Always Be Learning

Will Thames

January 2014

Apologies

This presentation is tailored for software and systems engineers — developers, testers, sysadmins, infrastructure engineers etc.

Hopefully the rest of you will derive some value

Inspirations

This presentation is heavily influenced by:

• There is no Talent Shortage, Andrew Shafer, Devops Down Under 2013
• Career Advice for Programmers, Trisha Gee, YOW Brisbane 2013

Thanks to Suncorp for sending me to both!

Learning Organisations

Learning Organisations

• Systems thinking
• Personal mastery
• Mental models
• Shared vision
• Team Learning

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_organization

• Systems thinking - analyse the interrelationships of the organisation
• Personal mastery - personal development is key to the organisation
• Mental models - assumptions and theories that shape the organisation's thinking
• Shared vision - a common identity providing focus and energy for learning
• Team Learning - sharing learning to improve problem solving capacity

Motivations

• Career Progression
  • More senior roles — more money, more influence, more respect
  • More interesting ways to do current role
  • Avenues into a different role entirely
• Self-advancement
  • The pursuit of knowledge
• Keep the mind active

Influences of progress in industry

• Almost everything will be available as a service that is mostly easily consumed through APIs — looking after infrastructure will need coding skills
• Most configuration management requires a development mindset — version controlled configuration, layers of abstraction
• Developers will need to know how to provision databases and infrastructure
• So Ops will have to learn Dev, and Dev will have to learn Ops.

Suncorp Framework

• 70% Experience — growing capability on the job through practice and coaching
• 20% Exposure — working on new things through secondment or side projects
• 10% Education — training courses, conferences etc
• Seek opportunities to work on projects that will enhance your skills (and marketability)

Discover

Find out what leading technologists are saying:

• Follow people on Yammer
• Set up an RSS reader to get blog post updates easily
• Seek out experts on Twitter
• Listen to podcasts, watch videos, view slideshows
• Go to conferences and local meetups, and internal brown bags
• Read the seminal texts of your field — books, papers
• Have coffee, lunch, drinks with people who know stuff about what you want to know

Contribute

• Answer questions on Stack Overflow
• Contribute to Open Source projects — bug reports, documentation improvements, software patches
• Speak at meetups and conferences and brown bags
• Help others through mentoring, coaching, code reviews, etc.
• Write blog posts
• Keep information on confluence up to date — add pages, update pages etc.
• Attend ShipIt days and code smashes and innovation days

Organise

• Create your own open source projects
• Start your own meetups
• Organise innovation days or brown bags

Key tips

• You are not your job title! Work on the tasks where you can add most value!
• Be visible! Get out on Yammer, Twitter, contribute to Github, Stack Overflow, write blog posts, speak at conferences, meetups, and Geek Forums!❋
• Ask yourself what you want to be recognised for doing in 12 months time, and plan the intermediate steps to getting there

❋ Don't feel you have to do all of these — just the ones that suit your strengths or address your weaknesses

One last thing

Further Resources

• Henney, K. 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know, O'Reilly 2010 — Continuous Learning (pp. 36–37)
• Hoover, David H. and Oshineye, Adewale Apprenticeship Patterns: Guidance for the Aspiring Software Craftsman, O'Reilly 2009

See also the LEARN space on confluence — http://confluence/confluence/display/LEARN — a work in progress — please contribute!