300-Level Guide to Career Internals: Planning Your Career

You're overwhelmed with choices: so many things you could learn, so many ways you could specialize in your career. Which one should you choose? What are the safe bets, and what are the risky bets? Should you be a contractor? A consultant? A freelancer? Specialize in the cloud, and if so, what products? There's no guide for data professionals here, and it's kinda scary.

I'm Brent Ozar, and about ten years ago, I sat down with a pen and paper to analyze the ways that I could make a living with data. I devoured a lot of business books, thought about the kinds of things companies pay money for, and laid out a simple grid to help decide what kind of career I wanted to build for myself.

Today, in 2020, you're facing the same problems. In one session, I'll explain what companies pay for, what individuals pay for, and how you could build different careers with that knowledge. I won't tell you what's right for you - I just want to give you a map of different choices, like a guidance counselor would. I'll finish the session by explaining the choice I made, and why - and if that resonates with you, you can attend the 400-Level session to get the roadmap I used to build my own career.