Quickly Learning New Technology

One of the biggest challenges you’ll face in a long term technical career is the constant change that occurs. While we often joke about the rate of change in the javascript space, the fact is that nearly every sector of technology is undergoing rapid change all the time, and the rate of change is accelerating. While it wasn’t so bad 20+ years ago {When Will started}, this is definitely something that has become a worse problem in more recent years. In the 90s, you could learn a new programming language to a reasonable degree of competence and have a career for years before you had to deal with major changes in technology. However, the 90s were almost 30 years ago. Now, you might learn a brand new javascript framework and find that you have to adapt to major changes in it within 6 months to a year. In addition to framework changes, the way we write, edit, and work with code is constantly changing. In addition to improving things like source control practices, agile processes, QA, continuous integration processes, and deployment processes, your own team is probably constantly making changes to how they work, based on their own experiences. The point is, if you thought that you could just rest on your laurels, you may be in for a rude awakening. No matter how hard you work, you will not be able to keep up with the rate of change in technology. Or at the very least, you won’t be able to keep up with most of it. The best you can do is to keep up with the stuff that you actually need to do your job. However, even then, your job is probably also changing quickly, so it can be tricky to determine what you need to learn before you need it. Instead, you are going to find yourself constantly adapting to changing circumstances and having to make quick decisions about what to learn. Constant, life-long learning is absolutely required for a career in technology. At no point in the near future will you be able to get by in tech without learning how to adapt to constant change. Instead, you are going to have to embrace change and learn to deal with it. Best of all, if you do this well, it will eventually become a competitive advantage for you. Best of all, if you are smart about it, it won’t be nearly as difficult to keep up with technological changes as you might think. Episode Breakdown Accept that you can’t keep things from changing. One common response to sudden change is to try to avoid or bargain with the change. While you can do this for a while (or even for a very long time in the case of some platforms), it eventually catches up with you. The longer you wait to deal with change, the more it costs you. Consider how many businesses resisted getting a domain name and a website when these first became available. While they could have brought the perfect domain for less than $50 back in the day, it might cost thousands of dollars today, if it is even available at all. While you probably don’t want to immediately learn the newest technology as soon as it arrives, you will want to learn relevant technology soon enough that it gives you an advantage. This also means that you need to make sure that you are aware of change that is about to happen. You can’t take advantage of change if you don’t catch it early enough. Look for the opportunities in change While change is disruptive, sometimes that disruption can work to your advantage. Major technology changes mean lots of new jobs, jobs where you can be ahead of the pack with far less effort than might be required for older technology. New technology can also give you the opportunity to change your career to work in a different area. Say a new single page application framework starts becoming popular – if you can quickly build expertise in that, you can get ahead of other candidates in getting a development in an industry you...