Playing the long game
In my career I have faced, and have often heard, the one question I think we all ask ourselves in the technology industry; “How do I stay relevant as a human asset in a field who’s end game always seems to be reducing the need for human assets?”.
“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change” – Albert Einstein. Career relevancy is all about being able to “read the room”, metaphorically speaking. According to a 2022 bureau of labor statistics report (https://www.bls.gov/news.release/tenure.nr0.htm), a mere 4.1 years is what the median time that wage and salary workers have been with their current employer. Clearly, folks are reading the room.
Staying relevant in the technology workforce isn’t about staying ahead of the curve. That model faded out back in the 80s-90s when there were only a couple of curves. There are so many curves in technology today that staying relevant is about predicting where the curves are before you get to them, so you can hug them.
Technology grows and changes too fast; it isn’t reasonable anymore to think you can “stay on top of it”, there is too much to stay on top of. Today’s successful tech employee is a master of the basics and a perpetually fluid learner. They learn and adapt new technology fast and are willing to release technologies that aren’t serving their career.
Have you ever met a system administrator that named the servers after Greek Mythology? That is a personal attachment to technology. Don’t grow personal attachments to technology. Technology is there to serve people, and by extension, you and your career. It is a tool, and as such, that tool must constantly be sharpened, evaluated and replaced when necessary. It’s hard to get rid of a stray animal once you’ve named it and started feeding it.
In my career, I have been a help desk technician, a media producer, a web developer, a web designer, a software developer, a network engineer, a DevOps engineer, a collaboration engineer (digital communication systems), a technology consultant, a server administrator, a systems administrator… and a dozen other titles.
I certainly never set out to have that many roles and titles. I acquired them by shifting roles and career paths along the way as industries and job markets changed. Looking back on my career up to the present time, I can correlate a career change, or a focus change, along with a parallel time in the industry (Ex. I stopped being a freelance web developer when I started having to compete with neighborhood middle schoolers).
The question that you should really be asking is, “how do I know when to change?”. How are you supposed to know when it is time to learn a new technology or change focus or even careers? I don’t have a simple, pre-packaged answer for you. The answer is more broad than just technology, and is mostly a personal observation of many different factors in your life.
Personally, I evaluate my career a couple of times a year. I ask myself questions like, “is there ground for me to gain with this technology?”, “Do I still have growth potential in my current situation?”, “Do I have the ability to learn new technology in my position?”, or “Am I getting increasingly bored with this technology/career because there isn’t anything new to learn?”. For me, boredom with technology isn’t good, so I always try to mix it up and keep myself involved with some “cutting-edge” tech, even if it isn’t involved with my career. Careers are like any other tangible asset, you have to take proper care of it and keep it polished for as long as you expect to have it.
So, as our friend Albert mentions in the quote above, be intelligent and be willing to change and adapt as needed.
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