Not happy where you are (skill wise?)

Jim Holmes has a great post about the journey he took from a place he wasn’t happy with to where he is now.  I can’t agree with this more.  I am sometimes taken aback at the negative reception to new technologies and methodologies by other developers.  If you want to get ahead in this industry you have to be keeping up.  You have to keep learning. 

If you haven’t been at least reading the “intro to” articles for the .Net 3.0 stuff that’s coming out in the next few months you should have been.  If you aren’t happy with where you’re at, start learning.  Even if you are happy, well, then you can afford to be stagnate only so much on your skills.  One day your manager will leave and you’ll get a new one that is all about using test driven development, agile development methodology, etc., etc.  And if you don’t pick it up quickly you’ll be looking for that new job, but guess what….you’ll be competing for jobs against people that do know those skills.

Now, based on the pace of new technology coming out I realize that I can’t keep up forever.  Five years ago if you could write VB6 code, understand a little TSQL and use COM+ then you could be utilized on 90% of the projects out there.  Now we have so many niche technology specialties coming out with things like the Service Broker in SQL 2005, or WCF, or WPF.  I’m hoping to get a solid understanding of at least what high level of these technologies has to offer, and even delve deep in the ones I’m most interested in (such as WF), but there’s just not enough time to specialize in them all and still be married. 

One day I won’t even be able to keep up with the pace.  And when that day comes, in true Dilbert fashion, it’s time to look at becoming a manager. ;)