July 21, 2018 at 11:34 am
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Future Proofing an IT Career
July 22, 2018 at 12:15 pm
Since my 1st days in the post-college professional job I have thought the biggest threat for IT workers was to become a dinosaur. It is not a matter of intelligence but rather if someone can continually learn new things.
Our discipline is much larger than ever before - more complexity, more layers of abstraction, etc. One person can no long know everything about an application or component or subject area. However, in order to make a nice salary you need to be more than a jack of all trades - you need to be an expert.
Therefore I think it best to try and specialize yet continue learning new things along the road. Try to get involved with some stretch projects. Whatever it takes. No one else is going to look after your career - it must be you.
July 23, 2018 at 8:43 am
You have to be careful learning too many skills as some employers might see that as a weakness. The ability to adapt however is obviously very useful. I think you should have core skills like SQL Server and branch out slowly and carefully. Core skills never go away. I also think if you want to future proof your career than you should aim to develop industry specific knowledge. Having the skills to query a database is one thing but understanding how to get insight from industry specific data gives you a whole lot of added value. Industry knowledge of data can be quite specialised and that will stand you in good stead with your core IT skills assuming you're happy to stay within a specific industry of course.
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