For a Software Support Engineer a Note on the Relevance of Professional References
The most important thing in keeping one’s Software Support Engineer job is professional references.
A professional reference is one of my colleagues describing my work behavior to another of my colleagues.
If my colleagues continually positively refer me to each other (I mean give positive professional references about me to each other) then I will be able to keep my job.
For example I’m Maurice and two of my colleagues are talking about me and one of them says to the other: “Maurice really did a great job on last week’s ______ project.”
This is even more important than taking school classes, passing tests or showing my colleagues my great written portfolio.
Here are some characteristics that I’ve noticed about professional references:
– Professional references are out of my control (given totally by the mercy and grace of someone else)
– Professional references are Taboo (this may be why I personally have historically had a hard time understanding them — it’s hard to find a recorded reference to them and also hard to find a person who will talk with you about them) (because of this, this may be my first and last post on the importance of professional references to a Software Support Engineer — I want to respect the taboo and not dwell on this subject!)
– Professional references are valuable– as valuable as one’s paycheck, but in a different way. (In other words references get a job which comes with paycheck)(maybe this great value is what makes it taboo too…)
– Professional references are relevant at all times — connected to one’s ongoing reputation
– In addition to being important in keeping one’s Software Support Engineer job, professional references are also important in getting a Software Support Engineer job in the first place.
These are the relevance of professional references to a Software Support Engineer.
*2014-12-05 edit: previously published at http://w̶i̶e̶l̶d̶l̶i̶n̶u̶x̶.̶c̶o̶m̶/?p=893
*2015-07-30 edit: edited whitespace to improve this post’s readability
[2020 edit: Moved to: https://i̶n̶v̶e̶s̶t̶o̶r̶w̶o̶r̶k̶e̶r̶.̶c̶o̶m̶/2014/... .html.]