Take Pride in Your Work

8 January 2013 by 20 Comments

I was laying in bed Christmas night watching “Holmes on Homes” on the DIY channel, and something bothered me. I had a thought that just would not go away, so I decided to write about it. For those of you unfamiliar with the show, Mike Holmes is a Canadian general contractor who visits homes where previous contractors have done work that was poor quality or flat out wrong. He eventually fixes everything by tearing it all down and starting over. Now, I’m no handy man, but I do the best I can when things go awry at home. However, I do enjoy or appreciate watching someone else who is an expert at their craft and loves what they do perform top quality work. Mike is just that: a person who loves helping uninformed individuals trying to improve things at home by cleaning up after his predecessors and doing things the right way.

I do not know why watching the show that night struck a major nerve with me when I’ve seen it so many times before, but I do know that it made me reflect. I reflected on my short career thus far in networking, and the many things I’ve seen, done, and learned in such a short amount of time. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no expert at any one thing, and that I’m not even average at more than a handful of network-related technologies. However, there are a couple of things that have remained consistent and have not wavered since I began working at the age of 16 as a bag boy in a New Jersey supermarket. I’m a hard worker, and I take pride in the work that I do. Whether it was bagging groceries, packing delivery trucks at FedEx, writing weather forecasts in the US Air Force, or configuring EIGRP on the network I currently help administer…I have always given and will always give anything I’m working on my best effort, because I care about the quality of my work and the service I’m performing for others. This is not just because my paycheck or my end-of-year review depend on it, but because it gives me satisfaction in knowing that I gave something my all and left nothing to chance. It feels good when I’m able to make things work in a desired manner where it helps someone or provides a service. Of course, I have received bonuses, raises, and promotions as a byproduct of my hard work and quality but then again, the money and performance reviews aren’t my main motivation.

So, what am I getting at? I believe mediocrity has slowly crept into not only the IT field, but society in general. Too often, individuals aim for just good enough instead of perfection, or they look for a monetary bonus or raise the first time they do something well. What’s wrong with aiming for perfection all the time and at worst falling a little bit short? What happened to self-satisfaction in knowing that you did things the right way and gave everything you had? I think we would all agree that nothing’s perfect, but being as close to perfect as possible is a lot better than being closer to average or below average. Even if you aren’t an expert at something – like Mike Holmes is at building homes – it doesn’t mean you can’t try to become one by putting in the time and doing all the little things that will help you get there. Start with the little things like arriving to work on time, staying a little later when necessary, and helping your peers with their projects even if they don’t ask. If you are going after a certification, read the study material, watch the videos, take notes and ask questions when you have them. Whatever you do, just don’t BRAIN DUMP! It will only hurt you later on down the road. And if you find yourself with some free time at work, instead of logging into Facebook or watching Netflix/Hulu, document those projects you’ve been meaning to or find areas where you can improve the network. Nothing to improve on you say? Are you hiring?

My point is to take pride in everything you do no matter what it is, and I think you’ll come out better for it in the end. Don’t be the person who comes to work everyday, but doesn’t care about what it is they’re doing and never makes a difference. Instead, put your best foot forward, aim for perfection, and make mediocrity a thing of the past!

Filed Under: Blogs, Work Life
  • John McGrath

    Here, Here! Thanks for the post. Pride in one’s work seems almost anathema to work life anymore, and it really shouldn’t be.

  • http://twitter.com/mellowdrifter Darren O’Connor

    Unfortunately it’s difficult to find people who do take pride in their work. If I’m configuring something and I see a old botched job, I’ll ensure it gets fixed. Create a planned works window and get it done.

    Far too often I see other simply glancing over the bad work and not touching it ‘because I didn’t configure it’ or even worse, provisioning a new site with the SAME horrid config as ‘that’s what was configured last time and it works’

    Be proud of what you do yourself as an engineer.

    • http://twitter.com/northlandboy Lindsay Hill

      I’ve seen a lot of this sort of thing at places that have extremely onerous change control procedures. People would see problems, be well aware of what was needed to fix it, but they wouldn’t bother actually doing anything about it, because they had to go through so much paperwork to get anything done.

      Instead, they just did the changes that projects were pushing through, layering on top of the problems.

      • http://twitter.com/Network_Keith Keith Miller

        Well that it isn’t good. Change control is non-existent where I work at the moment but there is an unspoken rule that if we let someone know that we are working on something that could cause an outage. I know that change control is coming down the road, I just hope it doesn’t handicap us like it has others.

        • http://twitter.com/mellowdrifter Darren O’Connor

          Thankfully our change control is relatively straight forward. I need
          to submit a planned works to helpdesk and they inform the needed
          customers and raise a case. This is done 7 days in advance.

          I don’t actually need approval to make any changes as usually my word is final at my current place. If it’s a big functional change to the core network I’ll speak with my technical director first, but he’s never rejected anything I’ve raised.

          It does mean I’ve been able to make a large number of good changes :)

  • MJ

    My goal is to leave the network/environment better than when I showed up.

    • http://twitter.com/Network_Keith Keith Miller

      That’s a good goal to have MJ. That’s my short term and long term goal. I tell myself that I’ve had a successful, productive day if I’ve learned something and I’ve helped make our network better when I leave at COB.

  • Will

    I have these thoughts every time I walk into a gas station or fast food restaurant in the US.

