SharePoint Careers: Three Most Successful Career Paths

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Let’s talk about SharePoint Careers!  Last week, we kicked off the new year by suggesting five key tips for a fun and fulfilling career in SharePoint.  This week, I want to start digging into each of those tips separately and sharing a little more information about each one.  After all, what better way to start the new year than with some advice about finding a better job?  (And no, Chicago Bears fans, I forbid you from sending this link to Lovie Smith, who was a pretty darn good football coach.)
The goal here is simple—to prepare you, the reader, to make good choices in growing your technology career.  Ideally, what you’ll find within is useful to experienced hands and fresh-faced job seekers alike.
Today’s topic is “Who should I work for?  The Three Best Paths to a Career in SharePoint.”
So again, if you’ve got the knack, it’s easy enough to get into.  But once you’re there, what’s the best way to move forward?  This is a subject I don’t think enough people have offered guidance on, and that’s a shame, because SharePoint talent is always in high demand, and it’s easy for people to take a job with less upside simply because they don’t know any better.
The most successful SharePoint people I know have taken one (or more) of three rock-solid routes to a successful SharePoint career.  That’s right, three—no more, no less.  What are they?  If you think about this, it won’t surprise you at all: Partners, Enterprise IT, and working for Microsoft directly.  Even within these avenues, though, there are pros and cons to be aware of.  I can’t tell you how many recruiters and ads I ignore on a regular basis.  These people are great at making their opportunities sound enticing, but you’ve earned the right to be more discerning.
Just like Lovie Smith.

PARTNERS
The MICROSOFT PARTNER space is probably the most commonly taken—and most competitive—route to a career in SharePoint.  Microsoft has a huge and highly-developed partner ecosystem, but as far as SharePoint is concerned, there are two main types of partners to consider: System Integrators (SI’s) and Independent Software Vendors (ISV’s).
SharePoint is a really friendly place for ISVs—as the likes of NewsGator, AvePoint, Metalogix, Knowledge Lake, Quest, Nintex and others can attest—because of the many opportunities to augment the base platform with specialized software packages to address specific use cases.  Likewise, ISVs are a pretty friendly place for SharePoint-focused people to build a career.  As unique software companies in their own right, they typically carry their own support, sales, presales and marketing staff alongside the actual development teams.  Some of the best-known and most talented experts in the SharePoint community work for these partners, who come in many shapes, sizes and flavors.
Similarly, Systems Integrators—the consulting firms who provide services to companies that require specific SharePoint-related expertise— also come in different shapes and sizes.  It’s this particular set of employers that has the biggest boom-or-bust potential, in my mind.  While a sound, SharePoint-focused SI with a commitment to the platform and a sales force that understands how to position it provides a great opportunity for a career in consulting, the flipside of this is something to look out for.  The world is littered with tiny boutiques that focus on one thing or another and, as such, provide very limited opportunities for growth outside of that specialty.  These companies often talk a good game… until you’re on board, and you see what an uphill climb they face.
In my own experience, the best opportunities for career growth in the SI world are with the National SI’s (full disclosure: my employer, Perficient, is one).  It’s easy to get lost in a truly Global organization, while the smaller companies can be pretty limited in scope and opportunities.   If I’m working for a Systems Integration partner, I’d like to be right where I’m at.
On either side of the ISV/SI equation, though, the strengths are pretty similar—great opportunities for advancement, exposure, and a broad range of potential experiences to build on.  The authors of most Microsoft Press books on SharePoint, the presenters of most SharePoint Conference sessions, and the vast majority of the MVP community all work for partners.  Of course, moreso than either of the other options I’m exploring below, these companies are only as strong as the market, so if you go this route you need to be pretty confident in your ability to succeed in it.
ENTERPRISE IT
The real value of working on SharePoint in an Enterprise IT shop is that you truly get to see it in action at the enterprise level.  There’s nothing like maintaining a farm that is national or even global in scope, and responding to the needs and requests of thousands of individual users.  People who come from this world tend to have a set of incredibly meaningful real-world stories and experiences to draw from.
Also, an advantage to working in Enterprise IT versus being “the SharePoint guy” for a small-to-mid-sized business is that you’re often able to focus strictly on SharePoint.  You’re not being called to maintain a dozen unrelated applications or work on SQL Server, SharePoint, Systems Center and probably Exchange too.
There are trade-offs, of course.  Large enterprises can be quite comfortable and maintaining their infrastructure and vital applications is a pretty stable line of work these days.  Depending on the organization, opportunities to take that experience and turn it into a wider role in leadership and/or management can be a simple matter of time… or a very difficult endeavor indeed.  More than anywhere else, success here depends a lot on corporate culture and just how important a role the SharePoint platform plays in enabling the company’s real line of business.
WORKING FOR MICROSOFT
The third—and probably most obvious but least traveled option—for a SharePoint career is working directly for Microsoft.  Life as a Softie who cares about SharePoint can take a lot of forms—Microsoft Consulting Services for the hardcore consulting lifers, Premier Support for the more technically minded, Product Development for the highly-trained coders, field-based Technical Specialists and MTC Architects to support the sales force, the SharePoint Product Team for the marketing-oriented and Technical Product Management for techies with rare communication skills.
That sounds like a lot of options, and in reality, it is—but landing a job with Microsoft isn’t easy.  They’re very selective, and as one of the world’s leading companies, they’ve earned the right to be.  It’s probably not something you can do without a wealth of prior experience on SharePoint for the experienced among us, or an internship in Redmond for the younger set.  Of course, many in the SharePoint Community aspire to working for SteveB as a sort of ultimate goal, and anyone who has the opportunity should probably take it.
I only spent two years working for Microsoft, myself, and I like to refer to it as my graduate degree in SharePoint and Office.  A rotation inside a tech giant like Microsoft will never hurt you, let’s put it that way, no matter what you do there.  Regardless of your role in the company, understanding how SharePoint is developed, scoped, produced, and marketed from the inside is something you just can’t replicate anywhere else—and that’s not even addressing how fascinating it is to see how Microsoft uses their own tools internally.
CONCLUSIONS
There you have it—one man’s opinion on the three best routes to a career in SharePoint.  It’s founded in large part on my experience and what I know of my peers’, so by definition it’s incomplete, but I hope it’s been valuable.  My next post will take a look at how to use what you already know to advance your SharePoint career.