Are you curious if your age actually can affect your technology career?
If so, this video is for you.
Hi, my name is Michael Gibbs and I'm the founder and CEO of Go Cloud Architects
and we're an organization dedicated towards building high performance cloud computing
and networking careers. I've personally worked in technology for over 25 years
and I've been coaching or mentoring others to get their first tech job or get promoted
in tech for over two decades now, and I absolutely love every last minute of it.
Today we're going to address the question does age matter? And the reason we're asking this
question is people say, "Am I too old to be a cloud architect?? Or they say,
"Am I too young to get started?? Am I too old for tech? Well, the answer is you can be in tech
at any age and no matter where you're at, there's a place for you. But let's face it,
age does matter. It matters in the way that people see us.
So because people's perception of us matters and in a lot of cases, perception is reality. So the
key to using age as your advantage is knowing what people are going to think about you of a certain
age and using those as your strengths. So you can play to your strength and you can play your game
where you can win as opposed to someone else's game. So use age as an asset, because at every
age group, at every age demographic, people have these set expectations of us.
Now are these expectations accurate? Not necessarily, but perception can equal reality,
so if you're basically 50 like me, or if you're 30, or if you're 70, there's a place for you in
technology, and we're going to talk about how to play your strengths. See when you're young,
you've got one set of obstacles. You know what these obstacles are?
Having people take you seriously. Having people view you as credible.
Now when you're older, you have people concerned with can you still learn as quick? And guess what?
If we play to our strengths, we're going to shine in every age. So we're going to start
with what to do for people that are a little older like me. So we're going to begin with
40 years old and older. Now this is in my perspective, the absolute best place to be,
and here's why. You're experienced in life, you have wisdom, and you've had past careers.
And guess what? Your past careers, even if they're different careers, are valid experience.
For example, I used to practice internal medicine. Here's the process of internal medicine.
I meet with the patient, I ask a few questions, I evaluate the patient,
I make an assessment, and then I give them a plan. Here's the job of an architect. Meet
with a client, ask some questions, make an assessment of their systems,
make a diagnosis, and then give them a plan called an architecture.
See, it's the same job, and I practiced medicine before I went into tech and because
of that I had a rapid career progression because I already had a lot of the tech skills. So play
to your strengths. When we're 40 and older people assume we have experience,
people assume we have wisdom, because we've had past careers, which are in many ways related.
So because people perceive us as experienced, that's our strength. People expect us to
know ourselves. It's expected that as we mature, we don't take unnecessary risks.
It's expected that as we get older, we communicate better. And guess what? The executives that
we're going to be working with, and for say an architect, and we're going to have to present a
$50 million or a $100 million dollar solution to the CEO, chances are that CEO's over 42.
So we're now up here and it's much easier for the CEO or the CIO to relate with us at 40 or at 50 or
at 60 than at necessarily as the 20 something. And don't worry 20 something year olds, we're going
to talk about how to play to your strengths. But I'm saying we have what we have. So work with the
strengths that we have and hide our weaknesses. So let's play to our strengths so we can win.
So when you're over 40, here's what my recommendations are.
Focus on becoming a master at one thing. Maybe you're like me and you used to practice medicine,
so maybe you would want to focus on health care technologies. Great place for a person like me.
What else should you focus on if you're over 40? Your communication skills, because, and this range
between say 35 and 50, but especially over 40, it's expected you have some experience. Focus
on delivering the perfect presentation. Focus on learning how to become CEO relevant, being
able to speak to the things that the leadership cares about. Focus on your leadership skills.
Let's face it, at 50 years old like me, I don't learn as fast as I did when I was 20 something.
I used to read a thousand pages a day and remember all of it. I don't do that anymore, but you know
what I can do now? I have a team. I can put the right people in the right places. I can guide.
I can help people grow. That's my strength. And I can close big deals because I can communicate with
the CEO. The CIO, the CTO, the CFO, I already know what they want and I'm really credible.
So I focus on guidance and advising others. I focus on management consulting.
I focus on strategic consulting. I focus on enterprise architectures, cloud architectures,
network architectures. I focus on the big picture and that's how I'm playing to my strength as I'm
older. I let the younger people who have much more fun doing the hardcore engineering do it,
and that's their chance to learn, and I teach it and I encourage it. It is wonderful.
But because of my age, I focus on strategy, I focus on execution, I focus on sharing knowledge,
and I show how my wisdom can help organizations either increase the revenue, decrease their costs,
become more productive, open up new business or service opportunities.
That's how you win as you get older, you play to your strengths.
You develop that executive presence that gymnastic quad, that gravitas. You basically
become bigger and you basically show people how your skills and your experience can be of help.
So at this stage, focus on your career development, specifically your tech career
development plan. Look for jobs that are like cloud architect jobs or network architect jobs
or enterprise architect jobs. Great place for these distinguished architect roles. Focus on
becoming a thought leader in an industry vertical or a technology, or combine them.
Focus on strategy consulting, focus on management consulting.
Focus on things that are going to play to our strengths of wisdom and experience.
Now if you're young, guess what? There's still skills you can do here, which are
pretty exciting too. And when you're young, you learn faster than at any other point in your age.
