I’ve been thinking about the most important attribute for an employee to have. In every resume, everyone lists certain individual qualities to promote themselves (by individual qualities, I mean qualities specifically strong to them).

To paraphrase my own resume, I say that I:
have a high energy
have a positive attitude
have passion for this field
am a strong team player
focus on strategic collaboration
am an independent developer
enjoy problem solving, researching, troubleshooting
believe in maximizing experiences

My old resume said that I have/am:
Leadership, team-oriented, a great communicator, and demonstrates initiative as displayed through extra-curricular activities
Creative, responsible, efficient, dependable, enthusiastic, patient

I’ve given this post, myself, and my professional image a lot of thought the last few months. I’ve thought about what I do well, what I do exceptional, and what I need improvement on. I need improvement on the following:

• Coming to work on time. I come late, I stay late, I work lots of extra hours. But I come in late. And that’s unprofessional. People say it doesn’t matter because I make up for it (which I do), but it still looks bad.
• Being proactive to try to fix things out of my comfort area.
• Not dressing appropriately. I wear (black) sneakers to work, I don’t tuck in my dress shirt…I look like a student still. But I’ve unofficially been given the responsibility of a senior.
• I get distracted too easily. If you’ve ever worked with me or been around me, this is my biggest professional issue (in my eyes). BUT if I didn’t get distracted, I wouldn’t know so much about everything. This is why I think (and I’ve been told) that I would make a good manager. I always know what everyone is working on, I take the time to find out or I’m nosy or whatever, but I’m always looking at the big picture in terms of team management.

Given all this in mind, they’re mostly all “cosmetic” changes, none of which really interfere with my job. Even with all these issues and possibly/probably more, I’m still a valued member of the team, I often get recognition others on my team don’t get…and while I know I do a good job, I don’t imagine I do my job that much better (or better at all) than some of my co-workers.

So this leads me to ask myself:
If I’m getting recognized by my co-workers, why/how am I being recognized more than others whom I feel deserve the recognition equally/more than me?

5 years ago I had no idea. I got “Outstanding” on 3 work terms but I didn’t really know specifically why. 2 years ago I had no idea.
But after recent months, I’ve really starting to ask myself “why?”. I always thought I was equal to everyone…but the more work experience I’ve gotten, the longer I’ve been around the same people, the more I realize that it’s not true and there’s something that makes me special.

And I swear, this is not an egotistical, arrogant speech. It’s fact. (Okay, maybe it’s a little egotistical and arrogant).

Just like my recent post, “Yes” Man, where I had been iterating the words in my head: “Very selfless professionally. Very selfish individually.”, I have been repeating these words as well, longer in fact.

“Reliable to succeed. Passionate to excel.”

Q: What does your boss want?
A: Someone who can get the job done well. Originally my statement was “Someone who can get the job done” but you can’t have a half-assed or barely passing job…

Here are some attributes, probably listed on tons of resumes, that just don’t matter if you can’t get the job done
High Energy
Leadership
Detail Minded
Takes Initiative
Following Instructions
Multi-tasking
Organizational Skills
Setting Priorities
Team Player
Enthusiastic
Resourcefulness

All of these attributes are a means to an end. An end of getting the job done. In my eyes, reliability encompasses all of these (as necessary pertaining to the job). There’s a lot of emphasis on personality in job interviews, wondering if people are a good fit with the team, etc. From my experience, no amount of “good personality” will save you if you can’t get the job done. In the work place, we’re not friends, we’re only co-workers. I don’t need you to be nice, I don’t need you to go drinking, I just need you to do the work.

So I think one of the keys of why I do well, why people go to me for questions, why I get the “important” projects is simple: I’m reliable. You go to me when you need something done well or need something fixed. There are countless instances that say “This guy hasn’t let me down before”…so people put their faith, trust, and peace of mind with me. Because I’ll get sh!t done. And look good doing it And it will be done well.

However, if you want to do very well, reliability won’t take you far enough. You’ll be good at your job but what happens when new things are thrown into the mix. What happens when you need to adapt to new changes? You can take them as they come…but that won’t make you reliable anymore. You’ll be playing catch up just like everyone else. You need to be prepared of new things ahead of time. That’s where the second part comes in: Passionate to excel.

This is speaking strictly from the web developer role and through my experiences with previous co-workers, co-op students, as well as current co-workers. All the developers, senior developers, and co-op students fit into these 3 different roles/categories: they can’t get the job done, they do the job, or they do the job well. The exceptional ones, the ones I think back with high regard all had an extra quality in common. Passion. Passion for this field we work in.

