Are we getting the wrong career advises?
I just watched an awesome lecture about how to have a five-digit salary in Brazil by Bruno Ticami (Python Brazil 2013). Here are some questions and advises that he talked about:
- Do you worth a five-digit salary TODAY? Why do you have your current salary instead?
- What do you do to actually worth a five-digit salary?
- Speak fluent/advanced English (for non-English countries like Brazil :D )
- Ambition and desire to achieve this salary/position
- Patience ā you should study hard and for a long time
- You should have some of Brazilian qualities ā creativity, flexibility, good relationship with other people and cultureā¦
- Donāt think less of yourself āvalue yourself and your work
- Learn how to talk with your equals and superiors
- You have to invest (in hardware, software, books, coursesā¦)
- Manage your time (to study hardā¦)
- No-one will pay a high value to work with basic stuffā¦
When I finished the lecture, I was very excited and I agreed with most of the things he said. But something was bothering me. As I am a new-born developer, I am trying to read articles about what should I learn, how should I learn, etc. But every time I find a big article about career advises, I find lots of them throwing personal advises. This lecture, for instance, talked 90% of the time about how you should be, instead of what should you learn. And it was in a technical conference, I suppose.
So I started questioning myself: am I getting the wrong career advice? Or am I getting a wrong message about these advises?
My intuition is to learn the technologies companies want. This way, I will fulfill some position I want in the future. But there are a lot of possibilities, areas and branches of expertise. So, naturally, I think I should choose a desired expertise. Maybe a ātrendā one. But, what if, I should not just learn the technology, but learn how to learn the technology?
Let me try to explainā¦
If technologies change all the time, there are several trends and most of the career advice talk about how should I beā¦ should I just learn how to absorb new technologies? I meanā¦ is it more important for the companies to have a person that knows how to grow inside it then one that is a know-it-all?
If that one is the case, why isnāt anyone talking about this? Or are the companies looking for strong-will persons without telling them how they will check this? Ok, some of them actually said they want thisā¦ but how important is this compared to everything else?
Letās assume this is the case, for a newbie like meā¦ should I learn one technology or try to know a little bit about more things? Should I focus in one technology deep down? Will my personality count just as bad as my curriculum and experience? An experience in a technology event is more important than to invest the same amount of time in a home study?
I donāt have the experience and surely donāt know the answers. Luckily, I was born weird enough to bother anyone I know to try figuring this out. If you got this far on the text and have an opinion about this, feel free to share it with me :D
PS: Just a little thingā¦ I am a newbie, so I really donāt expect a five-digit salary and I do know I will have to study a lot and for a long time. If you thought otherwise, you just didnāt get the point! Sorry!
ā¤ Cheers! LetĆcia