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€¦
  • Donā€™t think less of yourself ā†’value 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 ā€œtrendā€ 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 isnā€™t 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?

Letā€™s 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 donā€™t have the experience and surely donā€™t 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 donā€™t 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 didnā€™t get the point! Sorry!

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Cheers!
LetĆ­cia

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