All I Really Need To Know (About IT) I Learned In Kindergarten
Share everything
… or at least start implementing practices that promote sharing and reuse. Use and build APIs, define common standards or defaults for your organization, establish communities of practice for knowledge sharing. Use open source.
Consider building and deploying applications using technologies that can provide isolation (e.g. containers/Kubernetes, serverless cloud services, etc.) without required dedicated infrastructure (e.g. servers, to some vms) so that sharing can be done safely.
Play fair
If you use open source, contribute something back to the community somehow. If you can’t contribute code, perhaps documentation. If you can’t do that, then maybe publish a how-to article or participate in support forums.
You could even encourage your organization to purchase the “enterprise version”. If everyone takes, but no one gives anything back, nothing will be available any more…
Don’t hit people. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody
Very few people are expressly trying to make your job more difficult. Thinking of people or their ideas as “stupid” might feel gratifying in the moment, but they are probably just trying to do the right thing, based on the experience they possess, and the information at their disposal.
Be the person you want others to be. If you do lose your temper, apologize sincerely. Find ways to say things that respect people’s feelings even if you disagree vehemently with their position. Try articulating ways to improve their ideas rather than just describing why the idea is so bad.
Put things back where you found them. Flush. Clean up your own mess
… if you can do so efficiently… If you can’t, ask for help. Think about this before you implement — don’t let logs accumulate without putting in place processes to manage them. If your application creates ephemeral files, delete them when they are no longer needed.
If an application is no longer in use, remove it — don’t just leave it out there forever.
Don’t take things that aren’t yours
Use resource quotas (or at least don’t complain too loudly when system administrators impose them) to ensure that your applications are using only what they should. Ensure that others are acknowledged when you get kudos for work that has leveraged their input or work.
Wash your hands before you eat
… please just do it. I can’t think of a great parallel here, so we’ll just take this one literally and move on.
Live a balanced life
We can’t do everything, there are only so many hours in the day, and so many employees in the organization. Allowing every technology that might be desired by some will spread the organization’s resources too thin- and you won’t be good at anything. Forcing all solutions to adhere to a single pattern, even if they don’t really fit, isn’t the answer either — this will simply spread the organization’s resources too thin for different reasons. Balance is key.
Take a nap every afternoon. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you
Ok — so maybe don’t actually take a nap every afternoon. But you won’t reach your full potential if you don’t take some time to recharge occasionally. Take a few vacation days, or that sabbatical you’ve been dreaming of.
Recharging doesn’t only come from time spent outside of work. Reserving an hour every Friday afternoon, for example, for research/experimentation/learning on something job-related that you find really interesting can lift you out of the weeds and give you a little mental boost for the week to come.
When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together
The IT Security department isn’t the enemy. You may need to work with them to bring a bit more pragmatism to some of their recommendations, but their job is sometimes a thankless one and ultimately they are trying to keep your organization safe, which keeps you employed.
If you have advanced skills or experience, coach or mentor those that are not quite as advanced as you. Seek out coaching and mentoring from others, where they are more advanced than you. Everyone will be more productive when we are all supporting each other.
Be aware of wonder
Don’t be afraid of trying new things. Perhaps that might be the cloud, or Kubernetes, or that shiny new whatever. Technology can be a wonderful thing, an awesome and empowering force. Find something that is awe-inspiring, and spend some time learning about it. It’s out there.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice — they all die. So do we
Keep perspective. When the time comes, and you look back on your career in IT — and your life more broadly, will you be proud of the decisions that you make today? Will you even remember the “huge” issue that is stressing you out so much right now?
Remember the first word you learned — the biggest word of all — LOOK
Google search is your friend. Have you actually looked for a solution? Asking an expert for help is fine, but you might find that the answer was right in front of you all along. You aren’t actually doing yourself any favors longer term, if you never try to look for the answer yourself.
If you are interested, you can find out more about Robert Fulghum and find out where to buy his books here:
Disclaimer: I receive no compensation of any sort for any of my Medium articles, including for highlighting Mr. Fulghum’s work here.
I believe that the high-level points that I’ve used from his work are covered by fair use and/or non-commercial user-generated content provisions of copyright law.
Robert, if you happen to stumble across this article, thanks for a great book!
