16 posts tagged with "career"

Talofa reader,

A few weeks ago, I made the relatively easy decision to wind down The Pasifika Tech Network.

"Failed project" may be a harsh way to put it, but I think there's value in calling something what it is, so you can better understand how not to do it again in future.

This is a project that failed.

Ok, but what did it fail to do? And why?

To understand that, we have to go back to the beginning and look at why it was created in the first place; what its intended goal was; and the reasons it wasn't able to live up to this.

Talofa reader,

This newsletters going to be a bit different. A bit “looser” than previous newsletters, a bit more personal and conversational, both an update and examination of life to this point.

It's not lost on me I haven't written anything in a little while.

I didn't even realise I'd come to a full year of this newsletter- like months ago!

If how I celebrate my own birthday is anything to go by, completely missing the anniversary of starting my newsletter, is pretty much “on brand” for me.

This is newsletter #36, and I haven't packed this little project in just yet.

I remember this exact cross-road from my last writing project. I started it on LinkedIn as well. I told myself I was going to do a post on my blog regularly, and share it like I do on LinkedIn, like I do today.

Like all exciting new projects, they start with a hiss and a roar and they go for some time, even long enough to get some feedback on things. Inevitably "life happens" or so the saying goes, because I think that's just a convenient, non-looking-too-deeply way of letting something go that wasn't a failure of execution as it was a failure of heart.

What affects the heart?

For me, it's everything horrible going on in the world, it's knowing too much about how things are, the "reality" of life, and having no way of alleviating that pain, other than trying to distract myself with work, new projects or something more isolating so the pain in my head stops flowing to my heart.

When your heart’s impacted, you just don’t feel the same way about things after that.

Talofa reader,

This edition I’ve got a bit of a bee in my bonnet, so bear with the “tone” of this one 😂

I'm listening to the Lex Fridman1Podcast with Mark Cuban as the guest, and they’re talking about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programmes.

Mark’s been in some back-and-forth’s on social media with folks who believe DEI programmes are a big scam perpetuated to allow “under qualified”2people to get hired.

Despite Mark's anecdotal evidence to the contrary-

That he has asked around corporate America to understand how real this claim is, and he's only been met with business leaders admitting it's not happening at their company, but that it "does happen" and point to a news article out on the interwebs-

So, no first-hand experience of this major DEI boogeyman that seems to have corporate America in a death grip.

Mark, again, is backing his understanding and experience of these programs as a business leader.

He takes DEI as part of good business practice and sees no problem with it.

Mark goes on to explain each letter's meaning brilliantly:

• "D is diversity, and means you just expand your pool of potential candidates to people who you might not otherwise have access to."

• "E in Equity means when you hire somebody, you put them in a position to succeed."

• "I, Inclusion, means you hire somebody and they might not be typical, right? You show them some love and give them the support they need. This way, they can do their job as best they can and feel comfortable and confident going to work."

So, DEI, gets the thumbs up from Mark “Dallas Mavericks Owner” Cuban.

Which makes me think - if this Billionaire gets it, and he's a businessman who loves capitalism, so he is definitely no left-leaning liberal shill.

And he's saying it's good for Business…

If Mark Cuban gets it, then why do a lot of people find it hard to park the few examples of badly implemented DEI programs in favour of the majority of great outcomes for the rest of the programme?

Rhetorical question.

Asked and answered, because we all know why, and that shit is not only exhausting, it means we're not going by facts and statistics anymore, we're going by people's "feelings" - wasn't this what those folks most upset by DEI say we shouldn't do? Go with our feelings over facts?

In the podcast, Mark points out that a lot of folks who get let go were actually not good at their jobs - where have we heard this before?

Mediocre people who think they're great and refuse to accept the objective feedback that they really are not good at their jobs. You know these types of people; they blame everyone but themselves.

Diversity hires are under-qualified and taking jobs of much more qualified "people"!

For the "facts, not feelings" crowd, let's do some quick research and find out what evidence there is to back all these DEI claims being made on social media.

