Three means to maximise your growth

"What tips do I have for someone who is early in their mainframe career, and which opportunities do I recommend you take advantage of?"

This innocuous question had me stumped for the longest time...

As someone who has long-suffered with Anxiety and an internalised sense of Impostor Syndrome, I had always considered that my successes were just dumb luck and that I wasn't anywhere near accomplished as people thought.

After lengthy consideration, I narrowed things down to a select few options, which I deemed the most helpful aspects and opportunities during my mainframe career: Mentors, Events and Role-models.

So ultimately, what is answer to this question, and what are my suggestions to you (the reader)?

1) Mentorship & Menteeship

By definition, mentorship is the guidance provided by a mentor, especially an experienced person in a company or educational institution.

One of the first (and best) things I experienced, having recently shifted careers, was having a mentor who I could trust. Thankfully, I've been around some amazing people since starting !

Mentorship can be valuable no matter which company you work for, or which continent you live in.

A good mentor will be a person who you always feel comfortable asking questions to, who never judges you for having limited knowledge, and whose seniors are happy for them to take a bit of time away from a project in order to support your development.

Some mentors may support you with gaining knowledge or comprehending something technical, while other mentors may help you network with other people, encourage your advocacy, or cheer you on whenever you're too modest to take credit for an achievement.

2) Events and Conference

Events like GSE, SHARE, IBM TechXchange can be fun yet also highly valuable, featuring a healthy mix of seminars, quizzes, lectures, technology, gaming, lab-work, and panels.

In my experience, all sorts of opportunities occur at these events, but rarely arise outside of them, so sign up to as many as you possibly can!

Just because your employers may pay for you to go, that doesn't mean the event can't be a great place to build your professional network - Events like these allow you to meet other like-minded individuals, to collaborate, and to make friends for life.

The aforementioned collaboration can come in different forms:

• You might discuss working together on a blog, or joining one another in a prospective panel.
• You may describe how a software-development team could improve their UI (user interface).
• You might outline an issue that may have been missed, to QA (quality assurance) teams.

There is even the potential to forge partnerships with other businesses / teams to recreate software that is outdated, unsupported or unavailable for licensing (if the owners were dissolved).

3) Role Models

While mentors are more likely to actively teach and guide their mentee (you have meetings together to support learning), conversely role models may influence people much more passively (you model your own conduct based upon how they act).

One of the directors at Vertali is rather (in)famous in this industry: Mark Wilson is a name that few people are unfamiliar with.

Mark regularly, and most generously, takes the whole company out for dinner when a load of us are pooled into the office at the same time.

Over the years, many fascinating stories have been shared about his time working in the industry, from humble beginnings in the UK's West Midlands, to having started companies worth millions.

All the while he inspires us with is possible when you put your heart and soul into something.

Best of all, this director never tells any of the staff that we shouldn’t “dream big”, whether new or experienced, he encourages each of us to be our best and to learn, so we may one-day take over from people like himself when they retire.

It can be hard for people to know where the ceiling of growth is, or to know “how high can I progress?”, and that's where you need a role model who inspires you to maintain your efforts.