Career Profile: Hassan Schroeder/Independent Consultant

Name: Hassan Schroeder Title/Employer: Consultant/Self-Employed Age: 59 Education: College courses. Tenure in IT industry: 27 years First ever tech job: Customer Engineer for IBM fixing keypunches (1973) Current Role: As an independent consultant I'm sometimes doing small fixed-scope Web sites and sometimes engaged full-time for a specific role in larger enterprise projects. What exactly I do in each case varies according to the requirements. It might be IA/UX, it might be backend programming, it might be infrastructure. I like the variety. What's been your best job and why? Being the first webmaster of Sun Microsystems (1994) was great because everything about the Web was new then; we were pretty much continuously breaking new ground. What do you think is the number one non-IT skill IT professionals need today? It probably sounds trite, but actively listening to your clients/customers and being able to understand their real concerns and needs (which they may not be capable of articulating well).

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What do you credit your career success to (mentor, influence from colleagues, education, etc.) Insatiable curiosity mostly. Though Larry Wall's "three chief virtues" of laziness, impatience, and hubris probably apply as well. What are the top three skills a consultant needs today?

1. Proficiency in a scripting language
2. Familiarity with open source technologies
3. Understanding of business, especially your client's business environment

What's your favorite IT resource site and why? Google. It would be unlikely for a single site to cover all the areas that I'm involved in regularly, so search is essential. That said, the IBM developerWorks site has an amazing variety of quality tutorials. What's the top advice you'd give to someone coming new to the job? Learn some area in depth; don't take the "conventional wisdom" on faith. It may well be correct, but dig deep enough to understand why, and be able to explain it to someone else. What would you advise someone looking to find the type of role you currently have? Work toward having breadth of knowledge as well as the depth in specific areas, so you can join a team, evaluate the skill needs and fill in where needed. What is the one career decision you would change if you could? None; there's something to learn from every situation. If you had the choice to jump into any other job, tech or non-tech, what would it be? Tough one. Maybe film maker, bicycle mechanic, trekking guide. There are so many possibilities. Sometimes I see myself in shorts and flip flops, sitting cross-legged on a beat-up dock above azure Caribbean water, with the guts of an outboard on a tarp in front of me. Other recent articles from TechCareers The Big Bang for IT Don't Ignore The Vital Soft Skills In Career Management Career Profile: SSH Founder Tatu Ylonen

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