You will never have enough time to keep current. Jim reminds us of that in his comment for yesterday’s editorial. His comments have prompted me to explore the fact that there is more than one kind of skill set you need to continually improve.
In my mind I see three different kinds of skills we need to maintain.
- There are skills that are technical, but are transferable to different products
- There are skills that are especially technical, related to a specific technology, framework, or product.
- There are skills that are not technical, and are transferrable to working in IT
Some examples of Transferable Technical skills are Database Design, Objected Oriented development principles and patterns, version control, Warehouse design, User Experience Design, Continuous Integration, etc.
Some examples of technical skills are things such as ORM generators, Software Languages and Frameworks, Database Engines, Version Control tools, Cloud Services, etc.
The third skillset is not technical, yet still important for you to enhance and improve. This might include skills such as Working Remotely, Project Management, Documentation, Requirements, Test Planning, Presenting, Communicating with diverse audiences, industry knowledge, etc.
That being said, even if your employer is not willing to send you to training, and you can’t find free stuff somewhere, there is much you can focus on, and even integrate into your daily workload, so that improvement is not something you do outside of your job, but something you merge into your daily work.
It won’t always be possible to learn new technical skills based on specific products because your company has different priorities. For example, many companies still use SQL Server 2008 or even earlier. Regardless of their reasoning, you are not going to learn SQL Server 2012 or later, and implement it at your company.
However, if you work with, or want to work with databases, you can learn database design skills, because they are typically not database engine specific. You can even learn to create Database Entity Relationship Diagrams using a number of free tools, and better yet, use a commercial database design tool if one is available.
The same it true if you are supporting servers, writing application software, etc. Don’t focus on what your Employer won’t do for you. Target the many things that wrap around your job, and go after those areas your employer can’t control. For example, you can learn Object Oriented Design Patterns and apply it to nearly any language. That is completely in your control.
Have you found useful resources for developing skills on your own? Share it with us in your comments.
Cheers,
Ben