Peter Drucker was considered the top management thinker of his time. Jack Welch, former CEO and Chairman of GE can be counted among his famous students. Needless to say, his book Managing Oneself is a great resource of managing one’s career. Managing Oneself identifies the probing questions you need to ask to gain the insights essential for taking charge of your career.
If you know how to code, and are reasonably good at it then you have basically won the lottery. In this day and age, the sky is the limit for anyone working in technology. Regardless of your background you can reach the top of the software career ladder with enough hard-work, motivation and growth mindset! But companies today aren't in the business of managing and growing their knowledge workers careers. Instead, you must be your own chief executive officer. You need to take charge and carve out your place in the world and know when to change course. It's up to you to keep yourself engaged and productive during a career that may span some 50 years.
Key takeaways from Drucker’s book Managing Oneself:
The only way to discover your strengths is through feedback analysis. Whenever you make a key decision or take a key action, write down what you expect will happen. Nine or 12 months later, compare the actual results with your expectations.
Go to work on acquiring the skills and knowledge you need to fully realize your strengths. Discover where your intellectual arrogance is causing disabling ignorance and overcome it.
One should waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence. It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence.
Successful careers are not planned. They develop when people are prepared for opportunities: they know their strengths, their method of work, and their values. And then they can and should decide where they belong.
There are other great take aways, and I will direct you to this tweet for more on that.