Who drives your Learning?

A couple of weeks back, I was having a conversation with an old colleague of mine who told me that he hasn’t been in a project (software delivery project) that uses a lot of tools and technologies and hence his learning is limited.

That got me thinking partly because I have been in that situation myself earlier and majorly because I am a firm believer since that no body can be in charge of your learning other than themselves! It’s great if your current environment enables you to seek and learn new things, but if not it’s time you address it yourself.

Talking more in terms of the Quality Assurance role that I play and taking a few examples, lot of people who have started their careers in the 2010s would have picked Selenium as their choice for a Test Automation Tool. And going by that timeline, most of them would have a great grasp on the tool already. But isn’t it time to look beyond this tool? May be your project still uses it, may be there is no need right now to look for a new tool.

We can’t build tomorrow using yesterday’s tools.

The essence of learning comes in seeking and understanding new and efficient ways of doing things even if the current method serves you good.

If you are a Selenium expert and you got uncomfortable there, that was intentional.🙂 I am not saying Selenium is a bad tool, in-fact it is a great tool. What I wanted to say is be open to try out new things and compare with what you already know so that you are in a better position to do your work efficiently.

I often say that Software Industry is the one that goes through the drastic and frequent changes. People who are experts in single technology or language are soon to become a liability if they don’t adapt and scale. We have numerous examples of superstars of yesteryears being not in demand now, be it mainframes, waterfall, eCommerce suites like WCS, ATG. Technology that you are using right now, might be the next one!

And if you are interested in the advice that I gave to my friend whom I talked about — “waiting for a project to learn a new tool or technology is like waiting on the school/college curriculum to teach you all the life skills”.

No body cares about your learning, more than you! No body cares about your job, more than you! No body cares about you, more than you! Pull up your sleeves and start learning!