Are you structuring your learning? Most of us in our careers understand that learning is an integral part of our careers on day one all the way to the end. Lifelong learning is synonymous now with being a software engineer. If it's not for you, it probably will be in the future. So hopefully you've already bought into that concept that learning is going to be kind of fundamentally integrated to what you do as an engineer throughout your career. But do you have any structure to your learning today? How are you spending your learning energy? If you haven't thought about it in today's episode, I want to give you a little bit of a hint. I want to give you some core basis for choosing what you're going to spend your time learning. My name is Jonathan Cottrell. You're listening to Developer T. My goal on the show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective, and purpose in their careers. And this is about clarity. It's not just about clarity. It's about where you spend your time. How do you consider your time an investment in your career? And you don't have to be learning to the degree of clarity. You don't have to be learning to the degree that you are earning a degree. You don't have to be in formalized classes necessarily. But if you are intentionally taking out dedicated time to improve your skills, and this is not the kind of masquerading version of learning that a lot of kind of corporate cultures might say, oh yeah, we're always learning. You should be learning on the job, of course. You should be learning from code reviews. You should be learning from. You know, watching others in the way that they work. You should be performing learning in your retros and all of your work processes. But this is a different category of learning that we're talking about. Specifically setting a time, setting aside time to engage in some kind of learning activity, whether that's reading or working with exercises, working with course materials, whatever that is, where you set aside that dedicated time. That's what we're talking about here. If you haven't done that, then you're not doing it. If you haven't done that yet, that's a starting point, right? Decide that you're going to set aside a specific dedicated time to learn. Okay. Now, if we're all on the same page about that, now the question is, what do I learn? What do I spend my time learning? This is an investment in your career. And usually an investment in your career also means some kind of tactical or even strategic up-leveling in your career. So if you're going to do that, then you're going to spend some time learning. So if you're going to do that, then you're going to spend some time learning. So if you're going to do that, then you're going to spend some time learning. In other words, one way to find out what you should learn is just to ask your boss, what is needed right now? Look at your team dynamics. What is missing? What's coming up on the roadmap? What kind of expertise can you develop today to make tomorrow smoother so that you have the expertise necessary rather than going and hiring somebody new? You can step into that new competency, for example. But I want to address a common misconception that people have about learning, and that is that all learning is equally valuable to your career. Now, you probably wouldn't explicitly state it this way. You wouldn't say that out loud, that anything I learn is going to have the same level of value as anything else that I learn. But when we don't have a strategy to our learning processes, when we haven't picked the things that we want to learn. And that's why I'm going to talk about learning. We are implicitly accepting that as a reality. In other words, we're saying with our time, we're committing to spending our time in a way that suggests that we believe that. If you are not structuring your learning, if you're just saying you're going to engage in whatever you feel like that particular day, then the learning itself is not necessarily, you're not strategically choosing those things. Then you are implicitly saying that all learning is equal. This is not the case. We need to think about what that learning is getting us to. What is the vehicle? Where are we going? Now, a minor disclaimer here that I do believe that learning for the sake of learning, doing some exploratory learning, things that have very little, if not, perhaps nothing to do with your job. Those are healthy activities. Because you can expand your mind. You can kind of go around the work that you're doing a little bit. Those are good things to do. They're going to enrich your experience. They're going to give you more of a mental model lattice, so to speak, to hang different ideas on. So developing that kind of learning is not bad, but that's the disclaimer. We're going to set that aside because it's not going to be your primary learning objectives. Right? It's going to be on the side. You want to spend some time reading fiction books. That's probably going to enrich your life. It's going to enrich your intelligence. It's not the only thing that you should be reading in your learning time. Right? So let's talk about learning as an investment. When we're looking at investments, we look at some kind of return. Right? We want to understand what is this learning getting us to? What is it going to return for us? For your career, presumably, you want learning to return to you some kind of value. And this value might be that you are more capable in your job. Maybe you're more efficient. Maybe you have new competencies that you can use in a new job. Maybe you want to move from individual contributor work into management work or even into executive or founder work. Whatever it is, you're hoping that your learning is going to enable you to do something else. Something more, something different, something better. But something that is. You know, there's some delta between what you're doing today and what you're going to do once you have this learning under your belt. Now, here's the interesting part. Because a lot of times we imagine that developing expertise in an area is enough to provide us the opportunities that we need. So this is very similar to saying that any kind of learning is good. Right? Let's say that any kind of expertise, this is the fallacy. Any kind of expertise. Is compelling. Or any kind of expertise is equally valuable. Let's imagine that you pour a ton of your time into developing expertise in, let's say, JavaScript. Now, that's not going to return nothing, of course. You're becoming a software engineer that has expertise in JavaScript. Of course, there's a market for that. There is a demand for that. But here's the important thing to understand. Developing a deep level of expertise in JavaScript. Is very different. Than say, developing a deep level of expertise in COBOL. In fact, the net value of learning some COBOL or becoming somewhat experienced with COBOL. Could be drastically higher than becoming somewhat experienced with JavaScript. Now, hopefully you see where this is going. This is because there's not very many people who are actually good with COBOL. There's not a huge number of COBOL jobs out there. And so. It's