It sure would be nice to secure a stable source of income prior to relocating my family to the other side of the planet. For me, income means getting a job, and a big part of getting a job is sharpening my tech skills.
In the world of Information Technology, learning new tech is the greatest “GOOD” of any career. It’s as important as keeping helium in a blimp. If skills languish, then you might float for a while (or, if you’re working with government, then it could be a LONG while), but eventually your career will crash into the mountain and erupt in flames.
Learning new skills in a fast-moving industry is a challenge in the best of situations. I’ve always been above average when it comes to learning new technologies and getting the certifications to back them up, but in my current situation these efforts call for extra resourcefulness and grit.
PROBLEM: My current work situation presents two great obstacles to staying current and relevant in IT. Together they represent the great “EVIL” I fight every day.
- A physical presence requirement.
- Legacy, proprietary tech.
The physical presence requirement is a bitch, not only because it is an illogical, unnecessary waste of time and finite human energy (and in COVID times, an actual risk to health), but because it severely limits my ability to use and learn new tech. There are many learning resources that are inaccessible on the “safe” side of the firewall. I can access cloud resources, but cannot connect to a VM, for example. Theory is useless without real-world practice. I can watch training videos, but cannot connect to a live system and take the technology for a spin.
The physical presence requirement also makes learning during the day my only practical option, as it drains most of my energy in the effort it takes to transport my physical meat mass to and from the box where I’m required to exist. Weekends and nights are busy with family activities, but even if I can find the time at home I’d usually prefer to do anything other than stare at a digital display.
The concrete box where I go during the week is also infamous for its legacy (and sometimes proprietary) technology, which is either outdated or configured in such a way that working with it drives one’s career backwards. It is most fortunate that I’m not required to do too much actual work, because working with legacy tech would sink me further into the morass, drawing me further from my goal. The whole place is filled with would-be tech enthusiasts, starving for any scrap that might keep their knowledge pertinent to the real world. As a former colleague put it, “This is the place where skills come to die.”
To combat this, I have a few on-going goals:
1. Learn new tech in an inexpensive, cloud-based sandbox.
2. Leverage the most out of my time during the week.
To sum up: sharpen skills, in the cheapest way possible, while making the most of my time.
Overall, this effort requires a third goal:
3. Fake it to make it.
For this, I began studying and scripting my knowledge over one year ago, in a document called Career Metamorphosis, or Metamorph for short. As of this writing, it is currently fifty-four pages in length, fifteen thousand words. I’ll write about this in more detail, in a future post.