Now you don't always have the context or the wisdom in how these pieces and parts fit together,
but you learn fast. I mean, I read a thousand pages a day in my twenties,
every day. I still read three books a week just to stay current.
But I used to read a thousand pages a day and that was something I could do when I was younger.
So if you're young, don't worry, we know how to get people hired. We get young people hired
every day and we all started out and got hired too when we were young. But when you're young
you've got to overcome the perception of inexperience, so because the people are
going to see you as less experienced if you look young, what do you do? You play to your strengths.
When you're just learning about tech, it's exciting to you, so show your energy,
your enthusiasm, your passion for tech. Show your willingness to go above and beyond. Show people
your labs in your house. My students build clouds in their house. I mean, they want to be a cloud
architect, so I make my students build their own clouds and that way they have experience.
So this is where you do special things. This is where you go out there and build special
labs. This is where you go out and research your tech, blog, make some YouTube videos,
make a social media presence, get yourself known, because you learn so quick. Because look,
perception is working against you. So when perception is working against you,
what do you do? You become better than the rest. Since you learn faster, go be better.
Build a level of technical competence that is beyond reproach so that when people look at you,
they're like wow, that young fireball can do anything. And they forget you're young.
When I was in my thirties, I was at a meeting and I was with a group of senior leaders and
the most senior leader there said, "I'm the youngest person in the group that's 45, right?
And I was kicked by someone that was a peer of mine." And she looked at me and she shook my
head to not say that I was 34 because people had already assumed I was 45 to 50. So you know what?
Play to your strengths when you're young, focus on being the best you can. I focused on being
so good. I focused on communication. I focused on business acumen. I focused
on executive presence. No one even really knew how young I was. So when you're young,
become better, become super confident, and show that your capabilities are strong.
So how can you do that? And how can you rise faster when you're young?
Well, if you're more emotionally intelligent, you're going to rise much faster. In fact,
all the statistics show that emotional intelligence is the best long term
predictor of long term career success. And in average paying jobs, those with higher levels of
emotional intelligence, statistically speaking, earn $29,600 more per year than someone else.
So if you're young, that's a million dollars over the 30 year career. And guess what?
That's for average salary people. For tech salary people, it could double that $30,000
or even triple it because there's such a delta as you get up with higher salaries. So focus
on those emotional intelligence skills, bring out the best in others. Focus on presentation skills.
Focus on your writing skills. Develop extreme knowledge. [inaudible 00:09:26]. Go write,
teach. All of a sudden the people are like wow, this is a highly experienced professional.
I'm going to tell you this, when I was young, like mid twenties, late twenties, I took my first
network engineer job. I was a senior network engineer, and within six months I was the lead
architect. Everyone completely forgot my age. Why did they forget my age? From medicine I knew how
to communicate and I took a lot more communication skills training, and I focused on being the best.
So in six months of networking, I was a Cisco certified internet expert,
and I was presenting, I was teaching, and I was writing. The world saw me as an expert,
and it was up to me to do it to myself. No one would get me there on my own. Fight,
play to your strengths, and you'll win. Guess what? When you're young volunteer
for as many projects as you kind of work. Get experience as much as possible, and then move up.
What kind of jobs do I like you to focus on in the beginning? Look for network engineering jobs. Look
for security engineering roles. Look for solution architect roles. They're kind of junior level
cloud architect roles, but also solution architect roles are also pre-sales engineering roles,
and they're usually a lot easier. Find a big consulting firm, for example, that's going to
basically rent you out to other companies and you'll get to try a lot of things. So go stand
out, get noticed, and learn the business. So show your value to the organization, show how
your capabilities can improve the business, and get noticed and you'll be on the way to the top.
So what did we talk about today? We talked about as you get older, it's perceived that you have
more experience and wisdom, you have better communication skills, theoretically speaking,
and we have better leadership skills. That's our secret weapon and strength as we get older. But
when we're younger, we learn faster, we're more energetic, we're more passionate. Again, that's a
great strength too. So play to your strength and then age doesn't matter. Go after your dreams,
don't let anything stop you. If you need to learn it, learn it. Be better than anyone else.
Learn to communicate, learn to sell, learn to lead, learn to manage, develop your emotional
intelligence, executive presence, and your career will be amazing and it'll rise like a rocket ship.
And guess what? Don't let age define you. Just work with it and work with it to make you better.
This is Michael Gibbs. I'm the founder and CEO of Go Cloud Architects
and we're an organization dedicated towards building
high performance networking and high performance cloud computing careers.
I look forward to seeing you in another video and helping you through your technology career.
It was so nice having you join us for this video today.
Let me tell you about some free services we do for the cloud community. Twice per week we have
a free "How to Get Your First Cloud Architect Job" webinar, where we tell you all the things
you need to do and know to get your first cloud architect job. In addition to that,
once per week we actually have a free question and answer session on live on YouTube where you
can come and ask us any questions you want about building your career related to cloud computing
or networking and we'll answer them in real time for you because we want to get you to your goals.
Several more times per week, we have guests from industry, industry experts that I have
known for decades that are movers and shakers that have changed the world that can give you
information so you can build the best career. I invite them periodically, they are on my show.
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I look forward to seeing you and I look forward to assisting you in your technology career.
Thank you so much. This is Michael Gibbs from Go Cloud Architects.