Be a Unicorn, not a Dinosaur: Examples from VMworld – Episode 59

Warning: This is a tough-to-hear episode. Please accept our apologies – we did our best to clean it up. The conversation is just too good to throw it away!

Geek-Whisperers-Live-vBrownBag-VMworld-2014
Chris Cicotte joining your regular Whisperers, John, Amy and Matt.

In this incredibly raw (apologies from the vBrownBag crew for that!) episode of the Geek Whisperers, we have multiple guests explain how they advance their career in interesting way. Let’s break it out by chapters:

Individual Contributor as a Career Path

Chris Cicotte, Principle Sales Engineer, talks about turning down management roles.

  • Managing people vs individual contributor
  • Request Skip-level meeting (undated access to your bosses boss)
  • Put your shoulder out there to be tapped
  • Document your brand in 5 single sentences
  • Reaching out for raw feedback
  • Give to http://supportforstephen.com/

Giving Up Your Childish Things

Eric Nielson, former boss of our own John Troyer, teaches us that growth is coupled with loss. We discuss:

  • Giving up childish things to progress
  • Burnout is not a great time to ask for a promotion
  • Think about what you have to give up
  • Brutally honest mentor
  • Do you love people and do you love coaching people? — need that to be a leader
  • If you love to build and rebuild, be a specialist
  • Keep approaches simple and scale up from there
  • Do more, plan less
  • Don’t be afraid to fail

“Unicorns are free range. Dinosaurs stand in one spot” ~ Amy Lewis

Growth of vBrownBags

Josh Atwell jumped on the mic. Some great points:

  • Believe in what you’re doing
  • Do it until it looks like a forgone conclusion
  • Get involved in vBrownBags: http://professionalvmware.com/brownbags/

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