242: Choose Jobs That Help You Learn and Welcome the Chance to Lead with Aslam Khan

<p>Phil’s guest on this episode of the IT Career Energizer podcast is Aslam Khan. He has more than 20 years of experience in software design and architecture, leveraging his background in Electronic Engineering.</p> <p>He is a regular speaker at local and international conferences on software development and agile methodologies as well as the author of Grokking Functional Programming.</p> <p>He says that he is convinced that software development is hard, very hard.</p> <p>In this episode, Phil and Aslam Khan discuss how to better understand the problems you are trying to solve for your clients so that you produce better solutions and designs. As well as why everyone needs to be prepared to take the lead sometimes. They also discuss how the IT industry is evolving into a more diverse and accessible one.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>KEY TAKEAWAYS:</strong></p> <p><strong>(3.24) TOP CAREER TIP</strong></p> <p>Don´t change jobs simply to earn more money. It is far better to do so to learn something new. Aslam has always sought out people who can teach him something and it has greatly benefitted him to do so.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>(5.07) WORST CAREER MOMENT</strong></p> <p>Not long after apartheid had ended, Aslam found himself leading a team of about 40 people from different ethnic, tribal and socio-economic backgrounds. The old wounds were still raw, and the team quickly divided. It got so bad that people were accusing each other of being racist, sexist and white supremacies. Aslam was young and overwhelmed by the situation.</p> <p>Sadly, the project failed. But he learned many lessons and started to speak publicly about what he learned from the experience. First in Europe, later in South Africa.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>(9.24) CAREER HIGHLIGHT</strong></p> <p>For Aslam, the highlight of his career was realising that he is good at explaining complex concepts to other software developers. It took him a long time to understand that he had that talent. When he did, it led to his being able to help a lot of other developers