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Guest Bio:

Dan North is the originator of Behaviour-Driven Development and Deliberate Discovery.\\xa0 He has been coaching, coding, and consulting for over 25 years and uses his knowledge to help CIOs, businesses, and software teams to deliver quickly and successfully.\\xa0 Dan is also a frequent speaker at conferences and has contributed to a number of books, including 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know.

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Episode Description:

In this episode, Dan shares his excitement on how wide open the field of IT remains, and that it continues to be powered by a strong sense of innovation and creativity. He also talks with Phil about the benefits of choosing your own path, the value of diversity, and the importance of empathy.

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Key Takeaways:

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(1.22) Phil starts things off asking Dan to tell us more about himself and what he\\u2019s working on. Dan talks about how\\u2019s been working independently for almost six years now and that one of the downsides of being independent is having to run the actual business as well as do the work and that it takes up time that he would like to spend on book-writing. He adds that he also recently became a father and has less disposable time than ever before \\u201cand I couldn\\u2019t be happier about it.\\u201d

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(4.19) Phil then asks Dan to share a unique career tip, to which Dan responds first with the fact that IT as an industry is barely into its second generation and that this can be immensely freeing because it means the industry hasn\\u2019t become stuck in a rut of making people do things a certain way. He says that because of this, even people who are new to the business have just as much a chance of making their ideas successful as people who have been in the business for many years.

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(8.09) Dan then brings things back around by saying that the best tip he can think to give is for people just starting out in the industry to not \\u201cinstitutionalize themselves\\u201d and keep questioning and thinking of better ways to do things because everyone is just \\u201cmaking this up.\\u201d

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(9.02) Dan continues this line of thought by saying that even if he had been asked as recently as ten years ago, he could not have possibly predicted where we would be today in terms of technology and what would be \\u201chot and exciting.\\u201d He also says he can\\u2019t wait to see what keyboards finally get replaced with.

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(10.41) Phil asks Dan about his worst IT career moment, and Dan tells a story about the second \\u201creal\\u201d job he ever had, where he was the senior software engineer for a database marketing business. He describes that there was one single database that essentially did everything for the company and that he, by typing something in the wrong terminal, accidentally shut down, along with the entire server. Dan says that rather than punish or fire him, that his boss instead told him that he was going to learn about database restores, and they manually restored the database all night.

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(15.59) Phil moves on to asking about career successes, and Dan replies that he actually has a hard time thinking of what\\u2019s been the highlight of his career because he\\u2019s still learning and growing and that he has not had a very straightforward career path. Dan continues that rather he\\u2019s always just gone after opportunities as they appeared or based on what interested him and that even things he\\u2019s proud of, such as the first time he was a keynote speaker at a conference, happened essentially by accident. He emphasizes not getting too hung up on having a rigid career plan, as it can lead to you missing out on interesting experiences and opportunities.

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(19.04) When Phil asks what excites Dan most about the future of IT, he reiterates that what excites him the most is that he has no idea what the future of IT will look like. Apart from that, he says that the strong shift towards more diversity in the field of IT excites him very much because it means opening up a much larger talent pool of different viewpoints, life experiences, and ways of thinking.

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(22.41) On the topic of the best career advice that he\\u2019d ever received, Dan responds that it was actually advice from a friend in the context of relationship problems he was having and that it was to \\u201cnever settle for second best.\\u201d Dan adds that it has translated into every part of his life, such as looking at jobs and asking himself if he\\u2019s just taking a job because it\\u2019s there and settling.

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(24.35) On that note, Phil asks Dan about his current career objectives, to which Dan says that mostly he\\u2019s just trying to find interesting people and interesting challenges before adding that he\\u2019s tinkering with an idea for finding a better way to locate people for jobs that are good at working on teams in a way that gets people excited and motivated and can grow a team. Phil notes that people with these qualities are hard to find but easy to spot.

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(28.16) Upon being asked about the non-technical skill that he has found the most useful, Dan mentions listening as a \\u201cpowerful non-technical skill,\\u201d before adding that he also thinks that sharing information and empathy are both incredibly important as well.\\xa0

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(31.04) Lastly, Phil asks Dan if he has any final words of advice for someone starting a career in IT. Dan advises that someone should always do the best they can at whatever job they happen to be doing. He says that even if it feels like a pointless task if you always do your best someone is going to recognize that.

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Best Moments:

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(6.51) Dan: \\u201cSo my big unique career tip would be to just be aware that we\\u2019re making this up. This isn\\u2019t just Imposter Syndrome...it\\u2019s literally, the things we\\u2019re doing, no one knew about earlier.\\u201d

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(8.09) Dan: \\u201cDon\\u2019t institutionalize yourself, we are making this up.\\u201d

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(8.12) Phil: \\u201cI think any new career or technology is gonna go through those learning pains as well. If nobody\\u2019s been there and done it before, it\\u2019s all new, by definition.\\u201d

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(18.03) Dan: \\u201cI\\u2019d say the only deliberate career move I\\u2019ve made was going independent just five and a half years ago...and I had no idea what I was gonna do or where it was gonna go...and I\\u2019m still not entirely sure what I want to be when I grow up. But I\\u2019m having some adventures, and I\\u2019m working with some really interesting organizations.\\u201d

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(30.32) Dan: \\u201cAs a developer, understanding who you\\u2019re building software for is massive. As a manager, understanding that if you have a struggling team, you don\\u2019t have a struggling team you have a system of work that presents as a struggling team, so you need to go fix the system of work. It\\u2019s understanding the interconnectedness of things.\\u201d

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(31.04) Dan: \\u201cWhatever you\\u2019re doing, do it the best that you can, even if it\\u2019s a thing that you think sucks, even if you don\\u2019t see the point of it.\\u201d\\xa0

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Contact Dan North

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dannorth/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/tastapod @tastapod

Website: https://dannorth.net/

Contributor to Book: https://www.amazon.com/Things-Every-Programmer-Should-Know/dp/0596809484

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