Where do you want to go today?
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Henriksen, Glenn F.
Are you in the place you want to be? Are you moving into unknown territory or thinking about stepping up, but you don't really know how? We'll talk about the different roles a developer can, and probably will, have in a lifetime, how to handle them, how to prevent some of them and how to get to the ones you want faster. In short, how to manage your career like a proper project and not just wing it all the time. I'll claim to have picked up some insight in a few different roles, warn you against some of my stupid mistakes and share some stories. All in all you should get some inspiration and tools to help you decide where to go and how to get there.
 All right, good morning or afternoon. I don't know, these hours keep going back and forth for me. Anyone enjoyed the party last night? Somebody enjoyed it too much? So I'm Glenn. I work at Kepgem and I. I'm a managing consultant and yada yada yada. More importantly, I have a wife and five kids. These are four of them. One was missing. She was working. I do martial arts on my spare time, but usually I'm left mending something around the house unless I can get my kids to do it. That's the fifth one. That's why she wasn't in the car. I try to geek out as much as I can, but I'm usually stuck playing with my kids, which I enjoy. They're good fun and they're lovable little creatures. So that's me in three seconds. I'm going to come back to me because I want to say what I want to talk about first. I'm going to talk about careers, roles, and stepping up. That's what this is about. So if you're not interested in any of this, you're in the wrong room. Just adjust this one a little bit. There we go. So why am I qualified to talk about this? Well, I've been around a bit. I've been in this business for about 20 years. I've been a co-owner. I've been a developer, an architect, mentor, manager, lots of different things. I worked at small companies, large companies, and I work at a huge company. I've managed a few good things along the way. I've learned a few lessons, some the hard way, some the good way. In addition to that, I met a lot of people, and a lot of them have interesting stories and interesting experiences. So then I'm going to share some of those. Now I don't have all the answers. I'll tell you that. But what I've seen is there's a lot of people that go through work and their professional life without any goals or vision. They have no idea of where they're going to end up. They're sometimes thinking of what to do in the very short term. That's what we call tactically thinking. But the long-term goals are few and far between. At best they're thinking about what's my next position mostly. And I think that's a shame since I believe people would be happier, faster, and more successful if they set goals not just the short term, but the long term. Maybe a three-year goal, maybe even a 10-year goal, maybe even a goal that you're never going to reach. Now, and this is really important. I'm not here to tell you what successful means. That's your job. The definition of successful varies from person to person to person. I have a definition. You have a definition. You have another definition. It's deeply personal. What is successful to me? What does that mean? But what's common is for most people it doesn't just happen. You don't wake up one morning like, dude, I'm successful today. This is awesome. But having a plan and executing on that plan, taking action, getting results, and changing the plan along the way when it doesn't work, that is a key to getting to the place where you want to be faster. Or maybe even just getting there at all. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to talk about some things or techniques to help you along your way to achieve your definition of successful. And also, I do realize that I'm a large white male and gives me some privilege in a bunch of situations, especially when interacting with people. But the stuff I'm going to talk about isn't really about that. It's not about me coming onto people and forcing them to bend to my will and have them help me define my successfulness. But it's about you. It's about what you can do and how you can think to do things. Now for yourself, what is your definition of successful? I'd like you to write it down. Take out your phone and send yourself an email or something. Just keep that. Maybe put it at the notes app or if you have a good memory, put it in your head. But you don't have to share it with anyone. I'm not going to ask anyone what your definition is. Don't worry about it. Take a little moment and think about what is successful to you. When do you think you're really successful? And not just in the moment, like I'm successful when I get up in the morning. But when would you consider yourselves like, I made it. This is awesome. I am a success. I have arrived. What is that for you? Now, in order to get someone who needs goals, your definition of successful could be a goal in itself, but it's probably a bit vague. It's probably a bit hard to say this is a proper goal. So goals need some things. They need to be specific and they need to be measurable. So does anyone have a smart goals? Raise your hands. Okay, yeah. They're specific. They're measurable. They're achievable. They're realistic and they're time bound. Now for these kinds of goals that we want now, the long term goals, three of those suck. Specific and measurable, that's fine. They make sure you know what you want and they make sure that you know when you've achieved it. But achievable and realistic are only in the way when we're setting long term goals. Let me tell you a couple of stories. This is a good friend of mine, Bertha. When we were kids, his dream, like for many of us, was to become an astronaut. He had a huge fascination for everything to do with space and space technology. He built models of the moon with paper mache in his basement and all kinds of stuff. And it's pretty far out there. That's a pretty unreachable goal. It's not particularly realistic and it's not particularly obtainable. But he moved right on that goal. He stayed straight toward it. He studied physics, took a bachelor's in STEM, took master's in STEM. He went to a space university. There's such a thing, an international space university. He did a doctorate up on Svalbard studying space, something over there. And in his doctorate, he designed and built an experiment that ended up on the International Space Station. And today, he's actually working on making tomatoes grow in space. That's his job. What do you do for a living? I make tomatoes grow in space. How awesome is that? So he still hasn't been in space. He's been in some airplanes that do the weight-loss, the vomit comment they call them. Those airplanes that go on a wave and you're weight-less for some number of seconds. They've done that a couple of times with his experiments, of course. And so he's not been to space yet, but he's daily working with space problems and space technology. And this is because he set this weird goal a long time ago. This is another friend of mine, Andreas. He also had a dream and that was a sale around the world. Literally, around the world. Not just here and there, but go around. So I made that decision. I am going to sale around the world. But there were some problems with that. Minor problems. One, he didn't have a boat. Two, he couldn't sail. Three, he was 12. But he's a methodical guy. So he worked at it for several years. He bought a boat. He sailed around in Norway. He traded in for something else. He sailed around in the Mediterranean and ran out of money. So I sold the boat, joined the Navy. Along that, he taught himself a lot of stuff he'd need. He bought a new boat, sailed across the Atlantic, worked with the Caribbean as they're renting his boat and himself out as a skipper, went to the Panama Channel, sailed Australia and ran out of money. So I came back, sold the boat, went to school to become a deck officer, became a first mate, worked on tankers and ferries, quit his job, bought a new boat, along with this type with his girlfriend who works in financials, so he's got faith this type. And they just bought, they picked up the boat in Trinidad and now they're on an island called Bonnere, a small island just north of Venezuela. So they started a journey that will take them literally around the world. They just have to go around South America first because they wanted to go to Antarctic. So these are two guys that for me are a huge inspiration because they set out enormous goals really early. And especially Andres, he did a lot of other stuff as well. He went to film school and all the stuff, but all the time that goal of sailing around the world was always there. So every major decision he made, he factored in, how will this help me go around the world? So what is the most significant goal you ever achieved? Think about that. What's the most significant goal you ever achieved? And ask yourself, was it easy? Was it realistic? Was it attainable or even time bound? Did you take a significant amount of effort? Did you have to learn your skills? Were you scared along the way? Another speaker, Adam Cogan, said yesterday, if you're scared, it's probably worth it. So myself, most people I talk to, their most significant achievements were never attainable, never realistic, and they weren't time bound. They were difficult, required new skills. I caused a fair bit of distress along the way. So you don't put a dent in the universe with realistic and attainable goals. Now what are your goals? Specific and measurable goals. So you have your definition of successful. Now in order to achieve that, you need some goals. Take a little time to think about that as well. How can you tell when your definition of successful is achieved? For instance, your definition of successful could be to spend lots of quality time with your family. That's not measurable. So your goal, one goal could be to be in a position where you work less. Say you work 50%. You work half time. That would be a clear goal. That's specific and is measurable. Perhaps your definition of success is being able to travel and see the world. But one goal could be to have four months of vacation every year. Specific and measurable. Maybe you have a goal to be an internationally recognized expert on some topic. What does that mean, internationally recognized expert? It's not specific. So a goal could be to have at least 10 engagements in a foreign country every year, for instance. And then the next year, 20 and so on. And now we're over to the tactical thinking. Now we're on the strategic thinking. Strategic versus tactical. So strategic is the what and the tactical is the how. So these have been strategic goals, what you want to achieve. This is really important. You need strategic thinking to have that. Anyone drive a car here? Anyone has driver's license? When you were taught, that was when I was taught driving and if you weren't, your driver's license sucked. When you were driving, you talked to look far ahead. Because if you look straight in the road in front of you, you go back and forth like that when you drive. So you fix a point really far ahead and look at that and you drive straighter. It's the same thing with goals. You need those goals that are far away, not just right in front of you the whole time. So the mistake a lot of people do is they're thinking tactical only. So you're here and you're wondering where to go. And without having that long-term goal, it's hard to make a meaningful decision on what to do next. So imagine this new and improved version of ourselves. It's a version that achieved the goal or the goals we just made. It is our you version too is successful. But instead of standing here and trying to work my way, what did I do to get there? There's a trick. We'll start at the other end and we'll go back. So this is you 2.0. What did you do right before you got that? What was the last thing you did before you became successful, before you had achieved success? And you wouldn't get that. What was the last thing before that again? And then it's a lot easier to backtrack a path to where you are now. The path may branch out. You might have several ways to go, but make sure you always get back to your red dot. So now that you're back here, you can start going the other way. A friend of mine, he was also in the Navy up in Buddha, I think it was, where they have one taxi queue and it's really long. So what he would do, he would go to the front of the queue and it would say hi to everyone on the way back. Just hi, how are you doing? Walk himself back, greet himself back. And then it would get to the end and it would turn around and we'd go back. Excuse me, excuse me, coming through. Excuse me, excuse me. And everybody led him through because he was coming from the front because nobody reacted to that. So he went to the front of the line instead. So it's sort of the same. We'd go say hello to everyone we met on the way and then we'd go back and just pass them over. So some of you are seeing some