Book Review: My Job Went to India
- Read: January 2014
- Rating: 8.0/10
My Job Went to India by Chad Fowler is a typical book written about things programmers do, and could do, in order to keep their job. While the advice seems pretty generic, I found the book to be very interesting, and they type of information given in the book is great to hear again-and-again. I don’t know that it’s worth buying, but it is definitely worth reading at least once.
The book is divided into 52 chapters, one for each piece of advice over 6 parts:
- Choosing Your Market
- Investing in Your Product
- Executing
- Marketing… Not Just for Suits
- Maintaining Your Edge
- If You Can’t Beat ‘em
I’ll be covering what I felt were the best pieces of advice within each part.
My Notes
Choosing Your Market
- You can’t afford to compete on price- research current technical skill demand.
- Learn a new programming language (with a different paradigm).
- Be a generalist (know a variety of things).
- Be a specialist (know one thing really well).
- Work with smart people (be the worst in the room and learn from everyone).
- Find a job you’re actually passionate about.
Investing in Your Product
- Understand business basics.
- Find a mentor.
- Be a mentor.
- Practice. Code all the time.
- Pick a project, and read it a like a book. Make notes, outline, critique, learn.
- Automate something.
Executing
- Do your long tasks first.
- Have an accomplishment to report every day.
- Be where you’re at- be present.
- Make your job fun.
- Learn to love maintenance.
- Projects are marathons, not sprints.
- Learn how to fail.
Marketing… Not Just for Suits
- Perception is reality.
- Keep a development diary.
- Learn to type.
- Build your brand.
Maintaining Your Edge
- Carve out weekly time to investigate the bleeding edge.
- Focus on doing, not on being done.
- Watch the alpha geeks.
- Pick a technology you hate most, and do a project in it.
If You Can’t Beat ‘em
- Lead.
- Learn from open source.
- Think globally.