THE COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE

Feeling Left Out? 7 Steps to Stay Relevant in IT

Tips to stay relevant with changing technology landscape

Cliche But Extremely Relevant

The world is fast changing. The technology is changing even faster. In the last 10 years we have seen a boom in technology like never before.

From bulky wired phones to hand held smart devices, from the idiot box to the OTT platforms, from having limited options to being told what to buy.

Thanks to recommendation engines and social media advertising, technology has impacted our day to day lives as we knew probably even 10 years back.

To enable this constant changing lifestyle, technology has had to evolve a great deal in the last few years.

From the basic computer infrastructure, moving through the stating web pages in early days of WWW boom to the final stages of dynamic technology a lot of innovations have been done.

Amid this sea of changes were you able to keep pace with the constant changing technology demands in your workplace?

As a software engineer or developer , were you able to keep pace with the demand for constant learning? Well I could not.

Let me tell you my story..

I was doing quite well in my initial years in my company. I had passed out of the initial training course among the top 10 and had been assigned on a Data migration project.

Though the data migration project ended too soon and I had to move to a dreaded production support role(something no one wants to be a part of ).

But I was still not discouraged, I would experiment with the new learned knowledge of BI tools, come up with new ideas to improve processes and contribute in whatever enhancements and development work I could get my hands on.

The management soon took notice of my urge and I would soon become their go to person for anything that needed some research or special attention.

This ensured early promotions, early considerations for a team lead role and eventually the most sought after of Onsite deputation in UK.

But soon after coming back from UK, I hit a rough patch.

Unfortunately the projects in pipeline got hit due to disinvestment from the client business, a lot of upcoming projects were cancelled, many pipelines dried up and I too was content with whatever little role as a team lead or delivery manager I got.

I went away from the latest technology and started working on a legacy platform that no one else uses outside some banks in UK.

There was a gap of around 4 years that I stopped working on relevant technologies, while the whole sector was going through an unprecedented change, even bigger than the dot com bubble or may be the Y2K bug. The whole world in IT was moving at a faster than ever before pace.

Be it BI, be it application development or project management every field was completely changed in these 4 years time. Java and .Net based web apps and desktop software made way for Dynamic website, Android and IOS applications, scripting languages etc.

The simple BI through Datawarehouse saw a sea of change in BIG Data Management, Data Analysis and Data Science becoming main stream. The classical project management and SDLC life cycles made way for much leaner Agile methodology and Devops style or working with code and delivery.

I felt out of place and I had stopped practicing new technologies, even though I kept reading or learning new things, I never attempted for hands on learning, I also did not get hands on experience on job due to my role.

This created a sense of being left out, I started to feel I have fallen behind from the competition. This lack of confidence impacted my career growth too, as I did not like what I was doing back then.

But I was able to turn the tide by some self realization and a planned approach to learning. Here are a few tips that I used and I think might be relevant for others too. These steps will be extremely crucial to bounce back in career and continue to stay relevant in this fast changing time.

How to stay relevant :

1. Decide a path of growth both for your career and personal development: This is extremely important as this will drive all the other steps. You need to sit back and analyze which path you want to take in your career.
2. It can be a career path within your organisation or outside. But you need to be truthful to yourself and the skills you already have. This can be to become an app developer, a full stack developer, a Big data developer or to be a Data Scientist, just try to align the goals to your existing skills and to organizational requirement.
3. Learn hands On: This is key to be able to use your leanings in your workplace. With advancement of technology practicing your skills on any programming language, tool or platform is extremely easy.
4. Attend hackathons online / offline, attend hacks on Hackerrank, Kaggle, freecodecamp etc and various other websites. Do your own mini projects from scratch and build them as production ready projects.
5. Cloud is inevitable: Whatever career track you choose, be rest assured the development environment along with data has either moved to cloud already or is in pipeline. It is imperative, hence, to ensure you have hands on knowledge on how to use the relevant technical tools or environment in the cloud.
6. Data is the new Oil : After Cloud the single largest trend in technology right now is how Data can transform a business. Hence this is not an overstatement when someone says, “Data is the New Oil”.
   Adopt to Big data, try to learn various Big Data related technologies, work on cloud based ETL/ELT platforms and in the end try to analyze and see pattern in Data.
7. Stay motivated: In the end, I must break it to you, it is not easy to play catch up with those junior developers eager to learn or with those who have already had years of experience on the same technologies. But rather than being demotivated, learn from them, stay motivated is the key. This can be a long and tiring process, but if you keep at it regularly, this is achievable.

If I could do it, I am sure any one can do it too. I have just tried to give a few pointers on my personal experiences. Hope this helps someone else to be motivated and to start hustling back to the top of their career.