🔹 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 🙍 How to stay professional in demand 👩‍🎤 👼🏾 👰🏿

The world is becoming more complex, trends are replacing each other, not having time to take shape, digitalization of everything and everything is in full swing. With the development of technology and machine learning, more and more familiar and routine processes in which people participate will be automated. It is impossible to predict how circumstances will change. You should not count on “one profession for life”, which means that you need to adapt your career to the world around and a new digital reality.

Often there are vacancies, where the first lines are put not by specific technologies, but by understanding the basics and skill set, which contribute to the successful solution of tasks regardless of knowledge of programming languages, applications and frameworks.

In this article, I will consider aspects that greatly affect the demand for a specialist, and whose understanding reduces the professional risks associated with the uncertainty of the future.

Affection and habit

The object of attachment can be business, work, programming language, framework, etc. People are psychologically attached to what they spent a lot of time on and, with age, tend to change as little as possible in their lives. Studying, developing, investing the soul, they often do not notice, and sometimes do not want to notice, that it is time to switch to something new.

There are people who have been doing something for a very long time and have achieved good results in this. They may not notice that the global demand for their skills is declining. But because of the good level of development in their field, they remain in demand for a long time by inertia, and when the life cycle of the sphere of activity comes to an end, it becomes too late to change.

To see progress and understand what it takes to spend personal resources on, you need to use performance metrics and respond to them in time. Metrics are different and depend on the object of attachment. For example, income, the availability of more profitable alternatives, demand. For any kind of activity you can come up with your own metrics. The main thing is that they help in time to understand what is going wrong.

It is necessary to add more awareness to what you are doing, to be aware of what is happening around the area of interest. It is necessary to focus not only on the present moment, but also to compare it with the past and evaluate the future.

Burnout and motivation

Burnout is affected by age, and personal psychological aspects, and lifestyle, and the circumstances in which the person is. Burnout can be delayed for a very long period, and some do not go out of it until the end of a career. At this time, interest in work decreases, productivity decreases, and the desire to take the initiative disappears.

The main remedy for burnout is not to dig into the routine. In addition to the main work, engage in your own projects, participate in something for which a reward of any nature will be received. You can take the initiative, come up with a task for yourself, get involved in competitions or participate in a hackathon. When busy with a business for which you are personally responsible, interest and drive appear.

Criticism and feedback

Some of us have a superb psychological defense against criticism. This helps to make an unpleasant experience less traumatic and delay the solution to the problem, but at the same time greatly reduces the chances of a successful interaction with reality. A person who does not know how to work with criticism and adequately respond to it cannot develop normally.

Criticism usually means something negative, as opposed to feedback, which is often asked voluntarily. Gathering feedback allows you to evaluate the result and get useful comments.

Do not be afraid of criticism or feedback. It is important for the project to receive feedback and it is necessary to listen to it, because it is impossible to foresee and think through everything. The thoughts of other people, especially those competent in the right field, can help to significantly improve the project.

Criticism is easier to bear if you are mentally prepared for the fact that not all views coincide with yours. Be open to reasoned opinions. It is always useful to independently perform a thorough review of your work before showing it to the public. This will allow you to look at the work as a whole and identify possible errors or inaccuracies.

Basic knowledge

Often, people begin their journey in the profession not from the basics, but immediately from the study of the technology they are going to use. For example, they learn Java and several related technologies and go to work as a programmer. With this set you can make money and not worry about getting basic knowledge.

But technology succeeds, and they are based on general principles. If you own these principles, it will be easier to switch to something new. In programming, it is worth emphasizing algorithms and data structures, the principles of software design, and the skills to write good code. In ML, knowledge of linear algebra, statistics, probability theory and matan will help you stay afloat for a long time. Knowledge of the basics will allow you to accept changes in the professional environment most painlessly. This knowledge helps to understand the subject area much deeper.

Broadening the horizons

Various tools are more suitable for different types of tasks. Without experience and knowledge of the pros and cons of tools, it is difficult to use the right tool in the right context. The better a person understands the matter, the more he knows, the less effort he needs to find what is needed. Choosing the right tool can save a lot of resources.

For example, there are tasks of different difficulty levels, where you need to display data in a browser. All of them could be solved using the same engine. But it’s much more practical to choose an engine for a specific task. Therefore, you need to explore the area in which you work, try new things. On the pages of most frameworks and tools there are tutorials, which in a short period of time make it clear how useful and convenient the tool is. We must not be lazy and spend several hours studying.

To understand which tools you should pay attention to, follow the trends.

Trend tracking

Solutions that work today will not work tomorrow. Take neural networks. New architectures and learning approaches are constantly emerging that are superior in quality to their predecessors. The demanded area will develop and transform. So keep track of state-of-the-art solutions. State-of-the-art is the highest level of development of a device, technology or scientific field at some point in time. Take such decisions into service.