Talofa reader,

I’m often asked by young people wanting to get into tech, "I want to break into tech, what would you recommend I do?"

They ask about Cloud, CyberSecurity, and whether DevOps is the way to go.

Over the years, I find I'm doing two things over and over again:

1. repeating myself in terms of certs and skills I’d recommend,

2. and not providing information that, in my opinion, would be more valuable than certs and skills recommendations.

What’s more important than what certs and skills?

Understanding the corporate game.

The certs and skills you need for roles—that information is all out there on the internet.

What newbies don’t tend to get a heads-up on is the environment they will need to navigate through in order to “have a career”.

A lot of people don't understand the corporate game.

Pasifika, more so, because most of our parents didn't come up this way, so weren't in a position to pass on any knowledge. This perpetuates the trend of very few people from my community venturing out past sports and music careers into the tech world, and so the cycle of limited career and future-proof opportunities continues.

For the few Pasifika that do make it into the tech space, we’re out there individually fending for ourselves. If we’re lucky, we may come across a colleague willing to impart their wisdom of the corporate game to help us out.

Otherwise, we’re destined to learn those lessons the hard way.

I’ve learned a good number of lessons in my two decades working in tech, both nationally and internationally, as a contractor and an employee, in the office and as a fully remote engineer.

I did all that as a Pasifika person (can’t really change that, to be honest), so the lessons I learned, I’d say, are fairly unique in the tech context.

In this week's newsletter, I wanted to share those lessons, all in one place, so I don’t have to keep repeating myself—or at the very least, I know I have these receipts.

Some of it might be a bit tongue-in-cheek, but rest assured, I mean every word.

Walk with me now...

Talofa reader,

I feel like the Wednesday morning newsletter post is becoming more consistent than the scheduled Tuesday one.

Talofa reader,

It's been more than a few weeks since I've had the time - or more accurately, the energy - to carve out the space to sit down and write some thoughts for my newsletter.

Talofa reader,

Last week, I was on PTO (Paid Time Off aka Holiday) in Samoa for a quick break with my wife before the baby arrives in August.

This week I’m in Suva, Fiji for work.

As most of us highly-wired people know, it's hard to switch off when on holiday. Research shows that it takes about8 days to fully wind downand actually be on a "break."

It's a particularly busy period at work at the moment, different from other times of busyness in my career as an engineer.

As a solution architect, I move in a fluid space between customer interfacing engagement to work out the technical, organisational, and often economic and political challenges. And the technical and sometimes not-so-technical solutions that best help the customer solve their challenges.

Talofa reader,

Last week, I gave a talk to my ‘Pasifika Tech Network’, which I mentioned in my previous newsletter.

Talofa reader,

This past week, I've been working on a talk to give at"The Pasifika Tech Network"meetup this Thursday.

I wasn't sure what I was going to talk about when I organised and set the date (May 18th), but after a deep and pretty vulnerable discussion on our Discord server about salaries and careers, I knew I had to talk about how to navigate a tech career and share the lessons and advice I've gathered from my 20-year tech career.

I really felt for the people in my network who shared their experiences and the challenges they face with current salary negotiations, family responsibilities, and pressures at work.

Getting into tech isn’t easy, especially as a Pasifika person and a minority in the industry. It's not an industry familiar to our community, and we lack role models whose paths we can follow. We don't have the alumni network of Computer Science from the University of Auckland (at least I didn’t) to provide guidance on the tech career road-map. On top of that, being young and inexperienced, without guidance from people we trusted, and now you’re stacking a bunch of already “hard things” on top of each other.

And even once you're in, you’re still the odd one out.

Talofa reader,

I’m hitting the late Wednesday publishing mark so often I might as well make it official. Apologies to myself, and you the reader for missing our Tuesday slot.

This week I think I may actually write a non essay-length edition and just speak on what was top of mind for me this last week. As you’re probably aware Amazon have been going through their latest round oflayoffsthis past couple weeks, so it’s been a tough space for folks at work.

I was one of the lucky ones.