HACKER Q&A
📣 gchamonlive

What do you do to keep yourself updated?


I am particularly interested in DevOps, Infrastructure and best practices, but the question is directed to everyone in and outside tech. And even in tech, it does not have to be related to tech. Soft skills also need maintenance.

What do you do to stimulate yourself to learn and keep yourself both motivated and updated in subjects inside and, specially, outside work. It helps a lot to have an intellectually demanding job, that requires you to learn and read a lot. But if you are stuck in a particular position that exploits your current skills more than present opportunities to learn, how can you motivate yourself to learn outside that vicious circle of self exploitation?

I am also interested in knowing what do you do to manage burnout. It is fine to keep pushing yourself, but we are not always productive and we need some downtime. How to balance free time allocation between learning and relaxing?


  👤 b-pixel Accepted Answer ✓
Regarding keeping updated, I find small hobby projects to be a good outlet to try new technologies, architectures or processes. Often times I’d end up translating those to valuable additions to the code base at my day job.

As for being stuck in a position where learning opportunities are limited, try pushing for taking on tasks on other teams that are working on technologies you are interested in learning. If the company you are in frowns upon this sort of work then sounds like you should find a more open environment. They are companies out there that value this sort of curiosity.


👤 brudgers
Pursue an orthogonal interest instead of studying things that you can only wish were part of your job.

Even better if the interest is in something at which you will be a beginner...something you will be bad at...an area where you will lack expertise.

A job exists to pay the bills. A person can make a career out of paying the bills. A person can exploit the freedom having a job provides. It's a choice. The career is not in their control. The freedom is.

Good luck.