A good employee
After 9 years spent as employee in the IT field working for huge, big, small Companies, I think I can say my personal opinion on what I’ve learned so far: the perfect Company doesn’t exist and you should find your way by your own.
Luke: “What’s in there?”
Yoda: “Only what you take with you”
Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Motivate and Convince
Motivating is the most important thing in every professional job, but without the ability to convince it’s nothing. Learn how to explain your choices and being good in convincing your audience. Sometimes people reject your ideas with valid or even invalid reasons, or just because of their position in the Company and a solid point of view. Even if you don’t have to argue to convince, explaining your choices gets you more chances to get right, and sometimes you have to convince yourself too.
Focus on Process
When I was at school I found fantastic how Mathematics was so clear and left no doubts on the process that brings you to the solution of a problem. You can also have many ways to solve a single problem but any choice brings you to the same result. If it doesn’t happen, you did a mistake. A solution is wrong until you correct the mistakes in the process. A bad process brings you to a wrong result thus, if you focus on the Process you’ll gain better results.
Gain Experience
One of the most important things to improve is to stay up to date with the news in the field. You can accomplish this in several ways: reading articles online with tips and advices, buying books and going to exclusive Conferences to share your knowledge with other talented people. Not considering all these things it’s like claiming to be a good player without the proper training.
Seek for the Good Company
It mostly depends on your job, your Company and the work you gonna do, but don’t be scared to leave a Company to join a new one, instead do it often, at least at the beginning of your career, or you’ll never know what’s new out there. Working for a big company is not the best way to quickly improve, gain experience and build an enviable Curriculum Vitae. Big doesn’t mean Good. Changing Company, colleagues and even city helps you to quickly improve your skills with new viewpoints, works, challenges and sharing your knowledge with other new people.
These are only few points of an endless list. If you think you have other good points to discuss, say yours.