Engineers and the shiny object syndrome
Currently, there are a lot of technologies that are booming in the market. If it was Hadoop a few years ago now we are living in the world of Containers. Many software engineers feel overwhelmed with this. Some are rushing to learn it by briefing through the concepts. Some try to learn and then leave it when they feel behind the race. Some try to learn everything at once and reach a saturation level where they no longer feel interested to learn.
Life is not a race — but indeed a journey -Bonnie Mohr
Shiny Object Syndrome
It is a tendency to drawing attention to something new always, be it a new idea, a new technology, or a new trend rather than focussing on what is currently being done.
What issues shiny object syndrome brings in engineers?
Some of the issues with this behavior are:
- You always start something new but you never complete it when you get distracted by something new that comes up your way
- You tend to invest a lot of time in installing and learning tools rather than focussing on something fundamental to learning and technology
- You touch the surface of one or more technologies but you don’t know any of them well when you need to troubleshoot issues or understanding the architecture for an application
How to learn with a long-term focus?
1. Stick to basics first
To learn any technology you need to lay some groundwork. Not everyone could be from a computer science background to understand operating systems or networking concepts well. Even a computer science graduate may not know the basics properly. So it will be always worth investing a good amount of time in learning computer science basics like operating systems, computer networking and if you will be writing programs you should understand data structures and algorithms well to write efficient programs.
2. Be calm and learn at your own pace
It is important not to feel pressured when new things keep coming and thinking you need to learn everything. Take your time. You don’t need to know everything, that's why we work as a team where each member adds strength to the team with the skill set he/she has.
3. Identify your strengths and weakness
Everyone will have some strengths and weaknesses. Once you identify that it is easy to work on sharpening your strengths and reducing the weakness. For example, one may be very skilled at system administration tasks but may be lacking programming skills. It is absolutely fine, while they can keep on improving admin skills which are very valuable at the same time if they are interested they can look at getting started with programming. In the same way, one may be very good with problem-solving skills but may be weak when it comes to dealing with system operational tasks. They can keep improving their problem-solving skills by solving more problems and get the system operational skills they need gradually. This way you can bring balance by strengthening what you already know and reducing the weakness.
4. Read more and participate
It may not be worth investing time in every new technology that emerges in the market right away because some may be going away very soon. But it is good to keep up to date with what is happening in the industry. You can follow blogs in the areas of your interest in medium, dev.to, https://thenewstack.io/, etc, follow StackOverflow questions and participate in tech events, etc to get more exposure
5. Enjoy the journey
While the learning curve may look steep for some of the technologies, be patient and enjoy the process. You are progressing every day learning something. Collectively it will have a significant impact.
Thank you for reading, let me know your thoughts in response to how you learn something new.