    • http://twitter.com/Network_Keith Keith Miller

      Will, I agree with you to an extent but a lot of the folks you see working in gas stations, fast food restaurants, etc are just kids or very young adults. While I’d like to see them care more about what they are doing, no matter what the job, I’d really prefer to see older adults take pride in what they do.

      “Earning your paycheck” is what I always think about; a company doesn’t owe you anything if you haven’t already earned it by doing your job and doing it well. We shouldn’t expect to get anything more monetarily or accolades wise if all you do is punch in/punch out without ever truly caring or making a difference.

  • http://twitter.com/Vegaskid1973 Matt Thompson

    “I’m not even average at more than a handful of network-related technologies.”

    then

    “I’m a hard worker, and I take pride in the work that I do.”

    Keith, if you are a hard worker and take pride in the work you do, then you are already above average. I am currently putting a post together on my blog relating to this topic…might have to put it on hold now ;-)

    • http://twitter.com/Network_Keith Keith Miller

      Hey Matt,

      Please don’t delay your blog post because of mine. I am ecstatic that others share my sentiment in regards to this. I truly believe that society as a whole needs to shift mindsets if we are going to continue to thrive. The way I see it, it can go one of two ways at this point. We can continue to go down the rabbit whole and continue to care less about the things we are doing while our lives become worse for it or we can collectively start caring and putting forth more effort so we can continue to improve our way of living. This blog post definitely doesn’t just relate to the networking career field although this is the field I am in and the field I can most relate to.

      Please do me a favor and let us know when you post yours!

  • http://twitter.com/iggdawg Ian Bowers

    I have a short list of rules and truths I live by. And the first one on the list is “Being awesome for the sake of being awesome is a noble pursuit”. You can always tell the guys in networking who are mediocre and will never amount to much, and the ones that are like shining lights in the vast darkness. The most common indication that someone will stagnate and never really have much of a career, at least that I’ve observed, is when they haven’t identified to themselves that networking is important or worthwhile. When it’s “just a job” and all they can talk about is going home and rocking their X-Box or something every day, their career isn’t going anywhere.

    The internet is kind of a big deal. And I have the rare privilege to work on it. At least in the sense that any given customer’s network is a big part of the internet to them. And that’s really important to me. I’m doing something important. And my contribution is non-trivial. I simultaneously feel a great amount of pride and a great amount of humility towards it.

    If you have little academic exercises, you’re probably doing it right. Staying up till 3am to bring something from “wrong but working” to “right and working” even though nobody will ever care. Spending an extra day to figure out the right sequence to perform config tasks in across multiple devices during a replacement/upgrade to minimize downtime (personally I love this game). that sort of thing. then you’re probably doing it right.

    I could ramble on forever, but I’m in fierce agreement with this topic in general.

    • http://twitter.com/Network_Keith Keith Miller

      Ian, no pun intended but your comment was awesome. I know by talking to you in IRC that you know your stuff and you are definitely someone who cares and takes pride in your work. You also take it a step further by helping complete strangers with their issues whenever you can which is also noble in itself. Your stock is definitely on the rise sir!

      I also want to say that I totally agree with your idea of who the 9-5er’s are so to speak vs the ones who really love what they are doing and want to continue to grow their career. There is nothing wrong with a little R&R when you get home but unfortunately in order to keep up with this fast moving field, we as IT professionals have to commit some of our own time to staying sharp and the continuation of learning. In some career fields, that isn’t necessarily the case but I’d argue that the cream of the crop, regardless of their respective fields have dedicated time at work and outside of work to becoming better and they also care about what they do.

  • Michael Gonnason

    Totally agree with this post.

  • http://twitter.com/Iamjeffvader Keith Humphreys

    When I worked in McDonalds I made sure the burgers were perfectly made and quick smart. I took a lot of pride in that and it’s something I have taken with me all through my working life from starting at the bottom in a telco customer care team to being a network architect. I presume everyone zooms to 1500% in Visio to make sure that link is dead straight, right?!?

    I do think striving for perfection is something that, while not necessarily unique to networking, is hugely prevalent in our field. Just look at the civil service for the flip side of the coin, a huge number just don’t give a sh1t. Stamp the form, out the door at 4pm, collect your pension.

    Useless McDonalds fact: a big mac patty takes 44 seconds to cook. Amazing what information you remember from 20 years ago. I don’t recall why I will have walked in to a room but I will tell you the IP address of a some router I configured 5 years ago and it’s only through immersing yourself in something so much that it gets burned into your brain.

    • http://twitter.com/Network_Keith Keith Miller

      That’s amazing that you can remember that after 20 years. It’s only been about 4 years since I forecasted weather for the Air Force but I still remember a lot about it and the useless facts that came along with it and I agree with you that it’s only because I cared so much about what I was doing that I remember it.

      Thanks for the comment!

    • Guest

      “…presume everyone zooms to 1500% in Visio to make sure that link is dead straight…”

      Glad I am not the only one who does that, but in my case the Visio disagram is mostly walls…

  • http://twitter.com/networkstatic Brent Salisbury

    Great to see you posting Keith. You have a lot of good ideas. I really enjoy reading softer topics like this instead of just hard science all the time. Thanks for sharing and I look forward to more from you.
    Respect,
    -Brent

    • http://twitter.com/Network_Keith Keith Miller

      Thank you Brent! Hopefully I will have more chance to share as time passes. I definitely want to get into some technical blog posts but I felt like this could taken in by anyone.

  • http://twitter.com/packetsdropped Adam Loveless

    Well said!