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Welcome to the second Bonus Episode of the Nerd Journey Podcast [@NerdJourney]! We’re John White (@vJourneyman) and Nick Korte (@NetworkNerd_), two VMware Solution Engineers who are hoping to bring you the IT career advice that we wish we’d been given earlier in our careers. In today’s episode, we talk about the community discussion we had about what we’re thankful for and have neglected being thankful for in our careers.
Original recording date: 2018-11-17
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Topics
Thanksgiving – Two Questions
- What are you thankful for in your career / current job?
- What are some career-related items you should be thankful for but have not been in the past?
3:24 Community Feedback – Thankful for in career / current job
- Flexibility
- Work from home when needed
- Flexible schedule
- Work / life balance encouraged
- Encouraged to take PTO by management
- Some companies offer floating holidays as an additional flexibility benefit.
- Growth
- Growth in knowledge, into a new position, in the number / type of people you get to interact with
- Being in a specific field can provide more growth than other fields
- Variety in day-to-day work
- Revisit Nerd Journey 014: From IT Ops to Entrepreneur
- Being supported by management / others who work with you
- Job / Career
- Benefits (days off, corporate emphasis on family, etc.)
- Ability to use creativity in your role
- Thankful for customers and their support
- Excitement about the job
- Ability to hire the people you work with
- Thankful for a paycheck and benefits
- John’s Answers
- Jobs of the past
- Doing this podcast and the mindfulness of problems
- Positive customer interactions
- Ability to give back
- People in the industry doing cool things, writing about it, and allowing him to learn from it
- Cody De Arkland’s posts about blogging in Hugo with ClarityUI
- Mentors
- Nick’s Answers
- Great team (same desire / drive)
- Dynamic environment
- Being a part of the technology community
- Previous employer activities
- Office potlucks
- Surprise early office shutdown on holidays
- Nick gets on the soap box about thankfulness
- Remember to take time often to reflect on the things you are thankful for
- Learn to be content where you are
- Don’t lose sight of the most important things
- Be thankful for the smaller things like a child would
- John encourages listeners to progress for the right reasons and to not get caught on the hamster wheel of acquisition
23:05 Community Feedback – Career-related items you should be thankful for but have not been in the past?
- Growth
- People forget about how much they get to grow based on what they do each day
- Working for a company that fosters employee growth
- Working for a growing / healthy company
- Community
- Professional community involvement and relationships that have been fostered as a result
- Involvement in social media and its advantages
- John and Nick discuss how they met through the Spiceworks Community.
- Environment
- End users as the reason support personnel are needed
- Roles that don’t require extreme physical exertion or exposure to the elements
- John’s Answers
- Basic Safety can be suddenly threatened
- Nick’s Answers
- Go “back to basics” to gain perspective on what you may be taking for granted
- Garage for the car to avoid ice scraping
- Avoid exposure to elements
- Control of schedule / types of work
33:20 Sharing Thanksgiving Traditions
- John
- Quiche for breakfast is apparently a thing
- Nick
- Consistently scheduled family feast the Sunday before Thanksgiving / Christmas
- Nick connects the dots between John’s family tradition and his
- Beware of the sugar crash after pie consumption
- John and Nick go from talking about pie to talking about pizza. How did we get here?
- Future topic idea – the effect of pizza intake on personal growth
39:55 More questions for community discussion
- What has the effect of your job been on your holiday experiences (i.e. allowed you to unplug, forced you to work, etc.)?
- How do you allow yourself / force yourself to unplug on holidays (assuming you get some time off)?
- From a professional standpoint, what are your resolutions for 2019?
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