I return to Uncle Bob’s post, Whiners that Fail. This time I want to comment on the main message he makes in his post:
YOU, and NO ONE ELSE, is responsible for your career. Your employer is not responsible for it. You should not depend on your employer to advance your career. You should not depend on your employer to buy you books, it’s great if they do, but it’s not really their responsibility. If they won’t buy them, YOU buy them! It’s not your employers responsibility to teach you a new language. It’s great if they send you to a training course, but if they don’t YOU teach the language to your self!
In this day and age, we no longer have long careers at our workplace. Before I came to Typemock, I worked for 10 years at the same company, and I was considered weird. Most jobs today last between 2-4 years, when there’s no accounting for the economy downturn. Technologies change fast, and you need to learn and adapt.
Can you guess what’s the first thing crossed off the budget these days all around the world? training. Of course that’s not the smartest decision businesses make, but I can understand the motive behind it – We need to survive now, we’ll worry about the future, well, in the future. (Of course in the future, their competitors who continued with training will leave them far behind, as well as pull in their top developers, because good developers identify good employers, but that’s another story).
Combine these and you’ll understand what Uncle Bob says: It’s up to you. Books, languages, training, whatever. It’s up to YOU.
If you rely on what the company’s feeding you, it’s a choice you’re making. You can make other ones. Don’t be like those companies that forsake future gains by killing training investments now. Invest in yourselves.
When people come to interview with us, we make sure they sufficient technical skills, but we also look at their learning skills. We expect them to learn a lot, helped by others, but mostly by themselves, and create exceptional things. As Joel said: Smart, and gets things done. We want people who invest in themselves.