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Once you start the job you want - or move forward along your career path - it’s important to continue your progress. As you move forward, it will be natural - and necessary - to acquire new skills that complement the ones you have.
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Once you start the job you want or move forward along your career path,
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it's important to continue your progress.
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As you move forward, it'll be natural and necessary
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to acquire new skills that complement the ones you already have.
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Working with others and continuing to be an active networker online
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should expose you to new technologies, strategies, and tools
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to try out and potentially adopt as your own.
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At a recent visit to a local design agency,
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it was clear that staying current is a challenge that both job seekers
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and existing industry professionals must overcome.
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>>When we look to hire anyone, whether it's designer or developer,
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one of the most important things in my book is not necessarily—
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yeah, I mean it's great to have the prerequisites as far as the technology is concerned.
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But technology is moving so quickly on both the design and the development side
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that it's really important that the folks that we hire
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are passionate about learning.
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You know, we provide a lot of on-the-job training and those types of things
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for the individuals here, and because of the shifts, it's important
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for people to have that desire to get up to speed on the latest technology
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or learn something new.
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That is probably the single most important characteristic
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of any new hire here at our company.
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>>Industry blogs and networks continue to be powered
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by the energy of its audience.
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Continually seeking out new and better ways to advance their design
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and development projects.
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And you can count on Treehouse as well
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to continue to develop new courses based on the demands of the tech industry.
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>>So there's big misconception of trends in the industry.
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And I believe it was Paul Rand that said it.
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It's harder to be good than it is to follow a trend.
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Because following a trend, you're just jumping on the boat and saying
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hey, this person did it, and after a while it's just going to get dummied down
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to nothing, and you'll probably end up seeing that design at Wal-Mart.
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Right? Where being good, you're not really setting your own trend.
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You're just creating a timeless piece that will work well.
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>>That's one thing that's great about our industry, and that's why when I first started
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speaking was that, just by our nature of our industry, we're so open,
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that we have to share our information
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in order to get better, but also to continue on, because it's not going to happen otherwise.
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>>Yeah, it is hard to stay current.
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I rely on Twitter a lot to just get all of this new information.
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So I read a lot of blogs, but I kind of find out about them through Twitter.
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I think that that's a really great tool, because you can see what
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is on people's minds right at that moment.
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They don't have to take a long time to craft some big long blog post.
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You can see what other designers and developers are thinking about
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and working on right at that moment.
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And I think a lot of staying current, too, is just being willing to just
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try something new.
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So recently I just tried Sass for the first time.
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And I hadn't used a CSS preprocessor before,
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just because I've been doing CSS forever, and it works, right?
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I'm used to writing it, and so I can just write it and I'm fine without a preprocessor.
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So I had never taken the time to learn that,
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but I finally just was—I'm just going to give this an hour and try it out.
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And I really enjoyed it, so a lot of times I think we think that we have
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to devote like, okay, now I'm going to learn JavaScript.
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And I'm going to take the next six months to do that. Don't think about it that way.
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>>An easy way for your skills to erode is to stop using them.
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Your day job may have a certain focus, meaning that some of the skills
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you've learned in the past may become marginalized
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in favor of others.
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Sometimes the degradation of skills is simply a part of your evolution
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as a tech professional.
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Certain languages, techniques, and best practices become antiquated
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when new apps, versions, and platforms emerge.
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As long as you're staying current, you'll know when it's time to move on to something new.
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But if you have a skill you're not using, and you want to keep it,
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find ways to flex those creative muscles.
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Seek out freelance or even personal projects
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that can satisfy some of those needs.
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But always be on the lookout to integrate the skills you're most passionate about
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into the work you do or a future job or project.
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>>That's what web development is. That's why we're professionals, right?
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You know, for Treehouse, you can learn different techniques about
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how to do maybe one thing even.
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There's going to be best practices, and those will always rise to the top.
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But, you know, right now you just got to think it's a no-man's land.
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I decided to do two things, and one of my core concepts is always be learning.
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We're never the smartest, and if you are, you're about to get humbled in a big way.
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So I always want to be learning.
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So I came up with two goals that would help do that.
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One goal is to finish a book a month.
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And I don't really have a lot—I say this.
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I don't have time to finish a book a month,
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but I do, if I quit playing iPhone games and stuff like that,
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I do, I have an amazing amount of time
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to read a book a month, so I've been trying to do that.
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Also, another goal of mine was to spend about at least like a dedicated four hours
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a week learning something I don't know
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for programming, and I have this list of shame.
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Of things I want to learn, and I'll tell you, I'll just out myself.
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I've not used Backbone like I need to, and I just need to learn it.
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I don't use Grunt. I should. I just need to use it and add it to my workflow.
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Or maybe go—I call it full yamin, but like—or yomin, full yomin
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just like get on something, some sort of package manager for my front end
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work, but then again I don't know if I'm the target audience there.
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But there's a lot of other stuff, but those are kind of my big things.
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It's like, gosh, this is stuff I talk about and I want to do, but
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I just, for whatever reason, haven't done.
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So I'm trying to dedicate at least four hours a week to learning that stuff.
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>>In the tech industry, there is a continual fear that much of what you know now
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will soon be obsolete.
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It may take years or only months.
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But the speed at which this industry moves
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can be both exciting and intimidating.
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In the end, the best advice is don't ever stop learning.
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Seek out people that inspire you.
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Blogs for research. Projects to practice your skills.
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And get used to the process of finding and integrating new technology.
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The better you are at adapting to the industry, the better your chances are
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at continuing your progress.
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