On Greece, high-school students of about 16 years old, must choose an area for their university-level studies, and later on a specific department. This is portraited as one of the most important decision they have to make, especially at a relatively young age, and as private tutoring is wide spread, there are a few event where consultants offer their advices on how to choose. I was invited in such an event, not as a consultant, but as a software engineer, to briefly present my career and give a few advices.
I compiled a list of advices for these young kids, that will be adults in a couple of years and will have to balance the new-found personal freedom of living alone with the reality that the effort one makes in university will probably play a deterministic role in his early career. As always, these reflect my personal opinions, and are based on my own experiences, but I believe that are critical for most of the typical career paths. So here they are starting from the most important:
- Learn to Work Together with other people
- Learn to Listen, to Ask, to Understand what is asked and what is needed
- Learn to be Responsible
- Learn to Deliver Results
- Learn to Learn, to Evolve, to Adapt
- Learn to put the Effort (no easy wins)
- Work on your soft skills now
The most important skill (in my humble opinion) is to be able to work as part of team. Unfortunately most educational systems force students to work alone, to take exams alone and do little to nothing to promote teamwork. On the other hand, I cannot remember a single case in my career, were anyone cared about individual performance. Everyone works as part of one (or more) teams and everyone is judged on how he (or she) performs inside that team. No one cares about individual shortcomings, as long as a team can cover them. And that it what teams are for, to leverage the best skills of every member and to help them improve the rest.
The second-most important skill seems pretty simple: Learn to Listen, to Ask and to Understand what is requested and what is actually needed. Especially in tech, it is not uncommon for someone to request something but to actually be needing something entirely different. Listening carefully, asking the right questions, however stupid the may sound, and finally understanding is detrimental to actually delivering what is actually needed.
My third advice is to be responsible.