Career Development

Many people will disagree with this post, not so much because it's flat out wrong but because there are so many different approaches one can take. It's a very subjective realm but I'm going to put forward some suggestions, make some considered arguments and leave it at that. The context is twofold as suggested by the title: Firstly, I get a lot of people asking me about how to get a start in the security industry. I've regularly reverted with "stay tuned, I'm writing something" and this blog po...

Exactly 7 years ago today, I wrote my first blog post titled Why online identities are smart career moves [https://www.troyhunt.com/why-online-identities-are-smart-career/]. That's a pretty self-explanatory title and I wrote it while gainfully employed in a job I'd been in for 8 years at the time, but it's worth a quick read as it sets the scene for this post. I may have had a steady job, but I knew I wouldn't always be there... I won't go into all the background here, if you want the details o...

As I’ve now widely publicised, I left Pfizer a few months back [https://www.troyhunt.com/2015/04/today-marks-two-important-milestones.html] after 14 years with the firm. You build up a lot of dependencies over 14 years, a lot of access to systems and a lot of people who count on you. As I was preparing to exit, I made a bunch of notes in a draft blog post because firstly, as I recently wrote in How I optimised my life to make my job redundant [https://www.troyhunt.com/2015/07/how-i-optimised-my-...

If you’re a regular reader, you may have noticed a rather major job change on my behalf [https://www.troyhunt.com/2015/05/so-dust-has-finally-settled.html] recently. The day to day office grind has gone and corporate life is now well and truly behind me, where it will firmly stay. One of the things that amazed me most when I finally wrote about this is how surprised so many people were that I actually had a normal day job: > Can't believe @troyhunt [https://twitter.com/troyhunt] had another jo...

So the dust has finally settled. A month ago I wrote about </pfizer> [https://www.troyhunt.com/2015/04/today-marks-two-important-milestones.html] which marked my departure from the corporate world after spending the last 14 years building and managing their software things across a good whack of the world. With that chapter now formally closed, it’s time to talk about the next phase. It’s time to talk about Pluralsight [http://www.pluralsight.com/]. The path to Pluralsight It was 2012 when I...

Today marks two important milestones for me – it’s the first time I’ve ever mentioned Pfizer [http://www.pfizer.com] on this blog and after 14 years, it’s my last day working for them. Both those milestones are significant and in their own ways, mark a pivotal point in my career. For those that are interested, I’d like to tell you what I’ve been doing in recent years and give a hint of what will come next. “Architect” There’s this odd thing that tends to happen in many peoples’ careers and I...

He lurks quietly in the darkness emerging only to briefly churn out some markup during business hours. He has no face, no name, no records. His only weapon is his word. He is: This is not the work of fiction, these ghosts walk among us, blending seamlessly into their environment until one day they emerge, seeking a job somewhere else. And when they do, prospective employers look for them and… they can’t be found. Anywhere. Yes, the “Ghost Who Codes” is real and you may even be one of them wi...

The final catalyst for me eventually taking the leap into the blogosphere came from an unexpected source. It was actually my own response to a Stack Overflow Question [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1352597/continue-education-or-put-myself-out-there/1353125#1353125] where I’d suggested that one of the best ways to make yourself more marketable as a software developer is to have an active online profile. I don’t necessarily mean to try and achieve semi celebrity status like Scott Guthrie [ht...