Latest / DevQuestions with Tim Corey / 093 How Do I Go From Outdated to Employable?

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093 How Do I Go From Outdated to Employable? · DevQuestions with Tim Corey

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Dev Questions Podcast with Tim Corey.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Join us each episode as we tackle the questions you are asking about a career in software development, understanding the industry, and new technology.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you're just starting out or you want to grow stronger as a developer, this is the place to get your questions answered.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here's your host, expert developer and online educator, Tim Corey.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: How do I go from being outdated to being employable again?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: How do I break off the stagnation of working in a job where I'm not doing cutting-edge stuff, but really old technology?
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: How do I break out of that and get to a point where I can apply for a new job and be relevant again in the industry?
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: This is a question that Yulia asked recently, and I thought it'd be a great one to cover on today's episode of DevQuestions.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: Now, first of all, when you're working at a job, this is one of the things to consider is are they staying current?
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: Are they staying on the not the cutting edge necessarily, but close to the cutting edge?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: Are they on.NET Core, for example, as opposed to still on.NET framework?
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: Because as an employee, one of the things that you have to pay attention to is your own career.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: That's your job.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: Your employer is not going to do it for you in most cases.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: So you need to make sure that you're thinking through how do I move on from here?
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: You don't want to get locked in, if at all possible.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: Now, sometimes you can't help it.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's the job that you have and you can't get a different one.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: That's okay.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: You can still work inside those bounds by doing extra work outside, maybe working with your boss to bring some new projects in that maybe you're standalone.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: You could work in a new the new version of language or new features.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so keep your skills current while still working on the older technology.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_02: That's perfectly fine.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: But you need to make sure that you're paying attention to your own career so you don't feel stuck.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: But what happens when you do feel stuck?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe you're listening to this and saying, I wish I'd known that 20 years ago.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: Well, no worries, you can definitely get unstuck.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: There's a few things I want to talk through as we're walking through this process.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: I have walked companies through this, I've walked people through this, and it can be done.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: It just takes a little bit of work.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: So the first thing you need to do is make sure that you challenge everything you know.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's very easy to have an opinion, then go on the internet and find someone else who agrees with you.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: The problem with that is that those opinions may be 15 years old and things have changed in those 15 years.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: So if you go into it looking for affirmation, you will find it, but that's not necessarily a good thing.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: So make sure you challenge all of your knowledge, look at opposing viewpoints, look at the latest things people are putting out, and see if it still lines up.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: Some of it definitely will, but some of it may have changed over the years.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I want you to make sure you pay attention to that and be open to the fact that things might change.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: The next thing is I want to make sure you leave your ego at the door.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: Okay?
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: Step back and say this isn't an attack against me if the way I do things right now isn't the way it's still being done.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's not an attack against you.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: Things have just changed.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_02: And if you can leave your ego at the door, you will progress much faster.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: I've been on teams that have been on both ends of the spectrum.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I've been on teams where they wanted to move forward, but they couldn't get past the idea that they were doing things that needed to change.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: Well, if you don't do things differently, you won't get different results.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: So you have to let go of that wanting to do things your way.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: And let go, think through, well, why would it be different?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: And let's try the new way and see what happens.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: I've also worked on teams where I worked on one team where the owner of the company was the person who wrote the software and was a person who said, in his own words, I feel stuck.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like we've we've missed the bandwagon.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: We've kind of stayed where we were instead of progressing with the rest of the culture, with the rest of the software development.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: And so he brought me in to help move them forward.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: And it was a great experience because he did not have an ego about the fact that things had to change.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: Totally fine that he was good with that.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: He embraced it, he wanted it, and he did not take it as an attack when I said these things need to change.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: Because I wasn't attacking him.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: I wasn't saying he was bad.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: I wasn't saying he was an awful person.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: What I was saying is, this used to be the way we do things, now we do things differently.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: And because we did different things, we got different results.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: So by leaving the ego at the door, by saying this is not an attack on me, you'll progress much, much faster forward because you'll be able to get past the sticking point of I don't want to change, and get to the change.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the next thing.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: First of all, challenge everything that you know.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: Second of all, leave that ego at the door.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then third, I want you to fill your gaps.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: So there's going to be gaps in your education, things that you've missed in the last however many years it's been.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_02: So take some time, fill in those gaps.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: Find something hopefully a little more comprehensive.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: One of the things that I have seen a lot of is people that are experienced, people that have been doing C sharp development for years, still taking my C Sharp master course, which starts from installing Visual Studio and which options do you choose?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: And that talks through your first C sharp application and what the different pieces of an application are.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: And that's somewhat basic, but then it goes all the way up through uh modern project types and different database types and even career development.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: So with that whole breadth, what happens is even experienced C sharp developers say, man, I've been filling in my gaps that I didn't even know were gaps.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: So by having some kind of comprehensive system like that, you don't have to take that course.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: You can do it on your own.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: But by having some kind of system where you go through and look at a continuous span of development, you will find the gaps you need to fill.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: And then you can take the time to actually fill them.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: So if you've been working with web forms, well, guess what?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: They're not in.NET Core, they're not moving forward, they're end of life.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: So they're still supported, but they're end of life.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_02: So just kind of don't start new projects in them.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: Well, instead of holding on and saying that's we have always done things and having that ego and having that idea that my way is best, what you do is you say, Well, what's the new way?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you can do Razor pages, you can do Blazor.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: There's a number of different ways you can go about it.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you probably haven't experienced those.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: So fill in those gaps.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_02: Learn about them, try them out, play around with them, and figure out how you can take the knowledge that you have with uh web forms and take it into the new way of doing things with Razor Pages or Blazor.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the way to make sure that you progress your knowledge, fill in those gaps, try out, move forward as a developer, and really take yourself from stagnant in your career to a place of employment.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: But finally, don't discount your experience.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: Too often I people I see people say, Well, I've been doing web forms for 20 years, and I just don't think I can move forward now.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's too late for me.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's not.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_02: You have 20 years as a developer.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's experience that's important.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, the specific tool you used is no longer being used in new development.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_02: That's okay.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: You can still move forward in a new development because you are a developer with years of experience.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: So don't look down on that.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: The UI might be different, the code might be a little different, but the logic, the way things are built is pretty close.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: And you can adapt.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: That's one of the things that you've done over your entire career.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's just one more way to adapt.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: So don't look down on your past experience.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: Don't feel bad.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: Don't say, oh man, woe is me.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_02: You can definitely move forward.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: You can definitely become a great modern developer, even if you feel like you've been stagnating so far in your career.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so I hope that answered your question, Julia.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: Hopefully, you too can get unstuck and move forward with your career and really become that modern developer you're looking to be.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks to the question.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: That was a great question.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_02: If you have a question though, go to suggestions.iamtimcorey.com and either upvote an existing question or leave your own question if you don't find one that really asks the question that you're looking for.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_02: Hopefully you'll see your question answered on a future episode of DevQuestions.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for listening, and as always, I am Tim Corey.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for joining us for this episode of Dev Questions.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: Tim is committed to making it easier for you to become a developer.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: If you would like to help make more content like this possible, please like, subscribe, rate, and share Dev Questions.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: You can also send your questions to questions at IamTimcorey.com.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, remember, you are too smart and your time too valuable to waste it making all the mistakes Tim did.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: When you're ready to learn to think and code like a professional developer, head over to imtimcore.com and enroll in a course.