similarities. When we're here we can say okay, what's the next step? What's the next step we're supposed to do? Is that attainable and realistic? Now we can start doing that. Now we can start making smart goals. If the next step is not attainable and realistic, you have to break it down some more. And you're seeing a similarity to a project planning, break down tasks, make sure the task isn't too big and so on and so on and it is exactly the same thing. Another angle, depending on your goal, is looking at what skills are you missing. This is particularly useful in our professional setting, which we're talking about now, since goals here are often much more skills driven than goals in your personal life. The techniques of this, you could use the same technique for your personal life, but what are the top three skills you need to obtain your goal? How can you develop these skills? And it doesn't necessarily have to be technical skills, it could be skills that help you move into another role, it could be skills like speaking in public. They have had great classes on that here with Jesse and Denise. How to do good product review meetings was another session here. How to motivate others, you're writing skills perhaps, but that's up to you to figure out. So if I'm going to reach that goal, what skills do I need to do that? That's the goal part. Where do you want to go? Try to visualize a path there. It might not be correct the whole time, but make sure it's there. The other part is stepping up. So getting ahead in work is not just working with you. You need to be noticed. You need to see, you need other people to see that you are epic. So how many here at work think or feel that they are the smartest guy in the room most of the time? Raise your hand. Okay. You guys have put your hands up. How many felt a bit awkward doing it because it was a bit like, yeah, there was no one going, yeah, me. And then there were all the others like, yeah, probably I'm, but I'm not going to put my hand up. You know who you are. So remember this, there's nothing wrong with being epic, but particularly us Scandinavians, we have a particular problem with this. So here's another story. I teach a class, software engineering class at a local university. Every year I divide the students into teams of five to seven people in each team and give or take, but I need to share the teams are relatively reasonably balanced, right? They need someone who can organize. They need someone who can take charge and they need someone who can actually program. So we can have all the good programmers in one team and all the sucky programmers in another team, I need to balance this out so they can help each other. So give out a questionnaire where among other things I ask them to rate themselves on a scale from one to five. And one of the question is how good are you at programming, right? So what do you reckon I mostly get? Three. Right. Three. Yeah, I guess some about average. Unless, as usually we get when you get people, how good are you? It's like, ah, I'm about average. Unless you ask men how good, if they're better than average at driving, 90% will say they're better than average. That doesn't work. But I get mostly threes. I get the occasional four, some twos, the odd one never knowing again. Nobody picks five. Except last fall. One guy. My first reaction was what a douche. What a pump is Muppet. What the hell is he thinking? He's five. You don't write symphonies in code. You're 19 for Christ's sake. Why is that? Why are we so quick to judge other people for standing up? And that's what we fear. We fear that someone will, when you go like, yeah, I'm good. I'm great. And people look at you, you pump is Muppet. That's wrong. And we can't fix other people. We can keep that in mind ourselves and praise those to stand up and ask the stupid questions. Adam Cogan again. He was a speaker here as well. He's in Australia. He has his own company. He's got 50 employees. He could wildly be considered successful. His kids are doing great. Everything is awesome. And one of the things he's done consistently throughout his career is that I don't understand. Can you say it again? I don't understand what you just said. Can you say it one more time in a different way? And so many people are afraid to say, I don't get it. So I was at this, they introduced exchange, Microsoft introduced new version of exchange and they showed up the web email client. This is back in 2003, I think it was. And this one guy raised his hand and I was like, well, can you drag and drop emails in folders? This is the web in 2003. I don't know, most of you guys were probably not even born there. But you hear this collective groan and the on is like, oh, idiot. Of course you can't. This is the web. And the instructor goes, I don't know, let's see. And he drags a mail, puts drops in the folder and it's gone. And it worked. And the whole room learned a little thing there because that one guy was not afraid to look stupid. So don't be afraid of asking, I don't understand. And don't be afraid of standing up. So here works a developer. Where's your answer? So developer. OK. Most of the developers. This is a developer conference, but I'm sure if you're not a developer, you can apply parts of it. So who's good at it? Awesome. So you're not the smartest guy in the room. You're not writing symphonies. But yeah, you're pretty good. That is cool. Remember, there is nothing wrong with being epic. Take that with you. So here's the challenge. You know you're good at something. Now other people need to know that you're good at it. There's basically two ways to do that. One, go around telling people you're epic. Two, say nothing and let them figure it out on their own. That's your options. You can either make sure that people discover you as epic, or you can just keep doing your thing and people will notice you're epic. Just sleep out through your pores. The first one is faster, but it takes more work. And it needs for you to get out of your comfort zone. I believe that the best part, the best way of showing other people that you're epic is being part of a community. That could be in many shapes and sizes. It could be from just taking part in showing up at user groups, talking to people. Talking is important. Talking to people, discussing problems, coming up with solutions. It could be through your work at open source. Have a project online that people enjoy and like and use. Maybe you have a blog, maybe you're good at writing and can write about stuff. Maybe you'll speak at user groups. Maybe you're a hotshot at Stack Overflow. Nobody knew who John Skeet was until Stack Overflow came. And then suddenly everyone knows who John Skeet is. John Skeet is the guy that breaks Stack Overflow's SQL queries. Seriously, they changed some queries on Stack Overflow for the user profile page and they broke on John Skeet's page because he gets so many upvotes, but only his page. So he's an edge case. But the point is you can put your skills out there in some form or shape. This is part of building a brand. So when we say brand, people think of a corporation like Coca-Cola, Microsoft Apple and so on, but you also have a brand. So your brand is the attributes that people attribute to you or they associate with you. What do people think about when they see you or hear your name? Do they think expert? Doosh. Do they web developer, problem solver, Azure guy? So people have a brand, whether you like it or not. So what you can do is manage that brand. You think about what you put out there and what you tell other people and what would you like to be known for? Is that the same as what you are known for if you're known at all? So I co-owned a small company and I wasn't part of any community and we just worked and our asses off and trying to make next month's paycheck, which one does when you're doing a company yourself. So I did a significant change in my career path. I moved company and I needed to know more people and I needed more people to know me. So I made a conscious decision. I'm comfortable standing in front of people and saying stuff. So I'm going to start speaking at the local user group. So I started speaking at local.net user group. In addition, I used those events to force myself to learn more about technology. I'll come back to how I did that. I just worked better on the pressure. So I signed up to speak about a topic and then I had a deadline to learn everything I knew about that topic. Two birds with one stone. So two options. One, put your brand out there and manage it or two, let people discover your brand by chance and over time. The first one would probably yield faster results if the other one yields results at all. So now you've figured out what you want, hopefully. You've designed a path to get there, you have a hypothesis of a path and you're starting to manage your brand to get people to notice you. This is when opportunity is coming. So you're setting goals, gaining skills, planning your steps. At some point, opportunity is going to come knocking. Maybe it locks better than these guys. Of course, you can always open the door for opportunity yourself. So this might be the possibility of going for a new job. There might be a position that's opening up that you're looking at. I want that. That'd be great. Maybe someone mentioned something. It could be a conference is looking for speakers and so on and so on. And this is where we meet our next hurdle on our path to greatness, what's called the confidence gap, we're also known as the imposter syndrome. The imposter syndrome is a phenomenon where you are unable to internalize your own success. You don't really believe it. You're basically waiting to be exposed as a fraud or an imposter. It's like putting on a uniform and a pair of Ray-Bans and try to fly an airplane. Or later, this thing's going to crash and they're going to figure out, I don't know how to do this. If you have success or acknowledge your own success, you dismiss it as luck. Or of other being fooled by your, they didn't, well, good thing they didn't know what I knew before they hired me. So there's a gap between your abilities and your confidence and set abilities. So what happens when you have the confidence gap or the imposter syndrome is that when opportunity comes, we quickly become convinced that we are imposter like an actor in a role and it's easier not to even try. And that's a bad thing. So we know ourselves from the inside, but everyone else we only know from the outside. So we're constantly aware of all our faults, our anxieties, our doubts, our ideocracies, anything that comes from within, we know about this. But I don't know what you have inside, right? All I know of you guys is what you tell me or what you display. And this is a far more narrow and far more edited source of information. Michel de Montaigne, French philosopher, 16th century, said that kings and philosophers shit and so do ladies. Even in the highest door in the world, we are seated still upon our arses. And this is not just about kings and taking a royal dump. It's about CEOs, artists, experts, entrepreneurs that have great success. They all have these same feelings of self-taught. They bump into things. They feel that I might choke under the pressure. They look back on decisions with shame and regret. Everybody does this. So we end up in this place where we're thinking, what am I doing here or I'll never make it. I might as well just not try. It's easier not to try. Now also it turns out that this confidence gap have in research shown to affect women more than men. For instance, men are more likely to apply to a position where they don't have all the qualifications but they don't apply anyway. And women are more likely to say, no, I can't do that because I don't know all the, I can't take all the boxes. Men are more simply more likely to just fake it till they make it. Now there's lots of reasons why this stuff happens. A lot of it has to do with society and structural, society and structures. But and it's not a solution just to tell women to behave more like men. That doesn't work either. It turns out that that's actually detrimental. It doesn't work. There's something to be aware of if you're a woman competing with men and there's definitely something to be aware of if you're someone looking for talent. Remember loud does not equal being skilled. So just because someone is being loud, there's a story in one of the research papers for this of a woman that works as a manager in a law firm. I think it was a law firm and she hires two interns, a male and a female. And the male guy, the guy comes by her office all the time and have suggestions and how about this? I was thinking about this and they're often completely wrong and off the wall. Well, she is methodical, she wants an appointment, she books a meeting, much more serious and does all the right work and presents nothing that's not well thought through and all. But still, the lady manager is more impressed and she recognized this on her own. She's more impressed by the guy just steamrolling in and being a bull in a china shop because confidence affects how