In their book, The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master, Hunt and Thomas refer to something known as the “knowledge portfolio”. They call it a portfolio because they believe it should be invested in over time. You should always invest in your portfolio so that it grows and never becomes an excuse for holding you back. In the computer industry, or any industry for that matter, if you are not growing you are not moving. I can say this because I have experienced it. Between 2007 and 2009 I was a bit careless about pushing the skills that I needed to build websites and it has come back to bite me in the ass as I am having to relearn old stuff and learn new stuff at the same time.

High School Students, College Students, and Recent Grads

This part of life can be difficult as many people struggle to get their career jumpstarted. You may think that life has put you inside of a Catch-22. To get a job you need experience, but to gain experience you need a job so you think. There are plenty of opportunities to gain experience in the world you just need to know where to look. Too be honest there are so many laid-off professionals that if you do not increase your knowledge portfolio you will more than likely not succeed at all in competing with them. Add to the fact that more and more companies are outsourcing design and development work overseas.

For many of us out there I believe the secret to success lies in open source software. Go to GitHub and there you will find thousands of chances to gain more experience and increase your knowledge portfolio. There you will find over 100,000 individuals who in most cases are willing to help you get better. Web designers this is your chance to jump on board and design their websites for them because most open source projects need the help of a good designer or any designer at all. QA people can help test the products. Technical writers can write the documentation. There is always something to do because programmers can’t do everything (even though they sometimes try) themselves.

You can always start on your own projects as well. It can be frustrating working on something for free when you are struggling for money and that is why you should continue to look for work while doing something on the site. The project doesn’t have to be a way to make money. It can be something quick that you can add to your portfolio. Design and development work isn’t only impressive to businesses when it is paid work, they like to see you take the initiative to do things on your own.

The Unemployed

Follow the advice given above. Stay active in your profession even if you do not have a job. Let your future interviewers know that you have the desire to work and that you love what you do by participating in Open Source projects or your own projects. If you are a designer you would be surprised on how many clients you could get through a blog. No employer likes to see a 6 month gap between jobs because that could be a sign of someone who does not mind staying complacent. Even though you are not getting paid, that should never stop you from doing what you love.

You should also start a blog. You would be amazed at the amount of contacts you can develop from it. Yes they can be time consuming if you try to spend too much time on it, but take an hour a day to write. You don’t have to complete an article in an hour, but every day make some progress in completing something you can publish. I have already received a number of emails concerning development work although I am not looking for any and the amount of contacts I have developed in such a short time is nothing short of staggering to me.

For everyone

Always try to learn something new or improve on what you already know. Programmers this should be easy because I think very few individuals can truly master a programming language. Even better, you should learn another programming language that might help you with future problems. In the past I have done development work in Perl, Ruby, C# and of course PHP. Although I wouldn’t call myself proficient in the first three, the experience of using them has helped me grasp programming challenges that I encounter quicker.

Before I started Drawar, I never really had any plans to get back into development, but since I dabbled in a couple of small projects on my own I was able to keep my knowledge up to a usable level.

For designers and front-end devs, everyday there are new examples of individuals pushing CSS to its limits. There is always something new to learn in CSS. Also try to get better at information architecture, design, and document design. You will build better websites from your new knowledge. Increase your understanding of usability. Find out why eBay and Amazon succeed where others fail (and it is just not first mover advantage). Do not stop learning or think you have done everything you can.

It is okay to become a jack of all trades, master of none, because all of these skills will give you a broader perspective on how to handle different scenarios. The top guys in the industry never stop pushing themselves and it is no wonder they continue to pump out great stuff that others could only wish to achieve. The best are the best for a reason. Not because they were born with the knowledge, but they continued to push themselves to new heights never seen before. With the Internet and Open Source, this is possible for any individual.

Make learning a habit.

Do as the quote above says and you will find yourself a better programmer, designer, architect, doctor or whatever. Continue to learn because you love what you do, not because someone told you to do it. We have so many resources at our disposal that there are no excuses to not push yourself or learn something new.

The best way to learn is by doing. I wanted to write better. So I started a blog and wrote. I am learning better ways to express my ideas and opinions. Every time I write here it is a learning experience. I write what I think I know and by the time I am done writing I find that I might not know as much as I thought. I am learning and I am loving it. Knowledge is one of the few things people can not take from you. Cherish it and continue to help it grow. Most importantly, take the time to share it with the world so that they may grow as well.