Tag Archives: career

#inaction bcotton

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On 25 June 2018, I published a post called “It’s hattening”. After years of rejected applications, I was finally starting a job at Red Hat. On 24 April 2023, Red Hat announced a 4% reduction in global staff. As a member of that 4%, today is my last day at Red Hat.

What does this mean for Ben?

This is the first time I’ve been laid off from a job. I hope it will be the last, but who can say? I’d be lying if I said I haven’t felt a big range of emotions in the past three weeks: confusion, anger, sadness, amusement.

But I’ve also felt loved. I’ve received so much support from people since the news started spreading. It’s like that end scene of “It’s a Wonderful Life” and I’m George Bailey. I’m proud of the contributions I’ve made to the Fedora community over the last five years, and it feels good to have others recognize that.

While I won’t be contributing as the Fedora Program Manager anymore, I was a Fedora contributor long before I joined Red Hat, and I’m not letting them take that away from me. I’ll still be around Fedora in ways that spark joy, although perhaps not much at first as I let my wounds heal.

I’ve had the great fortune to build an incredible professional and personal network over the years. I’m already pursuing a few opportunities and if those don’t pan out, I’ll be asking for your help finding more. In the meantime, I have (at least) a few weeks to relax for a bit. There’s a ton of work to do around the house, many trails to hike, Program Management for Open Source Projects to promote, and an embarrassingly-large backlog for Duck Alignment Academy articles.

What does this mean for Fedora?

I’ve told folks that if Fedora falls off the rails, then I have failed. I’m working with Matthew, Justin, and others to ensure coverage of the core job duties one way or another. I’ve worked hard over the years to automate tasks that can be automated. The documentation is far more comprehensive than what I inherited.

No doubt there are gaps in what I’ve left for my successors. However, my goal is that in a few months, nobody will notice that I’m gone. That’s my measure of success. The only reason I’ve been successful in my role is because of the work done by my predecessors: John, Robyn, Jaroslav, and Jan.

As to what the broader implication behind the loss of my position might be, I don’t know. There’s no indication that my role was targeted specifically. There are definitely people in Red Hat who continue to view Fedora as strategically important. I wish I had a clearer understanding of how they chose people/roles to cut, but I’ll probably never know the process. What I do know is that I fully intend to still be participating in the Fedora community when my account hits the 20-year mark in May 2029.

Book review: Range

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In many parts of society, we ask people to specialize early and go very deep. This is the path to excellence. In Range: why generalists triumph in a specialized world, David Epstein examines the role breadth plays. I should admit my bias up front: I am definitely a width person, not a depth person. So maybe I just agreed with this book because it reinforced the story I tell myself about my success.

But I do think there’s something to this. Throughout my career, I’ve found that the best colleagues are the ones who have academic or work experience outside of the tech industry. It’s not that they’re necessarily better technically, but they grasp the context much more easily. That becomes increasingly important when dealing with novel and poorly-defined problems.

I’ve long understood the value of coursework outside one’s major. Range helped me understand why that value exists. I sometimes heard at my alma mater that “we have a liberal arts school so we can produce well-rounded engineers.” Now I think perhaps we should have fewer major courses and more gen ed courses. (In addition to ethics classes which should be added to all curricula for separate reasons.)

In the context of the current time, with conspiracy theories enjoying a disturbing degree of acceptance, I find Epstein’s emphasis on amateurs a little concerning. Yes, novices sometimes make discoveries that elude the experts. Still, we must be careful not to replace “appeal to authority” with “appeal to lack of authority”.

I didn’t find Epstein’s writing style particularly compelling. This surprised me since he’s a journalist. I suppose books are a different beast. But the arguments were well-reasoned and supported by research. I would recommend this book to anyone thinking about their future career or seeking reinforcement of their past, seemingly-odd, changes in direction.

Say “no” to advance your career

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A few months ago, Bridget Gelms shared the worst professional advice she has heard:

https://twitter.com/BridgetGelms/status/1053398670119395329?s=09

Early-career people in particular are encouraged to take on all tasks in order to prove themselves and — to a lesser extent — discover what they do and don’t like to do. I suspect this is more true for women. I understand why people give that advice, and I understand even more why people take it. But it turns out, saying “no” can do more to advance your career than saying yes.

One thing I’ve observed is that over time, people who say “yes” to every request get a bunch of requests dropped on them. Some of them are good, but many are a waste of their talents. Being able to say “no” when the situation warrants can establish that your time — and thus you — are valuable.

Consider this: you’re asked at the last minute to fly to another continent to be in a meeting with a potential customer for a couple of hours. The potential customer is pretty unlikely to actually sign up, or they represent a small and not-strategic gain. You could go. Or you could find another way for the customer to get the 5 minutes worth of information that you’d end up providing. By not going, you save your company a few thousand dollars in airfare and you don’t lose two days to travel. What else more valuable can you do in that time?

The example above isn’t contrived. I’ve seen it play out, and the person who said no established themselves as someone of value in the company. Of course, you can’t say “no” to everything. Sometimes a task has to be done and you’re the one that will do it, whether you like it or not. But knowing when to say “no” is a valuable skill for improving your career.