people think of you. So not saying you should be the bull in a china shop but have some confidence in your own abilities. There's been research that says, they're doing tests and just being told before you do the test that this is going to be good, you're going to ace this, this is going to be good. And having them walk in with good confidence increases their score. So another story and this was about me. Microsoft has something called the regional directors. It's a small group, there are about 150 people worldwide and they work as technical and strategic advisors to different product groups in the different product group in Microsoft. Now they have openings in every country, they're spread out. So I got wind of an opening here and being available here in Norway. And I wanted to apply but I had a friend that was applying and he's going to get it anyway so there's no use in even trying. Imposter syndrome. Like why even bother? It's not going to work anyway, it's just wasted work. So luckily for me, my friend badgered me until I actually applied. He's like, dude, you should do it. Go on. So if you're watching this video, thank you, Niall. But I ended up being awarded that title. And it was this close to not even bothering to fill out a form. The confidence gap prevented me from even trying almost. So one of the things that the RG groups, and here's the other bad part about the imposter syndrome, once you try and you actually make it, you get to a place where the imposter syndrome really hits you. You're thinking, why am I here? So one of the things the RG group does is between when Microsoft has a conference, like build conference, they have a day or two where they all gather and do a lot of stuff. And I find myself in a room with a bunch of people that have done amazing. There's this alien middle here. This is what happens when people move when you're taking a panoramic shot. That's Billy Hollis. So so many of these guys are legend. Literally, Billy Hollis was named Software Legend by Microsoft in 2002, I think it was. He has the title, Software Legend. The thing is this guy, he manages 100,000 servers. I can't even begin to fathom how he does it. There's another guy here. He regularly speaks to world leaders at UN summits. It's like, what the hell? I thought these guys were just geeks. So we're sitting there and we're doing introductions. I was like, holy crap. This is going to suck. Yeah. And you have CEOs and CTOs and people owned companies and sold companies and. Dotnet Rocks guys are there. That's Richard. So these guys have achieved so much. And I'm thinking they're, man, they picked the wrong guy. So it was my turn. I rattled off what I was doing, where I came from, tried to mention as much as possible. And nobody better than I was totally anti-climactic. It was like, oh yeah, awesome. Good. So it turns out that if you actually get in somewhere, you probably deserve to be there. You didn't get in there despite of who you are. You got in because you are who you are. Right? So even if you don't think so yourself. Another thing as well, talent totally overrated. Sometimes they're, oh, she's so talented and it's easy for him because he's so talented. I don't have a talent for doing that. So I won't do that. This is also part of the imposter syndrome. You're attributing traits to others that you don't have. And you probably never will. Like, no, I can't do that. Because yeah, it's. So somewhere in life, we get this notion that we need talent to do something. So I see this when I teach the class that some students are like, no, I'm not a good developer. I don't have the talent for it. Like, shut up. Of course you do. Sure. Some people have an inclination for certain tasks that give them a head start. But for the most part, hard work kicks talent's ass. Kids have it right. They have no limits. There's been quite a bit of research on this and it shows that the biggest factor for you to become really good at something is the number of hours you put in for self study. At that time, when you sit by yourself, you experiment, you screw around with things you don't know, that's when you take the steps towards perfection. There's a music university in Berlin, I think it is, that they did some studies here. And they have performers that become soloists. They have performers that play in symphony orchestras. And they have performers that teach others. And those are three distinct levels of skill, where the soloists are the most skilled people. So they did some research on what can we predict who goes where. And it turns out the single most differentiating factor was number of hours of self study. The number of hours of self study would vary between nine hours a week to more than 20, almost 30 hours a week. And it was consistent. The more you practice on your own, the better you became. There's no such thing as natural talent, it's just simply a matter of failing over and over again until you make it. Teresa Juho, currently the world's best cost country skier in the women's class. She's won gold medals, she has seven world championships and a lot of other medals. I wanted to put all the medals, but if I put all the medals you wouldn't be able to read the text. Well many people don't know is that when she was starting out she wasn't very good at all. She was in her early teens and she would come in last, dead last, over a minute behind everyone else. She had a friend that didn't practice as hard and she just went past her. She enjoyed skiing, so she kept going and going and going and she set goals. She said, okay next time I'll be 40 seconds behind. And so she made that. Next time, okay I'll be 30 seconds behind. And she made that and she worked and worked and worked. The more she trained the smaller the gap became and when she was 18 she took a bronze in the world championships on 30 kilometers. And since then she's only gotten better. And she said to herself, is someone told her back then that you're not talented enough? She would have quit. Gone. But they didn't. She was given space to go on and she worked hard. So hard work beats talent every single time. 80% of life is showing up, just showing up, taking that opportunity and saying yes instead of no. But sending that email and saying hi. I'm interested in the next one. We talked. That puts you ahead of almost everyone else. That's what I did with the RD. I sent an email to Microsoft here. It's like I hear the RD thing is open. What do I do? Oh, well, that's cool. You fill out this form and so on and so on. Okay, great. What prevents this from showing up? Imposter syndrome. The thing that you tell yourself, nah, I'm not good enough to show up. I can do a whole talk just an imposter syndrome but I'm more ground to cover. Just be aware that it exists. If you notice it, try to overcome it. If anyone wants to, we can talk more about that in the break. We're going to talk a little about roles. Different roles you might have in your career. Again, I'm doing this for a developer standpoint, but it's similar. So as a developer, we have many hats. That's why I picked these guys. They have all different hats. Those wear the same different hats at the same time. We have different roles. We have a junior developer. We have a developer, a technical lead, an architect. Some are even chief wizard. That's an awesome title. There's 82 people I can find on LinkedIn that have the title chief wizard. But this is the path most people take. Oops, that's an hour too much. That's where you go and die. I wrote senior here. Some people call a lead developer. But yeah, actually that arrow wasn't supposed to be here. It should come afterward, but it actually makes sense because a lot of people think that architect, okay, that's the end. That's the end game. I can go no further. But all of these are just titles. You can call yourself chief senior wizard instead. But what some decide to do is leave that path and go into other places. You want to be project managers, managers, go into sales. Again, sales is like dying a little bit. And that's okay. It's okay to switch paths and say, okay, this is not for me, but that looks interesting. But one problem is that for some, these other arrows are presented as the only career paths available to you. Like, oh, well, I'm done coding, I guess I'll be a manager then. Problem is that these roles are very different from a developer role. They're not the same at all. They require a completely different set of skills. So if that's what you're after by all means, pursue it aggressively. Go for it. Figure out what do you need. I want to be a manager. What skills do I need? Top three skills, right? Go for it. But don't do it because it's the only way for you to advance. Now I'll focus on this path here, except the dying part at the end. It's a bit simplified, but it's okay for the purpose of this talk. For instance, there are several types of architects, but they have so much in common that we can treat them as one role here. So the biggest shift is going from developer to architect. And I hear that a lot. What are your goals? Well, I want to go into architecture. What does that even mean? Well, simply speaking, the architect designs and develops and implement. Now this is a fluid role, and in many cases people have both roles, but we're talking roles, not people, right? But the architect is responsible for seeing the big picture. Now let me just inject here that I don't believe in the non-coding architect. I think there's an abomination, and they should be coding. Not shot, but coding. Now if you can't code and you really can't create a regime that other people will code in, now we're talking about the solution architect that makes architects a software project. You have other architects like the enterprise architect which designs systems, and you have the system architect that has a small bunch of systems and so on, but we're talking about the immediate path here of developing, developer architect. So the difference between developer and architect is on what level you care. Sorry, different architects is what level do you care, how big picture do you want to see. Another difference with the developer and architect is that the architect role usually interfaces more with the business. I keep saying that I interpret business problems into technological solutions. That's my architect role, that's what I do. Now I might be a dev on one project and then I'm architect on the next project, but generally the difference between a developer and an architect is in their skill profile. So along the X is the a bunch of skills, along the Y is how skilled you are, how proficient you are, these are two different profiles, can you tell which one is which? Make a guess. So the architect needs the big picture. So this is the architect. The architect needs to know of, not necessarily know, but know of a broad set of tools. He knows, needs to know about all the Lego pieces. The developer can be more focused, okay, I'm working on this. I'm a front end developer. I'm working on web applications. I know HTML, CSS, JavaScript, that's it. But I'm super good at it. But the architect needs to know that, how that works, and he needs to know about backend systems, distributed systems, databases, and so on and so on. Maybe some cloud in there as well. So if you're going from a developer role where you're often like this into an architect role, you need to broaden your skill set. You need to have a broader knowledge of what's possible and what exists. But there's a finite amount of time in a day. So you'll never get everything to the same level here, because that just doesn't add up. And this is what one area I've seen a lot of people struggle with, is they want transition from developer to architect, but they need to broaden their skills on how they do that. Well, my suggestion is to take as much knowledge as possible. That way you can get a good overview of what's available, what's possible to do, and thereby enabling you to have a more informed opinion on what you should look closer at. So you won't really know it, but you know of it. Personally, I consume a lot of podcasts and videos. But like I said, we have a finite amount of hours in a day, so I multitask. I listen to podcasts in the car on the way to work..NET Rocks usually last me back and forth for a day. Hansel Minutes last me in one way, depending on traffic. Or if I increase the speed, I find that if you listen to podcasts quite nicely, if you play them at 1.4X, it will go faster and you'll still get what you get. Azure Friday videos are a favorite of mine there, about 12 minutes. We're in a folding laundry. So get on the basement, bring in a bunch of clothes, and a standard watching a video while I fold laundry. They're really good as well because they're pretty focused and they give you a good introduction to a topic. Gemline videos. I'll use those as a radio. I'll listen to them while I'm working in the garden or on the house maybe, because it's enough to hear what they're saying. I don't need to get a deep understanding of what they're doing and actually see it. Some videos kind of suck when you don't do it, so I skip