a bit of a. A risky investment. You don't have a huge job pool. To be hired into. If you learn COBOL. But for those jobs that do exist. Because there's such a small candidate pool. It could be incredibly valuable. In other words. You kind of hold the negotiation keys. Your skills are rare and valuable. In the market. Now, compare this to. Let's say, spending a lot of time developing expertise. Learning another spoken or written language. The likelihood that you learning the spoken or written language is going to translate into some enormous amount of value or up leveling in your career is very low. The reason for that is very simple. There is a large number of people who already probably know that language was spoken and written. Here's the important takeaway here. And this is very hard to intuitively grapple with. Developing expertise. Is only. Correlated. With increased value. Developing expertise. Is only correlated with increased value. To put it another way. Just because you develop a particular esoteric skill. Doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to get more pay on the job market. Just because you've learned a particular language. Just because you've had experience with a particular framework. Does not mean. That you're going to have a higher salary. More job options. Than the next person coming along who doesn't have those things. Now when you put it that way it seems obvious right of course. Just because we have a particular skill doesn't mean that we're going to get paid more because. That skill is not necessarily relevant to everybody who might pay us. And this is the crux. Of what I want you to take away here. When you start thinking about specializing. Don't think about specializing. In terms of your own skill set. In other words. Let's imagine that right now you're a full stack developer. And you're thinking about pouring a bunch of time into becoming a back end developer. Right. That doesn't necessarily translate into value on the market. For you it might seem like a huge amount of effort. It might seem like a major development in skill. And there's nothing necessarily wrong with that. But remember that that skill development is only correlated with increased value. So. There are. Many of those kinds of skills. That you could go and learn. That are not going to improve your value on the market. Now you might be saying. Why did you include JavaScript? Of course that's going to be valuable on the market. Everybody's using JavaScript. Because there is a huge demand for JavaScript. There's a lot of supply. And so by learning JavaScript. Or by going for a job. Where you're primarily writing JavaScript. You're joining a very large pool of candidates. Right. It's a very. A lot of jobs. In that area. Well there's also a lot of candidates in that area. And so. In order to rise to the top of that job pool. Or of that candidate pool. It might take a higher level of investment. In learning JavaScript. And becoming the top of the top. Because that's going to mean. That you have to compete with a lot more people. Now this doesn't necessarily mean. That you're not going to get a job. If you go and learn JavaScript. I think it's probably a good investment. What it does mean. Is that if you're trying to learn something. In order to specialize. In other words. In order to create a unique. High value skill. In your portfolio. And you may want to choose something. That has less penetration. In other words. Less people that are trying to learn it. And we've already talked about this. But returning back to that metaphor. Of this as a true investment. When you choose things. That not as many people are investing in. You're going to have to. There is an effect. That is essentially. Kind of a moonshot effect. In other words. If you're choosing. Especially very esoteric tech. Tech that not a ton of people are using. Maybe emerging programming languages. Or emerging patterns. Or something like that. If you're choosing that tech. There's a possibility. That you get in on the ground floor. That you kind of establish yourself. There's a high risk though. So the high risk reward. Ratio comes into play. Just like it does in investment. If you choose a few of those. Kind of esoteric technologies. To invest some time in. You may not even necessarily have to be. An expert in those. Just having experience. With a particular esoteric piece. Of technology. Maybe enough for you. To stand out above the other candidates. So if you know of a particular. Area that you want to work in. Look at the technologies. That are surrounding that. That are unique. What are some things that you can learn. In that area. That not a lot of people even know. Not a lot of people have developed expertise in. Not everybody understands. The very difficult. And non-intuitive takeaway. Once again. Is that even a cursory level. Amount of knowledge. Of one of those things. That doesn't have a lot of penetration. From other candidates. In the job market. Even having a cursory level of knowledge. Or experience. Or exposure to those things. Might yield the same value. For your career. As having an expert level of knowledge. In something that is more broadly. Used and well known. Like we said before. JavaScript or something like that. So understanding. What are the pieces of the puzzle. That translate. Not just to a unique skill to me. Not just to. An expertise for me. But a unique skill. On the market. This is what you want to focus on. As much as you reasonably can. Especially once you've kind of established. A base. We've talked about this in previous episodes. Having some safe options. JavaScript would fit in that case too. Having an option. That you know how to. Operate with these more fundamental technologies. You can build a web app. In X, Y, or Z framework. The things that you would see. At the beginning of the list of technologies. The kind of. Expected things. But don't over invest. In those highly penetrated markets. That's a kind of practical. Takeaway here. Don't spend your time trying to. Become an expert. In an area that already has a ton of experts. You're not going to gain. A lot from that. Instead. Try to become one of the leading voices. Or one of the. First people. In an area. That is adjacent. To those already well penetrated areas. This is a little bit more of an opinionated take. On how you should structure your learning. But I think it will yield the best results for you. In the long run. You're unlikely to lose your job. If you don't become the top. JavaScript expert in your company. Or something like that. You're much more likely to gain. To have kind of positive. Upward motion. If you develop expertise in an area. That no one else in your company has. Expertise in or no one else. In the industry has expertise. So. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I hope you enjoyed this discussion. If you want to talk more about your learning portfolio. The things that you're considering picking up. I'd love for you to join us in the developer team, discord community, and share that with people in there. That's developer t.com slash discord. Thanks again for listening. And until next time, enjoy your tea. Bye. Bye.