Make mistakes to craft an amazing career
As my Friday morning began I was trying to fix an issue that Jackie the customer service representative reported. The database is having issues with some client records.
I query some records. The client she asked about has incomplete information. Then I looked at some database statistics. There is a weird thing going on. Then I type something and poof! All the records are gone.
“I meant to do that!” Pee Wee Herman
I realized what I had done. I just dropped our production database. It’s 8 AM and this place is about to go wild. I talked with our DBA Doyle. Lucky for me he has a few tricks up his sleeve.
Mistakes
In your career things will go sideways. People will need to remember to do something. You will drop some balls. Mistakes are part of the journey.
When these things happen don’t miss the lesson. Learning from your mistakes and others can accelerate your career.
Experiment
In high school, you had to take Chemistry. We are putting things in a beaker and watching them react. Our careers can be a lot like science experiments. We are not quite sure how things will turn out.
Embrace this fact and craft experiments. Look at the downside. What is the worst that can happen? In software development, we call this limiting the blast radius.
Break things
A few years ago we did a bathroom remodel. Our kids were young and they got excited to help. We let them do some demolition. They thought it was fun to break the sheetrock.
Although not as messy breaking software can be fun too. You gain a greater understanding of the resiliency of the system when you try to break it. Just getting something to work doesn’t cut it. It helps to put some load on it. Then you find out where the cracks form.