My first job, I can only describe as 12 people crammed into a 2-bedroom apartment. If I moved my head to the left, I would make eye contact with a person 3 ft away, 2ft beside me was another developer and 2 ft behind me were the servers. I once backed into the server and accidentally hit the keyboard triggering a copy. My second job was in a larger building, but they never had enough…
You might not be the star. You might not be the top player. You might be the third person on the call-in rotation. You might get the emails but you don’t have to respond to them. That’s what you’re asked to do as the Alternate. Here’s what they don’t always tell you that you can do; Show up for everything. Bring the best attitude. Jump in and offer to do extra. Ask questions. Volunteer for…
It sits there on the edge of your desk. You’ve pushed it off (physically) many times before. But then you pick it up and put it right back on the edge. It’s the code that works that no one knows how but now they need to change. You don’t touch that code, that code should never be modified, it should be left alone forever. But it can’t, you have to dive in, you have to…
If we gave up on stuff not working the first time, no one on the planet would ever be walking. At that point in time though, it wasn’t ingrained in you to give up, you simply hefted yourself back up on the couch and tried again. Forget the noise, forget what you think your failure is, forget what went wrong. Get up and take that first step again… and again… and again…
Your Strategy is where you want to go. Your Tactics are how you are going to get there. Your Tactics can change as you learn, stumble, fail, and achieve. But your strategy should always remain the same. Another way to think of it – your strategy is what drives you and pushes you to achieve a goal, your tactics are what will make it happen.