Free E-Book on Personal Branding

William Grosso @ April 26, 2006

Rajesh Setty gave a great talk last week at SDForum's Software Engineering Management SIG.

In it, he talked about the importance of long-term thinking in career development. More specifically, about how to develop a "personal brand"

Good stuff, and stuff that resonated deeply with me; it's something that's on my mind a lot these days (and wasn't 5 years ago). It's all too easy to get stuck, doing the same thing over and over again and not developing, either personally or professionally, the way you should.

I have friends who are very experienced software developers. They spend time, lots of time, learning the nuts, bolts, and gritty details of the latest technologies. So that they can compete for jobs as developers using those technologies. In essence, they spend their spare time doing what less experienced developers do, and then compete against those less experienced developers for jobs. They have an edge in the competition (experience does matter) but … it's not a huge edge and that's the wrong competition for them to be in.

Most of the people I know who do this suspect they could be managing their career more effectively, but they don't quite have their finger on what they should be doing.

Now I know how to explain things to them. Because Rajesh's put the talk on-line, in the form of a free PDF book.

Highly recommended for anyone who wonders where their career is going and how to grow as a professional.

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