those. But a lot of the videos, you're fine, but just listening to them. The audio track is usually sufficient to get a handle on what this is. And sometimes I'll leave it on the background on my computer while I'm working. If something interesting pops up, it's like, oh, what's that? That sounds fun. People have different needs and do different things. All in all, it enables me to have an opinion on when something might be applicable. And then I look into it deeper and figure out, is this an actual good fit for this project or not? So that gives me a broad awareness of different kinds of ideology, what's coming, what's not coming, what are people doing with it, and so on. Now, my biggest enemy when I'm trying to learn new things is the instant gratification monkey. That's the little monkey in my head that's looking for quick fix and don't have the patient to wait until the substantial reward is down the road. You just want a quick hit right now. His biggest drugs are Wikipedia and Imager. Ooh, funny picture. He's that little bastard that tells you, oh, click that. What's that on the side there? You just watched a YouTube video, what's that recommended for you video over there? Check that out. Next picture looks funny. That was boring. Keep going until you find a funny picture. We'll tell you stuff shit like that. Like, yeah, I'll quit when I find a really funny picture. He's the guy that makes you procrastinate and not do what you're supposed to do. Some people have it better than others. Some people have it worse. My monkey's pretty ripped. He's badass. But I've seen a lot of people with their own monkeys. I'll brought it up here as well. Now, remember smart goals? Specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound. One trick to prevent the gratification monkey is to pit him against the deadline gorilla. Time bound. Remember one of the reasons I had to give him talks? So I signed up to do talks at the local user group because then I got myself a deadline. I brought home the deadline gorilla and he kicks the gratification monkey's ass. But still, my gratification monkey is awesome if we don't have deadlines, I get interesting results. I should not have done that. I should not have done that. And they're pretty weird those habits as well, by the way. They're pretty screwed up. See, half of you are thinking, I've got to look that up. See, that's your monkey going, ooh, let me check that out. So you're not doing the next session because you're on Wikipedia reading about giraffes making out? Actually if you, cool thing, Google for a video called How to Talk to Giraffes. You'll thank me later. The worst part is I have no idea how I ended up here. And this is not a joke. This actually happened. I didn't just figure, make this up. But that's when I decided, no, this is enough. Close. So my deadline gorilla takes care of my gratification monkey. Another trick I use, because my gratification monkey is a picky little thing. He has some things he likes better than others. So there's an application called rescue time where I can block web pages. I can say I get 10 minutes of image or a day. And when that's done, it's done. So we're getting close to the end, but one more thing. This is also important, I think, figure out what you suck at and stop doing it. Seriously, if you're not good at something, chances are you want to join. Your gratification monkey gets an easy job. You're not getting shit done. It weighs on you and just gives you grief. And this is not just things you find boring. This is things you're not good at. For instance, me, I suck in managing money. It's not my strong side at all. So I left that to my wife. She takes care of all that stuff. And it works out great. She has less grief, I have less grief. Another thing I suck at is delivering expense reports. But that I kind of have to do. Otherwise I won't get money, and then my wife will be upset. And I don't want that. I want both the money and the happy wife. So I have to do that. So some things you just can't stop because you have to do it, but try to work around it. Try to minimize the stuff you're not good at and focus on the stuff you're good at. Because that makes you happier. And that makes you, it's so much easier to get better at stuff you like than get better at stuff you don't like. So I heard on the train in here, I chatted with some other guys, and we're talking about when the robots take over the world, the value of our service is going to plummet. Why? Because we like our job. The price of a McDonald's burger is going to go through the roof, because nobody wants to stand in McDonald's before they have flipping fries. So when robots take over the world, and we get this, everybody gets like a minimum salary thing. If you want someone to get out of work and work at McDonald's when they have basic income already covered, you're not going to do that unless you give them lots of money. But hey, you want a WordPress site? Sure, I'll fix that for you. I'm going to get a little bit of it. So this was a dense talk, so let me summarize it a little bit. Now this list is sort of prioritized. So if nothing else, start at the top. Define successful and set yourself some long-term goals. Most dreams die on the tyranny of how. The how becomes apparent when you have the what. When you have a clear view of what you want, then it's easy to figure out the how. Forget how things will happen. Focus on what you want to happen. So if nothing else, take that with you. What do you want to happen? What? So define successful for yourself. Give the long-term goals from your definition. Imagine the future, UV2, and go backwards. What do UV2 do right before the end, and so on, and so on, and so on? Dare to feel epic. Lose that imposter syndrome. Get a little bit of confidence. It will help you go a long way, and just having confidence in your abilities makes other people more confident and trusts you more. Screw talent. It doesn't work. Put in the hard work instead. Work kicks talent's ass. And stay focused and stop doing the things you suck at. If you want to follow Andrea San Margretta, they're sailing around the world. They have a blog, sailingstevelopolaris.com. You find them on Facebook too. They're pretty interesting. Otherwise, you can get a touch with me on Twitter, on email. Anyone have any questions? Yes? How do I differentiate between the things I suck at I should keep doing, like, stay in the day-to-day, and things I suck at that I should not do? So how do you differentiate between things you suck at and you actually should be doing and things you suck at and you really shouldn't be doing? Well, if you don't do it, is anybody going to kick your ass? I'm not sure which one. Is somebody going to come and complain to you if you don't do the things you're thinking question? Is somebody going to be disappointed and give you grief? So that's the answer. Do things that people will be grateful or don't do that, but it doesn't matter if you suck at it. Or avoid it, or give it to someone else. So if you suck at it, try to get rid of it, but some things you can't get rid of because nobody else will do it for you. I cannot get my wife to fill out my expense reports. Yes, that's a necessity. Say I started speaking. I'm terrible at it. I know that. Maybe if you... Is it fun? I enjoy it. But I suck at it. I guess I'm trying. They seem to be very much an auspicious hour. I don't think you're trying to say that to things. So the thing is, you suck at that, but you enjoy it. And now we're down to prioritizing. So do I enjoy that more than this other thing that I could do instead? So it sounds like you're saying, don't you think you don't enjoy it unless you've had it? That's not how I agree with you. Yeah, that's another way of putting it. I'll agree with that. We have a common understanding. So another thing, the definition of successful. So we have different areas of success. Like professional environment is one, you have a definition of success and you have a definition of success in your family, perhaps. Those two might be at odds. So being successful at work might require sacrifice on the family and the other way around. So there you end up with a point where I have to prioritize. Like, okay, what do I mostly want to be successful at? Can I do both? If I go a little bit down on that, can I do that? It's still like, keep the goals, keep the definition. But maybe you'll come to a point and say, okay, I can do that to get there, but then I can't do that. So I'll do that instead because I enjoy that more. That is more important to me. So for instance, for me, I don't submit for a lot of conferences because I want to spend more time with my kids. So I don't do the whole, like I know some people who did 52 talks last year, I talked to a guy, he did 40 talks last year, I talked to this other guy. For the past week, he did not spend more than 20 hours in a single country. So that's his definition of fun enjoyment. I for the moment have a different one. So yeah. Any other questions? Yes? The shift between developer and architect, the skill set that must be broader, but less deep, how do you define how much deep is enough? So in the transition between developer and architect, you have to broaden your skill set, but you can't go deep. So how do you define what is deep enough? I usually stop at awareness. Like I know of it, but I don't know it. I couldn't sit down and do it. For instance, I know of service fabric, Azure service fabric is a thing I know of. I have no idea how it actually works in practice. If you gave me, if you said, go spin up a service fabric cluster, I couldn't do it. I don't know the commands. I don't know. I have no idea. But I know how it works, I know some of the internals of it work. I know what problems I can solve with it. But if I actually thought that, oh, I need to solve, this could be a fit for my problem, then I would have to do more research. I would have to figure out how this actually works, and I'd probably have to do some testing and stuff like that. So I stop at awareness that I know of it, and I know what problems I can solve with it. But I don't know the technical details of it, or how the mechanics of it. How I use it. Did that answer your question? The help? If anyone else has a different definition, then go ahead. Oh, I can't stand here because I can't see anything there. Yes? What are your goals? What are my goals? One of my long, so when I was 20, one of my long-term goals was to have a helicopter. That was my definition of success. Have a helicopter. I'm not there yet. I still like a helicopter, but I realize the opportunity is getting smaller and smaller. I still want that helicopter, though. But in research, I figured out how much it would cost, how much I could order a kit that I could build myself for so much money. I could order a more complete version, a three-seater from Sweden that came in a shipping container. But there's some problems like where do I put a helicopter? That was one of my goals. I have another goal, which is I have a goal of working about two days a week. That's one of my goals. Being able to work two days a week, and that's it. I have no idea how I'm going to get there. Nobody said goals were easy. I have some ideas, but right now the place I'm at, family-wise right now, doesn't allow me to do the things I would do to get that goal. So that's a prioritization thing. I don't have a bunch of other goals that I would keep to myself. Any other questions? Yes, in the back. When do I get to own a goal? When I get too old for goals? When you die? You're never too old for goals. So whatever you're doing, if you don't have goals, you're not going anywhere. To me, if you don't have any goals, any form of, I'd like to do that, then that's pretty sad. You're not going anywhere. You're just standing still. I can't imagine being there. To me, that would suck. That would be the end. Or you're happy. Content. I don't know. Do you ever get there? I don't know. I think when you get to a certain goal, if I should achieve this, I have the helicopter, I'm working to do it as a week, everything is all golden. I probably could have some more goals, some stuff to do. I could have goals of using my success for achieving other things. The theory of the best way of being happy is just set a really low bar for success. I managed to get up before noon. Success. Super happy. I don't die today. Awesome. Winning. Hashtag winning. No, yeah. That's why I like having bold goals. Be bold in your goals and set some freaky goals. Deciding at 12, I'm going to sail around the world and sticking to it until he's now almost 40. Now he's doing it. It took him almost 30 years. Actually, it just turned 40. So yeah. 38 years it took him. He's got a chance and we'll figure out in two or three years if he made it. Right. My time's up. Thank you guys for coming. If you want to catch me, I'll be around here and probably down in the comments. Hope you're afraid to say hi.
