Making It in IT - Know How to Learn

With technology always changing, and new technologies always on their way into the workplace, nothing is more important for IT professionals than know how to learn, and exercising that knowledge on a regular basis.

As some of you may know, my Making It in IT blog for Tom’s IT Pro is not my only regular outlet for news, information, and musings on IT careers and certification. I have two other blogs that I work on: three times a week for TechTarget at my IT Career JumpStart, and once a week for Pearson Education at my Ed Tittel’s IT Career Success blog.

Recently, I reported on a post at the Microsoft Born to Learn blog by none other than Lutz Ziob, the General Manager at Microsoft Learning (and long-time colleague and friend). It’s entitled Reflections from the UNESCO TVET Conference, and reports on his thoughts and experiences after attending the third UNESCO conference on technology and vocational education training (that’s what TVET stands for) in Shanghai, China.

It’s pretty thought provoking and definitely worth a read (you can also find my other musings on this topic in a post entitled How Technology Changes Everything…).

Two particular items still stand out starkly in my thoughts and imagination after reading Lutz Ziob’s post, both taken from a recent IDC study he cites therein (both bullets below are quoted verbatim):

• The percentage of all jobs requiring some technologyskills will grow from 50 percent today to 77 percent in the next decade.
• 60 percent of the jobs that will exist in ten years do not even exist today.

And in case you have any trouble accepting this, think about current jobs involving high-speed datacenter networking, cloud computing, and business intelligence, then think about what kind of luck you’d have had looking for such positions ten years ago. This isn’t hype or even hyperbole: this is the world we live in from now on—and I have to believe the pace of change will continue to accelerate so that IDC’s time horizon of 10 years will continue to shrink as we bolt forward further into the 21^st century.

You might ask: What does this really mean for all of us as IT professionals in particular? Well, we are on the forefront of this technology wave and thus will be more directly exposed to change, innovation, and adoption of new systems and technologies than most members of the workforce.

That’s why I also have to believe that learning how to learn, and keeping your learning skills sharp and pointy, is your best hope for ongoing employment, career growth and advancement. This is true outside of IT, of course, but even truer for those of us who work on the bleeding edge in this ever-changing field.

I also think this means we’re on the cusp of a new model for what it means to work in technology.

In addition to keeping up with day-to-day responsibilities and deliverables, we need to start including research and learning as part and parcel of our regular working behaviors. I’m lucky enough to write and comment about such things, so I naturally find myself digging into and learning new stuff all the time. But I strongly believe that research, learning, training, and pilot testing or even experimental deployments (“try it, and see how well it works”) must become normal, everyday activities for all of us.

Anything less–such as attempting to stay in one’s comfort zones or sticking to tried and true or routine systems and software–risks being left behind the ever sweeping wave of innovation and technology.

“What’s new?” is no longer an idle question, or a good conversational ploy. It’s the very stuff of survival and success.

If you’re not learning something new, you should be. And you’d better get used to it: it is part of what all of us will be doing, some of the time, from now on!

Ed Tittel is a 30-year-plus veteran of the computing industry, who’s worked as a programmer, a technical manager, a classroom instructor, a network consultant and a technical evangelist for companies that include Burroughs, Schlumberger, Novell, IBM/Tivoli and NetQoS. He has written and blogged for numerous publications, including Tom's Hardware, and is the author of over 140 computing books with a special emphasis on information security, Web markup languages and development tools, and Windows operating systems.

E-mail Ed at etittel@tomsitpro.com with your request for IT certification or career info, or your ideas for future blogs. If your e-mail leads him to a blog topic, he’ll have the Tom’s staff send you your very own Tom’s IT Pro t-shirt! Be the envy of your friends and colleagues, and help him help you with your IT career! If you do have a request for Ed, please read his How to Help Me Help You blog posting, and answer as many of the questions this post contains as are applicable to your situation and inquiry. Thanks in advance for helping make his job easier that way!

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