Designing Your Cloud-Native Career

This is an experience report from my own efforts to design a career in a changing professional environment.

Flatter organizations mean fewer steps on the traditional career path. Emergent design redefines the role of architects and senior staff. Balanced teams challenge us to share rather than horde specialized skills we've spent years developing. Expecting to continue grow in a model measured by increases in power and authority is bound to leave us disappointed, or worse yet frustrated as our organization's goals seem in direct conflict with our own.

Delivered at ConFoo in Montréal.

Transcript

1. Designing Your Cloud-Native Career Chuck D’Antonio @crdant
3. Am I transforming myself out of a job? My buddy Nate.
5. Traditional Career Paths Junior Distinguished Lead Senior Principal Manager C-Level Vice President Director General Manager Sometimes
6. Changing Perspectives on Careers • Focused on a series of interrelated careers • You and your network support your growth from role to role • Grow with values you define and the moves you make You take responsibility for your own career development and advance based on opportunities you discover. Corporate Ladder CHARACTERISTICS CHARACTERISTICS CHARACTERISTICS • Focused on a series of jobs • You support your growth by moving between organizations • Grow status and authority by based on the moves you make • Focused on a single job • Managers support your growth within the organization • Lots of unwritten rules on how to “earn” status and authority Your company takes responsibility for your career development and you advance according to its needs. You take responsibility for your own career and treat look at your growth across many directions. Individual Ladder Individual Story
7. Software My Career Of Careers Information Technology Consulting Engineering Management Sales
8. Building Blocks for Your Career Story Values Interests What are your values and how do you see success? What captures and keeps your attention? What is the story you want your career to tell?
9. “Cloud-Native” represents the architectural, organizational, and cultural changes enabled by the ready availability of technology brought about by the public cloud
10. Cloud-Native Characteristics Lean Form a hypothesis, build just enough to validate or disprove it. Learn from your results. Use practices that embrace change, reduce feedback loops, and improve quality. Agile When change is constant architectures and designs emerge over time rather than as a series of upfront decisions. Emergent Continuously deliver, learn, and grow to build a stronger and more effective team. Continuous Authority is distributed among independent self-organizing teams working to deliver value. Self-Directed Collaborative Small teams work together, share ownership, and loosely connect to drive broader outcomes.
11. How do these ideas affect your career? What do they do to organizations? What do they mean for you?
12. Values, Incentives, and Behaviors Values TRADITIONAL An amoral focus on competition and financial success with a key goal of maximizing shareholder value. Incentives Behaviors CLOUD-NATIVE TRADITIONAL CLOUD-NATIVE TRADITIONAL CLOUD-NATIVE Focus on building value for your customers, employees, and users by rapidly bringing new capabilities to market. Concrete external measures like market share, stock price, and earnings. A broader set of metrics including though leadership, social impacts, and economic influence. Tight command and control, cost management, and distrust of employees. Collaboration, investment in driving for customers, respect and trust of employees and partners.
13. Balanced Product Teams Desireability Will users want to use this product? Feasibility Can this product be built and maintained. Viability Is there a market for this product? Product
 Management Product
 Design Engineering Empathy Value Quality Product
14. Growing Influence in Your Career vs Leverage Power
15. Pick the Right Room Mentors Seek Safety • Who can help you grow and develop right now? • Not people who tell you what you want to hear • Some people will be anti-mentors as well Tell Your Story Designing Your Career • Don’t be the most talented person in the room • Who should you surround yourself with to learn what you need right now? • Psychological safety is the most important indicated for group success • You can only grow and learn if it’s safe to make mistakes and admit fault • You career is story and each job is a part of it • Remember that you’re in control • Don’t forget to sell and market yourself
16. There Will Be Setbacks