 All right, good morning or afternoon.  I don't know, these hours keep going back and forth for me.  Anyone enjoyed the party last night?  Somebody enjoyed it too much?  So I'm Glenn.  I work at Kepgem and I.  I'm a managing consultant and yada yada yada.  More importantly, I have a wife and five kids.  These are four of them.  One was missing.  She was working.  I do martial arts on my spare time, but usually I'm left mending something around the house  unless I can get my kids to do it.  That's the fifth one.  That's why she wasn't in the car.  I try to geek out as much as I can, but I'm usually stuck playing with my kids, which  I enjoy.  They're good fun and they're lovable little creatures.  So that's me in three seconds.  I'm going to come back to me because I want to say what I want to talk about first.  I'm going to talk about careers, roles, and stepping up.  That's what this is about.  So if you're not interested in any of this, you're in the wrong room.  Just adjust this one a little bit.  There we go.  So why am I qualified to talk about this?  Well, I've been around a bit.  I've been in this business for about 20 years.  I've been a co-owner.  I've been a developer, an architect, mentor, manager, lots of different things.  I worked at small companies, large companies, and I work at a huge company.  I've managed a few good things along the way.  I've learned a few lessons, some the hard way, some the good way.  In addition to that, I met a lot of people, and a lot of them have interesting stories  and interesting experiences.  So then I'm going to share some of those.  Now I don't have all the answers.  I'll tell you that.  But what I've seen is there's a lot of people that go through work and their professional  life without any goals or vision.  They have no idea of where they're going to end up.  They're sometimes thinking of what to do in the very short term.  That's what we call tactically thinking.  But the long-term goals are few and far between.  At best they're thinking about what's my next position mostly.  And I think that's a shame since I believe people would be happier, faster, and more  successful if they set goals not just the short term, but the long term.  Maybe a three-year goal, maybe even a 10-year goal, maybe even a goal that you're never  going to reach.  Now, and this is really important.  I'm not here to tell you what successful means.  That's your job.  The definition of successful varies from person to person to person.  I have a definition.  You have a definition.  You have another definition.  It's deeply personal.  What is successful to me?  What does that mean?  But what's common is for most people it doesn't just happen.  You don't wake up one morning like, dude, I'm successful today.  This is awesome.  But having a plan and executing on that plan, taking action, getting results, and changing  the plan along the way when it doesn't work, that is a key to getting to the place where  you want to be faster.  Or maybe even just getting there at all.  So what I'm going to do, I'm going to talk about some things or techniques to help you  along your way to achieve your definition of successful.  And also, I do realize that I'm a large white male and gives me some privilege in a bunch  of situations, especially when interacting with people.  But the stuff I'm going to talk about isn't really about that.  It's not about me coming onto people and forcing them to bend to my will and have them help  me define my successfulness.  But it's about you.  It's about what you can do and how you can think to do things.  Now for yourself, what is your definition of successful?  I'd like you to write it down.  Take out your phone and send yourself an email or something.  Just keep that.  Maybe put it at the notes app or if you have a good memory, put it in your head.  But you don't have to share it with anyone.  I'm not going to ask anyone what your definition is.  Don't worry about it.  Take a little moment and think about what is successful to you.  When do you think you're really successful?  And not just in the moment, like I'm successful when I get up in the morning.  But when would you consider yourselves like, I made it.  This is awesome.  I am a success.  I have arrived.  What is that for you?  Now, in order to get someone who needs goals, your definition of successful could be a goal  in itself, but it's probably a bit vague.  It's probably a bit hard to say this is a proper goal.  So goals need some things.  They need to be specific and they need to be measurable.  So does anyone have a smart goals?  Raise your hands.  Okay, yeah.  They're specific.  They're measurable.  They're achievable.  They're realistic and they're time bound.  Now for these kinds of goals that we want now, the long term goals, three of those suck.  Specific and measurable, that's fine.  They make sure you know what you want and they make sure that you know when you've achieved  it.  But achievable and realistic are only in the way when we're setting long term goals.  Let me tell you a couple of stories.  This is a good friend of mine, Bertha.  When we were kids, his dream, like for many of us, was to become an astronaut.  He had a huge fascination for everything to do with space and space technology.  He built models of the moon with paper mache in his basement and all kinds of stuff.  And it's pretty far out there.  That's a pretty unreachable goal.  It's not particularly realistic and it's not particularly obtainable.  But he moved right on that goal.  He stayed straight toward it.  He studied physics, took a bachelor's in STEM, took master's in STEM.  He went to a space university.  There's such a thing, an international space university.  He did a doctorate up on Svalbard studying space, something over there.  And in his doctorate, he designed and built an experiment that ended up on the International  Space Station.  And today, he's actually working on making tomatoes grow in space.  That's his job.  What do you do for a living?  I make tomatoes grow in space.  How awesome is that?  So he still hasn't been in space.  He's been in some airplanes that do the weight-loss, the vomit comment they call them.  Those airplanes that go on a wave and you're weight-less for some number of seconds.  They've done that a couple of times with his experiments, of course.  And so he's not been to space yet, but he's daily working with space problems and space  technology.  And this is because he set this weird goal a long time ago.  This is another friend of mine, Andreas.  He also had a dream and that was a sale around the world.  Literally, around the world.  Not just here and there, but go around.  So I made that decision.  I am going to sale around the world.  But there were some problems with that.  Minor problems.  One, he didn't have a boat.  Two, he couldn't sail.  Three, he was 12.  But he's a methodical guy.  So he worked at it for several years.  He bought a boat.  He sailed around in Norway.  He traded in for something else.  He sailed around in the Mediterranean and ran out of money.  So I sold the boat, joined the Navy.  Along that, he taught himself a lot of stuff he'd need.  He bought a new boat, sailed across the Atlantic, worked with the Caribbean as they're renting  his boat and himself out as a skipper, went to the Panama Channel, sailed Australia and  ran out of money.  So I came back, sold the boat, went to school to become a deck officer, became a first  mate, worked on tankers and ferries, quit his job, bought a new boat, along with this  type with his girlfriend who works in financials, so he's got faith this type.  And they just bought, they picked up the boat in Trinidad and now they're on an island  called Bonnere, a small island just north of Venezuela.  So they started a journey that will take them literally around the world.  They just have to go around South America first because they wanted to go to Antarctic.  So these are two guys that for me are a huge inspiration because they set out enormous  goals really early.  And especially Andres, he did a lot of other stuff as well.  He went to film school and all the stuff, but all the time that goal of sailing around  the world was always there.  So every major decision he made, he factored in, how will this help me go around the world?  So what is the most significant goal you ever achieved?  Think about that.  What's the most significant goal you ever achieved?  And ask yourself, was it easy?  Was it realistic?  Was it attainable or even time bound?  Did you take a significant amount of effort?  Did you have to learn your skills?  Were you scared along the way?  Another speaker, Adam Cogan, said yesterday, if you're scared, it's probably worth it.  So myself, most people I talk to, their most significant achievements were never attainable,  never realistic, and they weren't time bound.  They were difficult, required new skills.  I caused a fair bit of distress along the way.  So you don't put a dent in the universe with realistic and attainable goals.  Now what are your goals?  Specific and measurable goals.  So you have your definition of successful.  Now in order to achieve that, you need some goals.  Take a little time to think about that as well.  How can you tell when your definition of successful is achieved?  For instance, your definition of successful could be to spend lots of quality time with  your family.  That's not measurable.  So your goal, one goal could be to be in a position where you work less.  Say you work 50%.  You work half time.  That would be a clear goal.  That's specific and is measurable.  Perhaps your definition of success is being able to travel and see the world.  But one goal could be to have four months of vacation every year.  Specific and measurable.  Maybe you have a goal to be an internationally recognized expert on some topic.  What does that mean, internationally recognized expert?  It's not specific.  So a goal could be to have at least 10 engagements in a foreign country every year, for instance.  And then the next year, 20 and so on.  And now we're over to the tactical thinking.  Now we're on the strategic thinking.  Strategic versus tactical.  So strategic is the what and the tactical is the how.  So these have been strategic goals, what you want to achieve.  This is really important.  You need strategic thinking to have that.  Anyone drive a car here?  Anyone has driver's license?  When you were taught, that was when I was taught driving and if you weren't, your driver's  license sucked.  When you were driving, you talked to look far ahead.  Because if you look straight in the road in front of you, you go back and forth like  that when you drive.  So you fix a point really far ahead and look at that and you drive straighter.  It's the same thing with goals.  You need those goals that are far away, not just right in front of you the whole time.  So the mistake a lot of people do is they're thinking tactical only.  So you're here and you're wondering where to go.  And without having that long-term goal, it's hard to make a meaningful decision on what  to do next.  So imagine this new and improved version of ourselves.  It's a version that achieved the goal or the goals we just made.  It is our you version too is successful.  But instead of standing here and trying to work my way, what did I do to get there?  There's a trick.  We'll start at the other end and we'll go back.  So this is you 2.0.  What did you do right before you got that?  What was the last thing you did before you became successful, before you had achieved  success?  And you wouldn't get that.  What was the last thing before that again?  And then it's a lot easier to backtrack a path to where you are now.  The path may branch out.  You might have several ways to go, but make sure you always get back to your red dot.  So now that you're back here, you can start going the other way.  A friend of mine, he was also in the Navy up in Buddha, I think it was, where they have  one taxi queue and it's really long.  So what he would do, he would go to the front of the queue and it would say hi to everyone  on the way back.  Just hi, how are you doing?  Walk himself back, greet himself back.  And then it would get to the end and it would turn around and we'd go back.  Excuse me, excuse me, coming through.  Excuse me, excuse me.  And everybody led him through because he was coming from the front because nobody reacted  to that.  So he went to the front of the line instead.  So it's sort of the same.  We'd go say hello to everyone we met on the way and then we'd go back and just pass them  over.  So some of you are seeing some similarities.  When we're here we can say okay, what's the next step?  What's the next step we're supposed to do?  Is that attainable and realistic?  Now we can start doing that.  Now we can start making smart goals.  If the next step is not attainable and realistic, you have to break it down some more.  And you're seeing a similarity to a project planning, break down tasks, make sure the  task isn't too big and so on and so on and it is exactly the same thing.  Another angle, depending on your goal, is looking at what skills are you missing.  This is particularly useful in our professional setting, which we're talking about now, since  goals here are often much more skills driven than goals in your personal life.  