One of the blog’s I’ve been following (besides Bob’s here at Appistry) is Marc Andreessen’s from my old nemesis Netscape. I really have enjoyed some of the insights Marc has shared around startup’s, VC’s and most recently, Career Planning.

In his career planning post, he shares a couple of rules that really resonated with me and I think they are worth repeating. Marc’s career rules –

1. Do not plan your career – His point is that with the pace of technological change, it’s difficult to guess what’s going to happen in the future. And that career planning could be career limiting over the long haul.
2. Instead of planning your career, focus on developing skills and pursuing opportunities – Here he elaborates on opportunities. The Opportunities that present themselves to you and those that you go out and create.

What really struck me about the second rule related to how the technology decisions we make during the course of our careers affect our future career opportunities.

During the course of my career at Microsoft, I got a chance to focus on a wide variety of technologies including operating systems, networking technologies, programming languages, relational databases, internet technologies and enterprise resource planning solutions. Each technology served as the foundation to learn something new. The seemingly random-career-walk through technology didn’t just linearly evolve, it morphed through unforeseen technologies that each contributed to some greater thing. (OK – Cue the black obelisk and 2001 Space Odyssey sound track) The reason I make this point, is that Enterprise Application Fabrics were a natural step in the evolution to my technology skill set. Fabrics leverage everything I know about databases, programming languages, operating systems and line of business solutions to create solutions beyond anything I could have imaged during my career. Fabrics allow me to leverage unforeseen opportunities!

OK, enough with the Space Odyssey. Are you ready to evolve your career and skill set to address unforeseen opportunities with Enterprise Application Fabrics?

Call us and we can tell you how to advance your career!

Until next time….

Mark