When is a time to refresh your skills?

When is a good time to refresh your skills? What an amazing question that most people in the IT Field get their hackles up over. This question was posed by a friend of mine and in a friendly wager we began asking each other questions right from some of our RTFM resources (RTFM is an acronym for Read the Fine Manual from back in the day, with a LOT of derivations to it!) and as we rolled along, the both of us began to become more and more uncomfortable as we couldn't answer the questions we both "knew". Quite an eye-opening experience for both of us.

Then it sort of hit us both. "When was the last time you had to do 'Basic' things?" We had a good laugh at that which went from laughter to uncomfortable laughter that resonated with embarrassment. Wait, were "WE" out of touch with our skill base? Had "WE" become those engineers we used to make fun of with the "Back in my day.." comments and outdated skills.

Oh. We Had.

Well, how do you fix that? Easy right? Well, not as easy as we both thought. The skills that we had were no longer applicable in so many cases. I used to build servers as a matter of rote skills, but as we migrated to Virtualization, some of those skills that we required daily disappeared. Why would I need to know the bus speed of the motherboard? When was the last time I built a bare-metal server for production use? It was no longer applicable to my job, but now a simple A+ practice test had me backed into a corner.

But I came out swinging. Sitting down with an old manual and the neurons began to fire again. Sure, the information was out of date (wildly in some cases!) but the PROCESS was still valid. Now it became a process of "Updating old files with new information" and in some cases throwing that information out completely. Once new hardware is now outdated. My attitude regarding things was also archaic as my field had evolved. I had evolved, but I had not gone in the same direction. Because my career path had moved into virtualization, my need to know physical hardware had disappeared.

It appears the time spent reading and self-testing is yielding favorable results. Gaining an understanding of the connection between physical hardware and new software technologies is essential to keep up with modern developments. To refresh my memory on this subject, I'm researching the latest technology implementations and will be focusing on their physical hardware requirements.

During our trial run with the tests, there was a visible improvement in our scores.

It can be difficult to answer the question of whether or not one is continuing to remain sharp and knowledgeable. In some cases, it might depend on the individual situation; however, it's important to remember that consistent effort is needed to maintain a holistic understanding of a certain subject.

5 years ago I was a different kind of "smart" as I was interacting with the technology in a completely different way. Much like a the breakdown in skillsets differs from EMT to ER Nurse to Trauma Surgeon to Research Doctor, they also do not have the same requirements.

The old me wrote scripts with 10 lines that did the job and I thought I was a genius. Now, I write Infrastructure-as-a-Service code that encapsulates logging, error checking, application security, hardening and redundancy.

Will I get both smarter and better? Yes I will because I am not going to be one of those engineers we made fun of for not adapting to new technology. Is re-certification in my future for my A+? Likely not because I don't do that kind of work anymore, but just like a driver's license there is nothing wrong with taking a defensive driving course again to sharpen those skills.