Shockingly simple Tech Career Planning you need

Technology can change fast. As it does, we need to keep up. Of course, we don’t need to master every change. It can be tricky to define what is a skill worth pursuing.

Don’t leave your career plan to chance. Put some time and thought into it. Have you asked your leader what skills you may need? Perhaps co-workers have mentioned you lack something.

Before we move on one warning. Don’t just plan on learning technical skills. Find a balance between technical and non-technical. I have seen too many careers sidetracked by poor interpersonal skills.

Objective

Firstly, start with the skill you want to learn. Early in my career, I wanted to become a Technical Lead. My manager explained to me that I needed to learn delegation. Once I could delegate key responsibilities, I could grow my career.

Assess

Next, you need to determine where you are to the skill. Josh was quite smart, and he began to learn some software architect principles. Although, when he tried to transition to that role, he lacked some software development basics. He skipped over some fundamentals, and he had to address that.

Learning

Everyone learns differently. If you are a self-taught developer, you may be able to figure things out yourself. Piecing together YouTube videos and blog posts. A course from Udemy or LinkedIn Learning can be a more well-rounded approach.

Mentoring or pair programming can be helpful too. We need to be respectful of others' time too. Your lead developer might have a lot of responsibilities and can’t spend all day explaining things to you.

Accountability

Change is hard. We begin to learn something new eventually things get hard. Having an accountability partner can keep you going. Dave and I went through a coaching program together. Each week we had to ask each other questions. This simple check-in helped keep me focused on the work. Without him, I would have struggled to keep going.

In a nutshell, career planning doesn’t need to be extravagant. Start with an objective. “I want to learn how to lead the architecture review.” Assess where you are and what skills to focus on. Create a learning plan to get you there. Lastly, find an accountability partner. Take a step in the right direction today!

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