2019-12-27 13:52:00
2020's right around the corner and I've been poking colleagues, urging them to set study-goals for the upcoming year. In Dutch, we have saying equating a lack of progress to deterioration: "Stilstand is de dood" ("Stagnation is death"). I believe that this proverb applies very heavily to work in IT: if you're not keeping up with the times, you're going to get out-dated real quickly.
A colleague asked for suggestions on how to set goals for yourself, to which I replied:
I'd suggest taking into account things like A) where do you want to be in 2-3 years? B) is your team or company lacking particular knowledge or experience? C) do you, or your team, have requirements that you need to fulfill through training? D) do you see any chances that will allow you to quickly up your perceived value?
Basically: train for the job you want, fill any gaps that your team has and make sure you're not dropping any balls.
For me, EX407 fills categories B and C (my current team has little Ansible experience and it will renew my RHCE which will lapse in 1.5 years). The Python for pen-testing course will help me with A (I want to move towards red-teaming and my current coding skills are almost nill).
This year's CySA+ was for category D (it was heavily discounted and I'm pretty sure I could pass it, thus adding a well-regarded cert to my name). Ditto for trying the SANS Work/Study programme, which gets me a heavy discount on a very big-name training and cert.
Finally: just keep a list of things that you want to investigate or work on. Maintain it throughout the year, add new things, remove unwanted things, change priorities. That way you're always set for A) next year's study plans and B) that all-time favorite interview question "Where do you see yourself in two years? What are your short-term development plans?"
kilala.nl tags: work, studies,
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