One of the senior developers was very passionate about the field. He had his own website, went home and did research in the area as well as developed in his own time. Went to web seminars, kept up with current technology. He loved this field.
Another senior developer built his own site within the last couple of years, learning technologies beyond what was presented in the workplace.
One co-op student came in with a lot of knowledge on PHP and jQuery, something he had learned before hand. Because he knew so much, I also learned a lot…more on him later.
Another co-op student also had her own site, reading programming books and developed in her own time to accomplish tasks outside of what was necessary.

Note that these exceptional ones all have the reliable trait as well. There have been passionate, unreliable ones…I’m not talking about them…

All of the people above (and I’m going to throw myself in this category), at some point learned in their own time. It wasn’t for the job (though the job benefited in the end) it was for some type of personal gain. They used their personal time to learn.

In my eyes, that’s what made the difference between doing the job and doing the job well. It was the added, extra experience you can’t pick up on the job, the experience that takes practice and time and carries with you throughout your life. It was being resourceful, using experience to offer new solutions and out of the box thinking. You don’t get that with people who just do the job. They just want the end result, they don’t care how you get there. They want things to work, but it doesn’t matter how it was done. Which is fine if that’s what you want…but it’s not good enough for me. If I were their manager, I wouldn’t keep them….because again, I want a job done well, not a job simply done. I wouldn’t pay people for satisfactory. But that’s just me. I’m a perfectionist/elitist/control freak :)

Personally, I can’t grow with people like that around me, people constantly making the same mistakes, people that just don’t really care. I mean, they care about their job, but just enough to get by. It’s the ones that I can learn from, the ones that counter/argue with me and say to me: “You’re doing this wrong Warren. (Dumbass).” that I want around me. If their point is valid, if I respect their skills and intelligence, I will listen. And I will learn and hopefully not make that mistake again. I will grow….and just the same, I can call them a dumbass (in a nice way) and they’re willing to see my point and grow as well.

There was one co-op I worked really well with. We had the relationship where I could easily say “no, that’s a terrible way to do it” and he could do the same. We would spend lots of time, 30 minutes to an hour simply arguing about the best way to do a simple, almost irrelevant thing. And I loved it. Because I respected his intelligence and input, we both really worked together to do something the right way. We didn’t care about the task or the project, it was a fundamental care for developing. But I learned a lot from him, he was really strong in jQuery, often saying “man, the 20 lines of code you wrote, I could do in one” or “that’s coded really poorly…why not do this”. And I would (at first take offense and counter with why I did stuff the way I did) but I would always take what he said into consideration. If he was right, and he often was, I would then modify my code to make it shorter, better, up to his standards. Which is awesome, he pushed me…despite being a co-op, he would say “you suck, i’m better than you” and it would make me do better.

Anyways, getting a little side tracked. If I had my choice, I would surround myself with these people. Reliable and passionate. In a perfect world….

But I have clearly seen (from experience) the difference between the 4 traits.
I’ve seen unreliable and indifference. That guy got laid off.
I’ve seen unreliable and passionate. That guy got laid off too.
I’ve seen reliable and indifference. Those people are still employed.
I’ve seen reliable and passionate. One guy got promoted to senior, one guy was senior, one guy was me…sorta getting promote (i hope >_<) and...well, I guess those 2 co-ops are doing alright? I don't really know. From what I have seen, and what I've written, I truly believe: Reliable to succeed. Passionate to excel. holds some merit, at least in the developer world.

When you’re working, take some time and think it over. Look at these traits, look at your co-workers, look at yourself. Think about it…

I’m a bit annoyed at myself for writing this given all I’ve written and how strongly I believe in what I’ve written but I should add that reliability can also be a negative trait to have. I would honestly say I’m extremely reliable…but because of that, there are often times when I get near impossible tasks – impossible to do in the set working hours, possible to do if I work (unpaid) overtime. And because I pride myself in reliability and it’s a key trait of mine, it’s often the case that I will work overtime or after hours to finish a seemingly impossible task in a timely manner. I believe I put more overtime than the other 39 or so people in the department…well, I would I would be in the top 3 for sure. And it all depends what you want, if you want to sacrifice personal time (and in my case, get no monetary gain) and if you think the sacrifice is all worth it. And I personally believe it is….that it will pay off in the end…but maybe it won’t and then I’ve wasted my life/time (tho I believe in karma, so I think I should be okay). It’s up to each person to decide a question like that…if being very reliable is worth it or not.

Given the type of person I am, the way I worked before even thinking about this stuff…it’s clear that I’ve already made my decision. Reliable to a fault.