The techniques of this, you could use the same technique for your personal life, but  what are the top three skills you need to obtain your goal?  How can you develop these skills?  And it doesn't necessarily have to be technical skills, it could be skills that help you move  into another role, it could be skills like speaking in public.  They have had great classes on that here with Jesse and Denise.  How to do good product review meetings was another session here.  How to motivate others, you're writing skills perhaps, but that's up to you to figure out.  So if I'm going to reach that goal, what skills do I need to do that?  That's the goal part.  Where do you want to go?  Try to visualize a path there.  It might not be correct the whole time, but make sure it's there.  The other part is stepping up.  So getting ahead in work is not just working with you.  You need to be noticed.  You need to see, you need other people to see that you are epic.  So how many here at work think or feel that they are the smartest guy in the room most  of the time?  Raise your hand.  Okay.  You guys have put your hands up.  How many felt a bit awkward doing it because it was a bit like, yeah, there was no one  going, yeah, me.  And then there were all the others like, yeah, probably I'm, but I'm not going to put my  hand up.  You know who you are.  So remember this, there's nothing wrong with being epic, but particularly us Scandinavians,  we have a particular problem with this.  So here's another story.  I teach a class, software engineering class at a local university.  Every year I divide the students into teams of five to seven people in each team and give  or take, but I need to share the teams are relatively reasonably balanced, right?  They need someone who can organize.  They need someone who can take charge and they need someone who can actually program.  So we can have all the good programmers in one team and all the sucky programmers in  another team, I need to balance this out so they can help each other.  So give out a questionnaire where among other things I ask them to rate themselves on a  scale from one to five.  And one of the question is how good are you at programming, right?  So what do you reckon I mostly get?  Three.  Right.  Three.  Yeah, I guess some about average.  Unless, as usually we get when you get people, how good are you?  It's like, ah, I'm about average.  Unless you ask men how good, if they're better than average at driving, 90% will say they're  better than average.  That doesn't work.  But I get mostly threes.  I get the occasional four, some twos, the odd one never knowing again.  Nobody picks five.  Except last fall.  One guy.  My first reaction was what a douche.  What a pump is Muppet.  What the hell is he thinking?  He's five.  You don't write symphonies in code.  You're 19 for Christ's sake.  Why is that?  Why are we so quick to judge other people for standing up?  And that's what we fear.  We fear that someone will, when you go like, yeah, I'm good.  I'm great.  And people look at you, you pump is Muppet.  That's wrong.  And we can't fix other people.  We can keep that in mind ourselves and praise those to stand up and ask the stupid questions.  Adam Cogan again.  He was a speaker here as well.  He's in Australia.  He has his own company.  He's got 50 employees.  He could wildly be considered successful.  His kids are doing great.  Everything is awesome.  And one of the things he's done consistently throughout his career is that I don't understand.  Can you say it again?  I don't understand what you just said.  Can you say it one more time in a different way?  And so many people are afraid to say, I don't get it.  So I was at this, they introduced exchange, Microsoft introduced new version of exchange  and they showed up the web email client.  This is back in 2003, I think it was.  And this one guy raised his hand and I was like, well, can you drag and drop emails in  folders?  This is the web in 2003.  I don't know, most of you guys were probably not even born there.  But you hear this collective groan and the on is like, oh, idiot.  Of course you can't.  This is the web.  And the instructor goes, I don't know, let's see.  And he drags a mail, puts drops in the folder and it's gone.  And it worked.  And the whole room learned a little thing there because that one guy was not afraid to look  stupid.  So don't be afraid of asking, I don't understand.  And don't be afraid of standing up.  So here works a developer.  Where's your answer?  So developer.  OK.  Most of the developers.  This is a developer conference, but I'm sure if you're not a developer, you can apply parts  of it.  So who's good at it?  Awesome.  So you're not the smartest guy in the room.  You're not writing symphonies.  But yeah, you're pretty good.  That is cool.  Remember, there is nothing wrong with being epic.  Take that with you.  So here's the challenge.  You know you're good at something.  Now other people need to know that you're good at it.  There's basically two ways to do that.  One, go around telling people you're epic.  Two, say nothing and let them figure it out on their own.  That's your options.  You can either make sure that people discover you as epic, or you can just keep doing your  thing and people will notice you're epic.  Just sleep out through your pores.  The first one is faster, but it takes more work.  And it needs for you to get out of your comfort zone.  I believe that the best part, the best way of showing other people that you're epic is  being part of a community.  That could be in many shapes and sizes.  It could be from just taking part in showing up at user groups, talking to people.  Talking is important.  Talking to people, discussing problems, coming up with solutions.  It could be through your work at open source.  Have a project online that people enjoy and like and use.  Maybe you have a blog, maybe you're good at writing and can write about stuff.  Maybe you'll speak at user groups.  Maybe you're a hotshot at Stack Overflow.  Nobody knew who John Skeet was until Stack Overflow came.  And then suddenly everyone knows who John Skeet is.  John Skeet is the guy that breaks Stack Overflow's SQL queries.  Seriously, they changed some queries on Stack Overflow for the user profile page and they  broke on John Skeet's page because he gets so many upvotes, but only his page.  So he's an edge case.  But the point is you can put your skills out there in some form or shape.  This is part of building a brand.  So when we say brand, people think of a corporation like Coca-Cola, Microsoft Apple and so on,  but you also have a brand.  So your brand is the attributes that people attribute to you or they associate with you.  What do people think about when they see you or hear your name?  Do they think expert?  Doosh.  Do they web developer, problem solver, Azure guy?  So people have a brand, whether you like it or not.  So what you can do is manage that brand.  You think about what you put out there and what you tell other people and what would  you like to be known for?  Is that the same as what you are known for if you're known at all?  So I co-owned a small company and I wasn't part of any community and we just worked and  our asses off and trying to make next month's paycheck, which one does when you're doing  a company yourself.  So I did a significant change in my career path.  I moved company and I needed to know more people and I needed more people to know me.  So I made a conscious decision.  I'm comfortable standing in front of people and saying stuff.  So I'm going to start speaking at the local user group.  So I started speaking at local.net user group.  In addition, I used those events to force myself to learn more about technology.  I'll come back to how I did that.  I just worked better on the pressure.  So I signed up to speak about a topic and then I had a deadline to learn everything I  knew about that topic.  Two birds with one stone.  So two options.  One, put your brand out there and manage it or two, let people discover your brand by  chance and over time.  The first one would probably yield faster results if the other one yields results at  all.  So now you've figured out what you want, hopefully.  You've designed a path to get there, you have a hypothesis of a path and you're starting  to manage your brand to get people to notice you.  This is when opportunity is coming.  So you're setting goals, gaining skills, planning your steps.  At some point, opportunity is going to come knocking.  Maybe it locks better than these guys.  Of course, you can always open the door for opportunity yourself.  So this might be the possibility of going for a new job.  There might be a position that's opening up that you're looking at.  I want that.  That'd be great.  Maybe someone mentioned something.  It could be a conference is looking for speakers and so on and so on.  And this is where we meet our next hurdle on our path to greatness, what's called the  confidence gap, we're also known as the imposter syndrome.  The imposter syndrome is a phenomenon where you are unable to internalize your own success.  You don't really believe it.  You're basically waiting to be exposed as a fraud or an imposter.  It's like putting on a uniform and a pair of Ray-Bans and try to fly an airplane.  Or later, this thing's going to crash and they're going to figure out, I don't know  how to do this.  If you have success or acknowledge your own success, you dismiss it as luck.  Or of other being fooled by your, they didn't, well, good thing they didn't know what I  knew before they hired me.  So there's a gap between your abilities and your confidence and set abilities.  So what happens when you have the confidence gap or the imposter syndrome is that when  opportunity comes, we quickly become convinced that we are imposter like an actor in a role  and it's easier not to even try.  And that's a bad thing.  So we know ourselves from the inside, but everyone else we only know from the outside.  So we're constantly aware of all our faults, our anxieties, our doubts, our ideocracies,  anything that comes from within, we know about this.  But I don't know what you have inside, right?  All I know of you guys is what you tell me or what you display.  And this is a far more narrow and far more edited source of information.  Michel de Montaigne, French philosopher, 16th century, said that kings and philosophers  shit and so do ladies.  Even in the highest door in the world, we are seated still upon our arses.  And this is not just about kings and taking a royal dump.  It's about CEOs, artists, experts, entrepreneurs that have great success.  They all have these same feelings of self-taught.  They bump into things.  They feel that I might choke under the pressure.  They look back on decisions with shame and regret.  Everybody does this.  So we end up in this place where we're thinking, what am I doing here or I'll never make it.  I might as well just not try.  It's easier not to try.  Now also it turns out that this confidence gap have in research shown to affect women  more than men.  For instance, men are more likely to apply to a position where they don't have all the  qualifications but they don't apply anyway.  And women are more likely to say, no, I can't do that because I don't know all the, I can't  take all the boxes.  Men are more simply more likely to just fake it till they make it.  Now there's lots of reasons why this stuff happens.  A lot of it has to do with society and structural, society and structures.  But and it's not a solution just to tell women to behave more like men.  That doesn't work either.  It turns out that that's actually detrimental.  It doesn't work.  There's something to be aware of if you're a woman competing with men and there's definitely  something to be aware of if you're someone looking for talent.  Remember loud does not equal being skilled.  So just because someone is being loud, there's a story in one of the research papers for this  of a woman that works as a manager in a law firm.  I think it was a law firm and she hires two interns, a male and a female.  And the male guy, the guy comes by her office all the time and have suggestions and how  about this?  I was thinking about this and they're often completely wrong and off the wall.  Well, she is methodical, she wants an appointment, she books a meeting, much more serious and  does all the right work and presents nothing that's not well thought through and all.  But still, the lady manager is more impressed and she recognized this on her own.  She's more impressed by the guy just steamrolling in and being a bull in a china shop because  confidence affects how people think of you.  So not saying you should be the bull in a china shop but have some confidence in your  own abilities.  There's been research that says, they're doing tests and just being told before you do the  test that this is going to be good, you're going to ace this, this is going to be good.  And having them walk in with good confidence increases their score.  So another story and this was about me.  