Keeping up to date with what's happening in areas of interest is much easier today than ever. You do not have to study a huge amount of information in search of the right one. The network is full of digests on top topics, conferences are constantly held, there are many communities. For example, in the ODS community, you can follow the world of machine learning.

Focus on the goal

Each person has a wide range of options for what he can do. Without a clear goal setting, a person rushes from one task to another, each of which brings closer to something specific. When there are too many such tasks and they have different directions, in the end it is not possible to achieve significant results in any of them.

Setting a goal and concentrating on it is important because it allows you to achieve success in a specific area. Make plans, determine what is important at the moment and follow this, bring it to the end. Do not take long breaks, as over time, the context is lost and it is difficult to get involved in the process again.

An important aspect in achieving goals is managing your own time, organizing personal activities, and prioritizing. Time is a critical resource; learn to spend it efficiently.

Education

There is a stereotype that education in itself does not mean anything, they say, we must learn to get crusts. This is not true. If we compare children from a good school or lyceum, where they pay due attention to studying with children from an average Russian school, then the former will compare favorably with their peers in terms of education and the desire to acquire knowledge.

With universities it is similar. At the end of 2017, I read statistics from the resume , where one of the graphs shows which university graduates want more money.

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The top most prestigious universities. Graduates of these universities want more money not so much because they studied somewhere there, but because they are more likely to be interviewed for a vacancy where this amount will be offered.

In good educational institutions, not only the quality of education plays an important role, but also the community, the appropriate atmosphere. A person from the very beginning sets himself the right course, being in a society of smart and successful people.

From the above it follows that if you have to study or have the opportunity and desire to influence the education of children, then you should strive to study in a good institution.

Self learning

Not everyone is lucky to study in a good place. Many while studying at school or university did not imagine what it was for, they considered it a waste of time. Knowledge only makes sense when it can be used to achieve your own goals. Fortunately, a specialized university is not required for this. You can now learn anything, absolutely free and without leaving your home. In the public domain a huge number of textbooks, courses, lectures.

Make a curriculum for yourself. From time to time, when a new one appears or something loses relevance, the plan is worth adjusting.

You need to learn all your life

Someone masters the skill and thinks that now he can always feed on it. This model of behavior is laid in us from childhood. Because we are accustomed: life is divided into two stages. First you get an education for a long time, and then you go to work and use the accumulated knowledge. In fact, education provides only the basis that helps to better understand the world, but if you want to succeed in your field, you need to learn all your life.

It is always possible to move to a higher level. In any field, high-level specialists will be in great demand, even if there is strong competition in the field as a whole. Therefore, think about how to pump in your profession and become better.

Creativity

While robots are better at optimizing existing ideas and processes, the world needs creators who can come up with solutions for the future.

The best way to develop this skill in yourself is to generate ideas and create something of your own.

Communications

Communication is one of the foundations of human life and society. The quality and speed of communications greatly affect the result of the activity. In a complex world, effective interaction is encouraged, and teams need team players.

Do not be afraid to communicate. Tell people about your activities and skills. The more people know about you, the more likely they are to be paid attention to.

If there is a person who is competent in the matter of interest to you, it will be useful to consult with him. With a high degree of probability, he will bring something useful to your idea, direct it in the right direction. Often such communication saves a lot of time.

Self-awareness

The ability to adequately assess yourself and understand at what stage of development you are, allows you to put yourself in the right place and to avoid subsequent disappointments associated with discrepancy with the environment.

Self-awareness develops through education, broadening one's horizons, gaining expertise through communication in professional communities and the implementation of one's own projects.

Learning foreign languages

Without English, the professional is nowhere. Most of the important and useful materials and large communities are in English. Only knowing the language you can enter the world market as a specialist. It is also probably worth paying attention to the Chinese language, given how quickly China is gaining leadership in information technology.

The network has many applications, courses and lectures for learning the language, and video communications allow you to receive lessons from native speakers. It remains only to set a goal and set aside time.

The balance between specialization and interdisciplinary knowledge

People are divided into three types:

The first are specialists of a narrow profile. Their horizons are not very wide, they are well versed in a particular area and not strong in the rest.

The second are scholars. They know superficially about everything in the world. Their abilities allow you to interact with people from different disciplines, but they do not understand anything deeply.

The third type is a combination of the previous two. They know enough to be well versed in certain areas and are well aware of how the world works outside these areas and can interact productively with it.

Different situations require a different level of expertise, but people of the third type are more likely to remain competitive in many situations.

Health

In an era of constant change, uncertainty and progress, the best investment you can make is investing in yourself. This applies not only to knowledge and skills, but also to health. If the body is not all right, then other things begin to worry much less. Love yourself and take care of yourself, this will give strength to the rest.

So, I have listed some recommendations that are useful to stay afloat in the future. You can still say a lot about where to improve yourself. But the main message - to feel comfortable in this world, to be in demand and to appropriately perceive the environment - work on yourself and keep yourself in good shape.

How to stay professional in demand