Making it Big in Software: Get the Job. Work the Org. Become Great

Chapter 11. Career Advancement

“Space isn’t remote at all. It’s only an hour’s drive away if your car could go straight upwards.”

—Fred Hoyle (1915–2001)

In any reasonable company, the most important steps you can take to help advance your career are to do good work, be a team player, innovate, and make a modest and constant effort to ensure that your manager and a reasonable circle of others are aware of your contributions. If corporations had a way to effectively monitor and accurately evaluate their staff, perhaps that would be enough. Unfortunately, the real world is so far from that ideal that it’s shocking. I can honestly say without any hesitation that over the past 20 years in the software development, I’ve seen every manager I know ...