Microsoft has something called the regional directors.  It's a small group, there are about 150 people worldwide and they work as technical and strategic  advisors to different product groups in the different product group in Microsoft.  Now they have openings in every country, they're spread out.  So I got wind of an opening here and being available here in Norway.  And I wanted to apply but I had a friend that was applying and he's going to get it anyway  so there's no use in even trying.  Imposter syndrome.  Like why even bother?  It's not going to work anyway, it's just wasted work.  So luckily for me, my friend badgered me until I actually applied.  He's like, dude, you should do it.  Go on.  So if you're watching this video, thank you, Niall.  But I ended up being awarded that title.  And it was this close to not even bothering to fill out a form.  The confidence gap prevented me from even trying almost.  So one of the things that the RG groups, and here's the other bad part about the imposter  syndrome, once you try and you actually make it, you get to a place where the imposter  syndrome really hits you.  You're thinking, why am I here?  So one of the things the RG group does is between when Microsoft has a conference, like build  conference, they have a day or two where they all gather and do a lot of stuff.  And I find myself in a room with a bunch of people that have done amazing.  There's this alien middle here.  This is what happens when people move when you're taking a panoramic shot.  That's Billy Hollis.  So so many of these guys are legend.  Literally, Billy Hollis was named Software Legend by Microsoft in 2002, I think it was.  He has the title, Software Legend.  The thing is this guy, he manages 100,000 servers.  I can't even begin to fathom how he does it.  There's another guy here.  He regularly speaks to world leaders at UN summits.  It's like, what the hell?  I thought these guys were just geeks.  So we're sitting there and we're doing introductions.  I was like, holy crap.  This is going to suck.  Yeah.  And you have CEOs and CTOs and people owned companies and sold companies and.  Dotnet Rocks guys are there.  That's Richard.  So these guys have achieved so much.  And I'm thinking they're, man, they picked the wrong guy.  So it was my turn.  I rattled off what I was doing, where I came from, tried to mention as much as possible.  And nobody better than I was totally anti-climactic.  It was like, oh yeah, awesome.  Good.  So it turns out that if you actually get in somewhere, you probably deserve to be there.  You didn't get in there despite of who you are.  You got in because you are who you are.  Right?  So even if you don't think so yourself.  Another thing as well, talent totally overrated.  Sometimes they're, oh, she's so talented and it's easy for him because he's so talented.  I don't have a talent for doing that.  So I won't do that.  This is also part of the imposter syndrome.  You're attributing traits to others that you don't have.  And you probably never will.  Like, no, I can't do that.  Because yeah, it's.  So somewhere in life, we get this notion that we need talent to do something.  So I see this when I teach the class that some students are like, no, I'm not a good  developer.  I don't have the talent for it.  Like, shut up.  Of course you do.  Sure.  Some people have an inclination for certain tasks that give them a head start.  But for the most part, hard work kicks talent's ass.  Kids have it right.  They have no limits.  There's been quite a bit of research on this and it shows that the biggest factor for you  to become really good at something is the number of hours you put in for self study.  At that time, when you sit by yourself, you experiment, you screw around with things you  don't know, that's when you take the steps towards perfection.  There's a music university in Berlin, I think it is, that they did some studies here.  And they have performers that become soloists.  They have performers that play in symphony orchestras.  And they have performers that teach others.  And those are three distinct levels of skill, where the soloists are the most skilled people.  So they did some research on what can we predict who goes where.  And it turns out the single most differentiating factor was number of hours of self study.  The number of hours of self study would vary between nine hours a week to more than 20,  almost 30 hours a week.  And it was consistent.  The more you practice on your own, the better you became.  There's no such thing as natural talent, it's just simply a matter of failing over and over  again until you make it.  Teresa Juho, currently the world's best cost country skier in the women's class.  She's won gold medals, she has seven world championships and a lot of other medals.  I wanted to put all the medals, but if I put all the medals you wouldn't be able to read  the text.  Well many people don't know is that when she was starting out she wasn't very good at all.  She was in her early teens and she would come in last, dead last, over a minute behind everyone  else.  She had a friend that didn't practice as hard and she just went past her.  She enjoyed skiing, so she kept going and going and going and she set goals.  She said, okay next time I'll be 40 seconds behind.  And so she made that.  Next time, okay I'll be 30 seconds behind.  And she made that and she worked and worked and worked.  The more she trained the smaller the gap became and when she was 18 she took a bronze in the  world championships on 30 kilometers.  And since then she's only gotten better.  And she said to herself, is someone told her back then that you're not talented enough?  She would have quit.  Gone.  But they didn't.  She was given space to go on and she worked hard.  So hard work beats talent every single time.  80% of life is showing up, just showing up, taking that opportunity and saying yes instead  of no.  But sending that email and saying hi.  I'm interested in the next one.  We talked.  That puts you ahead of almost everyone else.  That's what I did with the RD.  I sent an email to Microsoft here.  It's like I hear the RD thing is open.  What do I do?  Oh, well, that's cool.  You fill out this form and so on and so on.  Okay, great.  What prevents this from showing up?  Imposter syndrome.  The thing that you tell yourself, nah, I'm not good enough to show up.  I can do a whole talk just an imposter syndrome but I'm more ground to cover.  Just be aware that it exists.  If you notice it, try to overcome it.  If anyone wants to, we can talk more about that in the break.  We're going to talk a little about roles.  Different roles you might have in your career.  Again, I'm doing this for a developer standpoint, but it's similar.  So as a developer, we have many hats.  That's why I picked these guys.  They have all different hats.  Those wear the same different hats at the same time.  We have different roles.  We have a junior developer.  We have a developer, a technical lead, an architect.  Some are even chief wizard.  That's an awesome title.  There's 82 people I can find on LinkedIn that have the title chief wizard.  But this is the path most people take.  Oops, that's an hour too much.  That's where you go and die.  I wrote senior here.  Some people call a lead developer.  But yeah, actually that arrow wasn't supposed to be here.  It should come afterward, but it actually makes sense because a lot of people think  that architect, okay, that's the end.  That's the end game.  I can go no further.  But all of these are just titles.  You can call yourself chief senior wizard instead.  But what some decide to do is leave that path and go into other places.  You want to be project managers, managers, go into sales.  Again, sales is like dying a little bit.  And that's okay.  It's okay to switch paths and say, okay, this is not for me, but that looks interesting.  But one problem is that for some, these other arrows are presented as the only career paths  available to you.  Like, oh, well, I'm done coding, I guess I'll be a manager then.  Problem is that these roles are very different from a developer role.  They're not the same at all.  They require a completely different set of skills.  So if that's what you're after by all means, pursue it aggressively.  Go for it.  Figure out what do you need.  I want to be a manager.  What skills do I need?  Top three skills, right?  Go for it.  But don't do it because it's the only way for you to advance.  Now I'll focus on this path here, except the dying part at the end.  It's a bit simplified, but it's okay for the purpose of this talk.  For instance, there are several types of architects, but they have so much in common that we can  treat them as one role here.  So the biggest shift is going from developer to architect.  And I hear that a lot.  What are your goals?  Well, I want to go into architecture.  What does that even mean?  Well, simply speaking, the architect designs and develops and implement.  Now this is a fluid role, and in many cases people have both roles, but we're talking  roles, not people, right?  But the architect is responsible for seeing the big picture.  Now let me just inject here that I don't believe in the non-coding architect.  I think there's an abomination, and they should be coding.  Not shot, but coding.  Now if you can't code and you really can't create a regime that other people will code  in, now we're talking about the solution architect that makes architects a software project.  You have other architects like the enterprise architect which designs systems, and you have  the system architect that has a small bunch of systems and so on, but we're talking about  the immediate path here of developing, developer architect.  So the difference between developer and architect is on what level you care.  Sorry, different architects is what level do you care, how big picture do you want to  see.  Another difference with the developer and architect is that the architect role usually  interfaces more with the business.  I keep saying that I interpret business problems into technological solutions.  That's my architect role, that's what I do.  Now I might be a dev on one project and then I'm architect on the next project, but generally  the difference between a developer and an architect is in their skill profile.  So along the X is the a bunch of skills, along the Y is how skilled you are, how proficient  you are, these are two different profiles, can you tell which one is which?  Make a guess.  So the architect needs the big picture.  So this is the architect.  The architect needs to know of, not necessarily know, but know of a broad set of tools.  He knows, needs to know about all the Lego pieces.  The developer can be more focused, okay, I'm working on this.  I'm a front end developer.  I'm working on web applications.  I know HTML, CSS, JavaScript, that's it.  But I'm super good at it.  But the architect needs to know that, how that works, and he needs to know about backend  systems, distributed systems, databases, and so on and so on.  Maybe some cloud in there as well.  So if you're going from a developer role where you're often like this into an architect  role, you need to broaden your skill set.  You need to have a broader knowledge of what's possible and what exists.  But there's a finite amount of time in a day.  So you'll never get everything to the same level here, because that just doesn't add  up.  And this is what one area I've seen a lot of people struggle with, is they want transition  from developer to architect, but they need to broaden their skills on how they do that.  Well, my suggestion is to take as much knowledge as possible.  That way you can get a good overview of what's available, what's possible to do, and thereby  enabling you to have a more informed opinion on what you should look closer at.  So you won't really know it, but you know of it.  Personally, I consume a lot of podcasts and videos.  But like I said, we have a finite amount of hours in a day, so I multitask.  I listen to podcasts in the car on the way to work. .NET Rocks usually last me back and forth for a day.  Hansel Minutes last me in one way, depending on traffic.  Or if I increase the speed, I find that if you listen to podcasts quite nicely, if you  play them at 1.4X, it will go faster and you'll still get what you get.  Azure Friday videos are a favorite of mine there, about 12 minutes.  We're in a folding laundry.  So get on the basement, bring in a bunch of clothes, and a standard watching a video while  I fold laundry.  They're really good as well because they're pretty focused and they give you a good introduction  to a topic.  Gemline videos.  I'll use those as a radio.  I'll listen to them while I'm working in the garden or on the house maybe, because it's  enough to hear what they're saying.  I don't need to get a deep understanding of what they're doing and actually see it.  Some videos kind of suck when you don't do it, so I skip those.  But a lot of the videos, you're fine, but just listening to them.  The audio track is usually sufficient to get a handle on what this is.  