might not be significant, but I’m telling you this for three reasons:
- It bit me in the arse the first time I had to write a service manual.
- In most companies, employees with the most power and influence are the ones who can write and speak in English clearly, convincingly, and comfortably.
- It’s not really a problem. You can work around it.
For most graduates who come out, and they’ve got degrees in engineering or computer science, writing’s not their strong point. It’s actually very difficult to teach because it’s very individual. Somebody has got to take your text and a red pen and explain to you what you did wrong. And that’s very time-consuming.
Having the best ideas and the most pragmatic thinking is ultimately sterile unless you can communicate with other people. You’ll find yourself in situations where you’ve to write proposals, memos requesting and justifying resources, reporting status, …etc., so you need to do it well.
How can you learn to write? My suggestions, which you will no doubt accept because I’m the one writing the text, are to start a journal and take those write-intensive course units seriously, that is those in which you write an awful lot to pass them. The more you write, the easier it will be.
Learn microeconomics before graduating.
Microeconomics is actually about studying the behaviour of individuals and firms in making decisions regarding the allocation of scarce resources and the interactions among these individuals and firms. Please study it if you haven’t already. And feel free to leave the macroeconomics stuff provided you promise to take Microeconomics.
I’m coercing you to make promises, which you must fulfil otherwise you’ll get me to stop liking you, because you have to know about supply and demand, you have to know about competitive advantage, and you have to understand NPVs and discounting and marginal utility before you’ll have any idea why business works the way it does.
The classical mistake many engineers make is spending months building something nobody wants. So if you understand this stuff, you’re more valuable to a company than a fellow engineer who doesn’t. Period!
Invest regularly in your knowledge portfolio.
In The Pragmatic Programmer, the authors say:
Your knowledge and experience are your most important day-to-day professional assets. Unfortunately, they’re expiring assets. Knowledge becomes out of date as new techniques, languages, and environments are developed. Also, the ever-changing market forces may render experience obsolete or irrelevant. With the ever-increasing pace of change in our technological society, this can happen pretty quickly. As the value of your knowledge declines, so does your value to your company or client. We want to prevent this from ever happening.
Alert readers will be wondering, “how do I learn how to learn, and how do I know what to learn?” Well, the authors go on to say that managing a knowledge portfolio is very similar to managing a financial portfolio:
- Serious investors invest regularly—as a habit.
- Diversification is the key to long-term success.
- Smart investors balance their portfolios between conservative and high-risk, high-reward investments.
- Investors try to buy low and sell high for maximum return.
- Portfolios should be reviewed and rebalanced periodically.
To be successful in your career, you must therefore invest in your knowledge portfolio using these same guidelines. That’s the bad news about IT and engineering disciplines.
The good news is that managing this kind of investment isn’t an innate talent that people are born with—it can be learned just like any other skill. The trick is to make yourself do it initially and form a habit (develop a routine which you follow). And then, one day, finally, perhaps when it’s too late, you’ll wake up and say, “Hmm. Maybe I’ll never know how to manage my knowledge portfolio.” And on that day only, and not three seconds before, your brain will have internalized, and you’ll find yourself sucking up new knowledge automatically. Until then, all is not lost: you have my blessing if you still want to eat Nang-Nang.
If you follow my advice, you, too, may end up selling stock in AIM Global way too soon, turning down jobs at MTN because you want your own office with a door, and other stupid life decisions, but hey, that won’t be my fault. I told you not to listen to me.