BYOL: bring your own learning ⚡️
If you work in a dynamic fast-paced company, you will learn a lot
Of course, having experienced talented peers who are invested in your growth or willing to share their knowledge can also teach you a lot.
Situations and challenges that you are exposed to and your personal experience trying out different approaches in different contexts also help you grow
All these are good, but are they enough?
Your employer does not own your learning
Now this may come as a surprise to some
The company does not owe it to you to develop you completely as a professional.
You’ll see ad-hoc learning and development programs that seem like an afterthought and don’t really have quality content
Sometimes engineers in the community start voluntary communities like Lunch and Learn, weekly book clubs, etc but these quickly fizzle out when the original organizer and their supporters lose interest or just move on
You’ll also be wise to realize that you are ultimately there to do a job
Do what you are being paid to do, and do it well.
Hopefully, you work on something that is intellectually interesting and challenging as well and that the company needs to meet its own goals but in many cases it may be business-as-usual tasks
If you think about it, You are ultimately responsible for creating business outcomes that make the company profit and that is completely fair for a business owner to expect from an employee
All doom and gloom?
In your career, some managers will prioritize your growth and learning by helping find mentors, suggesting conferences, and training, and brainstorming and following up on progress during 1:1s and some really won’t and may index more on delivery and other things that the company cares about
You are lucky if you have a leader like the former.
In such work environments, it is quite easy to feel stuck get demotivated, and feel like you are not growing fast enough and others are racing ahead.
Social media allows for easy comparison with your peers and past colleagues and while you just see the end shiny result, you are ultimately comparing your career with the highlight reels of theirs
Given all this, What would you do?
- You could change teams or groups
- You can take ownership and try to find mentors within the company yourself
- You could quit and move on and try to seek greener pastures elsewhere. Most of the advice on the internet suggests something along the lines of: “If you can’t change your manager; change your manager”
Are they scalable?
Probably not.
A way out?
What perhaps would work better is a deliberate consistent self-learning habit.
You may counter immediately and say you don’t have time for this.
Yes, you may be super busy in your off hours, have social and family obligations, etc…
But if you pause and reflect, is taking out 30-45 mins a day or a few hours over the weekend that difficult? You may be wasting this time doing N other activities
Building this muscle can bring you compounding effects that years of doing your routine job may not necessarily bring.
Have you heard the quote:
“Do you have 10 years experience or just 1 year repeated 10 times?”
I don’t know who said this first, but this was how I used to approach the initial years of my career. Living the good life, going mostly with the flow at work, etc, and complaining and sometimes wondering how others are achieving more.
Until one day stopped and took control of my own learning…
I changed directions toward making this change and focussed on building a learning habit often at a fixed time and tracked this in Habitica as well.
I’ll say while most of the events in my career have been incremental, this habit has worked quite well for me over the years.
Why spend more time learning?
If you still need a bit more context
Aside from the technology landscape constantly evolving and this being just the need of the hour, why would you want to do this?
Mostly because It’s super fun since you are not constrained by the tech choices, tools, environment, or language that your employer needs. You can build skills in other vertical or horizontal areas.
Another side bonus is that you’ll be more confident about establishing yourself and speaking as a person who knows their stuff
You may build new and unique skills by working on side projects
Learning about things more deeply and hacking on side projects can be oddly very self-satisfying
And who knows, you may end up using this knowledge at work sometimes in obvious or nonobvious ways as well. Growth is not always linear
What next?
Also, don’t just stop at self-learning, put the Feynman technique to work
“You keep on learning and learning, and pretty soon you learn something no one has learned before.” ― Richard Feynman
- Bring this learning to your workplace and unique context.
- Discuss it with peers and see how you can implement it to make things faster, better, and more efficient
- Teach it to folks you are mentoring (if they are genuinely interested)
- Talk about it in tech talks either internally
- Write a blog about it
- Give a talk about it at a public conference
Try some of these, whatever feels comfortable for you, and see how it can unlock levels of value that are not immediately obvious but you’ll see the difference slowly compounding over time
The best time to start this habit was 5 years ago, but the second best time is today.
So don’t procrastinate, start now and begin anywhere!
Go on, you got this!
I’m rooting for you! 🤝
| Thanks for the time you spent reading this 🙌. If you found this post helpful, please subscribe to the substack newsletter and follow my YouTube channel (@automationhacks) for more such insights in Software Testing and Automation. Until next time 👋, Happy Testing 🕵🏻 and Learning! 🌱 | Newsletter | YouTube | Blog | Twitter. |
Comments