And sometimes I'll leave it on the background on my computer while I'm working.  If something interesting pops up, it's like, oh, what's that?  That sounds fun.  People have different needs and do different things.  All in all, it enables me to have an opinion on when something might be applicable.  And then I look into it deeper and figure out, is this an actual good fit for this project  or not?  So that gives me a broad awareness of different kinds of ideology, what's coming, what's  not coming, what are people doing with it, and so on.  Now, my biggest enemy when I'm trying to learn new things is the instant gratification monkey.  That's the little monkey in my head that's looking for quick fix and don't have the patient  to wait until the substantial reward is down the road.  You just want a quick hit right now.  His biggest drugs are Wikipedia and Imager.  Ooh, funny picture.  He's that little bastard that tells you, oh, click that.  What's that on the side there?  You just watched a YouTube video, what's that recommended for you video over there?  Check that out.  Next picture looks funny.  That was boring.  Keep going until you find a funny picture.  We'll tell you stuff shit like that.  Like, yeah, I'll quit when I find a really funny picture.  He's the guy that makes you procrastinate and not do what you're supposed to do.  Some people have it better than others.  Some people have it worse.  My monkey's pretty ripped.  He's badass.  But I've seen a lot of people with their own monkeys.  I'll brought it up here as well.  Now, remember smart goals?  Specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time bound.  One trick to prevent the gratification monkey is to pit him against the deadline gorilla.  Time bound.  Remember one of the reasons I had to give him talks?  So I signed up to do talks at the local user group because then I got myself a deadline.  I brought home the deadline gorilla and he kicks the gratification monkey's ass.  But still, my gratification monkey is awesome if we don't have deadlines, I get interesting  results.  I should not have done that.  I should not have done that.  And they're pretty weird those habits as well, by the way.  They're pretty screwed up.  See, half of you are thinking, I've got to look that up.  See, that's your monkey going, ooh, let me check that out.  So you're not doing the next session because you're on Wikipedia reading about giraffes  making out?  Actually if you, cool thing, Google for a video called How to Talk to Giraffes.  You'll thank me later.  The worst part is I have no idea how I ended up here.  And this is not a joke.  This actually happened.  I didn't just figure, make this up.  But that's when I decided, no, this is enough.  Close.  So my deadline gorilla takes care of my gratification monkey.  Another trick I use, because my gratification monkey is a picky little thing.  He has some things he likes better than others.  So there's an application called rescue time where I can block web pages.  I can say I get 10 minutes of image or a day.  And when that's done, it's done.  So we're getting close to the end, but one more thing.  This is also important, I think, figure out what you suck at and stop doing it.  Seriously, if you're not good at something, chances are you want to join.  Your gratification monkey gets an easy job.  You're not getting shit done.  It weighs on you and just gives you grief.  And this is not just things you find boring.  This is things you're not good at.  For instance, me, I suck in managing money.  It's not my strong side at all.  So I left that to my wife.  She takes care of all that stuff.  And it works out great.  She has less grief, I have less grief.  Another thing I suck at is delivering expense reports.  But that I kind of have to do.  Otherwise I won't get money, and then my wife will be upset.  And I don't want that.  I want both the money and the happy wife.  So I have to do that.  So some things you just can't stop because you have to do it, but try to work around  it.  Try to minimize the stuff you're not good at and focus on the stuff you're good at.  Because that makes you happier.  And that makes you, it's so much easier to get better at stuff you like than get better  at stuff you don't like.  So I heard on the train in here, I chatted with some other guys, and we're talking about  when the robots take over the world, the value of our service is going to plummet.  Why?  Because we like our job.  The price of a McDonald's burger is going to go through the roof, because nobody wants  to stand in McDonald's before they have flipping fries.  So when robots take over the world, and we get this, everybody gets like a minimum salary  thing.  If you want someone to get out of work and work at McDonald's when they have basic income  already covered, you're not going to do that unless you give them lots of money.  But hey, you want a WordPress site?  Sure, I'll fix that for you.  I'm going to get a little bit of it.  So this was a dense talk, so let me summarize it a little bit.  Now this list is sort of prioritized.  So if nothing else, start at the top.  Define successful and set yourself some long-term goals.  Most dreams die on the tyranny of how.  The how becomes apparent when you have the what.  When you have a clear view of what you want, then it's easy to figure out the how.  Forget how things will happen.  Focus on what you want to happen.  So if nothing else, take that with you.  What do you want to happen?  What?  So define successful for yourself.  Give the long-term goals from your definition.  Imagine the future, UV2, and go backwards.  What do UV2 do right before the end, and so on, and so on, and so on?  Dare to feel epic.  Lose that imposter syndrome.  Get a little bit of confidence.  It will help you go a long way, and just having confidence in your abilities makes other people  more confident and trusts you more.  Screw talent.  It doesn't work.  Put in the hard work instead.  Work kicks talent's ass.  And stay focused and stop doing the things you suck at.  If you want to follow Andrea San Margretta, they're sailing around the world.  They have a blog, sailingstevelopolaris.com.  You find them on Facebook too.  They're pretty interesting.  Otherwise, you can get a touch with me on Twitter, on email.  Anyone have any questions?  Yes?  How do I differentiate between the things I suck at I should keep doing, like, stay in  the day-to-day, and things I suck at that I should not do?  So how do you differentiate between things you suck at and you actually should be doing  and things you suck at and you really shouldn't be doing?  Well, if you don't do it, is anybody going to kick your ass?  I'm not sure which one.  Is somebody going to come and complain to you if you don't do the things you're thinking  question?  Is somebody going to be disappointed and give you grief?  So that's the answer.  Do things that people will be grateful or don't do that, but it doesn't matter if you suck  at it.  Or avoid it, or give it to someone else.  So if you suck at it, try to get rid of it, but some things you can't get rid of because  nobody else will do it for you.  I cannot get my wife to fill out my expense reports.  Yes, that's a necessity.  Say I started speaking.  I'm terrible at it.  I know that.  Maybe if you...  Is it fun?  I enjoy it.  But I suck at it.  I guess I'm trying.  They seem to be very much an auspicious hour.  I don't think you're trying to say that to things.  So the thing is, you suck at that, but you enjoy it.  And now we're down to prioritizing.  So do I enjoy that more than this other thing that I could do instead?  So it sounds like you're saying, don't you think you don't enjoy it unless you've had  it?  That's not how I agree with you.  Yeah, that's another way of putting it.  I'll agree with that.  We have a common understanding.  So another thing, the definition of successful.  So we have different areas of success.  Like professional environment is one, you have a definition of success and you have  a definition of success in your family, perhaps.  Those two might be at odds.  So being successful at work might require sacrifice on the family and the other way  around.  So there you end up with a point where I have to prioritize.  Like, okay, what do I mostly want to be successful at?  Can I do both?  If I go a little bit down on that, can I do that?  It's still like, keep the goals, keep the definition.  But maybe you'll come to a point and say, okay, I can do that to get there, but then  I can't do that.  So I'll do that instead because I enjoy that more.  That is more important to me.  So for instance, for me, I don't submit for a lot of conferences because I want to spend  more time with my kids.  So I don't do the whole, like I know some people who did 52 talks last year, I talked  to a guy, he did 40 talks last year, I talked to this other guy.  For the past week, he did not spend more than 20 hours in a single country.  So that's his definition of fun enjoyment.  I for the moment have a different one.  So yeah.  Any other questions?  Yes?  The shift between developer and architect, the skill set that must be broader, but less  deep, how do you define how much deep is enough?  So in the transition between developer and architect, you have to broaden your skill  set, but you can't go deep.  So how do you define what is deep enough?  I usually stop at awareness.  Like I know of it, but I don't know it.  I couldn't sit down and do it.  For instance, I know of service fabric, Azure service fabric is a thing I know of.  I have no idea how it actually works in practice.  If you gave me, if you said, go spin up a service fabric cluster, I couldn't do it.  I don't know the commands.  I don't know.  I have no idea.  But I know how it works, I know some of the internals of it work.  I know what problems I can solve with it.  But if I actually thought that, oh, I need to solve, this could be a fit for my problem,  then I would have to do more research.  I would have to figure out how this actually works, and I'd probably have to do some testing  and stuff like that.  So I stop at awareness that I know of it, and I know what problems I can solve with  it.  But I don't know the technical details of it, or how the mechanics of it.  How I use it.  Did that answer your question?  The help?  If anyone else has a different definition, then go ahead.  Oh, I can't stand here because I can't see anything there.  Yes?  What are your goals?  What are my goals?  One of my long, so when I was 20, one of my long-term goals was to have a helicopter.  That was my definition of success.  Have a helicopter.  I'm not there yet.  I still like a helicopter, but I realize the opportunity is getting smaller and smaller.  I still want that helicopter, though.  But in research, I figured out how much it would cost, how much I could order a kit that  I could build myself for so much money.  I could order a more complete version, a three-seater from Sweden that came in a shipping  container.  But there's some problems like where do I put a helicopter?  That was one of my goals.  I have another goal, which is I have a goal of working about two days a week.  That's one of my goals.  Being able to work two days a week, and that's it.  I have no idea how I'm going to get there.  Nobody said goals were easy.  I have some ideas, but right now the place I'm at, family-wise right now, doesn't allow  me to do the things I would do to get that goal.  So that's a prioritization thing.  I don't have a bunch of other goals that I would keep to myself.  Any other questions?  Yes, in the back.  When do I get to own a goal?  When I get too old for goals?  When you die?  You're never too old for goals.  So whatever you're doing, if you don't have goals, you're not going anywhere.  To me, if you don't have any goals, any form of, I'd like to do that, then that's pretty  sad.  You're not going anywhere.  You're just standing still.  I can't imagine being there.  To me, that would suck.  That would be the end.  Or you're happy.  Content.  I don't know.  Do you ever get there?  I don't know.  I think when you get to a certain goal, if I should achieve this, I have the helicopter,  I'm working to do it as a week, everything is all golden.  I probably could have some more goals, some stuff to do.  I could have goals of using my success for achieving other things.  The theory of the best way of being happy is just set a really low bar for success.  I managed to get up before noon.  Success.  Super happy.  I don't die today.  Awesome.  Winning.  Hashtag winning.  No, yeah.  That's why I like having bold goals.  Be bold in your goals and set some freaky goals.  Deciding at 12, I'm going to sail around the world and sticking to it until he's now almost  40.  Now he's doing it.  It took him almost 30 years.  Actually, it just turned 40.  So yeah.  38 years it took him.  He's got a chance and we'll figure out in two or three years if he made it.  Right.  My time's up.  Thank you guys for coming.  If you want to catch me, I'll be around here and probably down in the comments.  Hope you're afraid to say hi.
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