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Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success

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Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success

#41

Post by miqueloc »

Yes, self-help article alert. But, what is interesting is to point that it’s true that soft skills are usually underrated. Of course, being a specialist makes you one of a kind, but I don’t think everyone can be that person (meaning, you will become very unhappy just struggling, because normal people has different passions not only one). Actually, this person is the 1%, and trying to be them can be frustrating, so we can be mid-rad. Also, in technology, yes, you want an specialist that solves the problem in 5 seconds, but multiple skills make interconnections and new ideas or relations to other important, not that technical, questions. Meaning, is the 1% because those problems are, maybe a 20% for the company, the other 80% is focused on multiple problems related with reality. For example, Agile, how things are tested, communication, visibility, goals... Anyway, I found the reflection useful. Here, speaking:

- Advertising graduate, ex copy writer, ex music producer, ex bartender, ex journalist writer, QA analyst, now self-taught programmer, now kind of in testing automation and managing infrastructure and devops.

Future is bright

Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success

#42

Post by tenf-sefhu »

baxtr wrote: post #16
syndacks wrote: post #8

When I rode my bicycle across the USA from LA to NYC I met a dude named Ryan through WarmShowers. Over pizza and beers at a local joint in Tempe, AZ, Ryan told me about this blog called _Semi-Rad_ - "you don't need to be a rockstar in something, you just need to be semi-rad. Semi-rad people have the most fun, they achieve the most, they experience the spice of life. They're not so caught up in perfection, but they st…

I believe these two things are orthogonal. Take Steve Jobs for example, generalist but a perfectionist, too

Yikes, that didn’t work out so well for him

Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success

#43

Post by carlmr »

User23 wrote: post #26
_kxbd wrote: post #19

I don't find these sorts of articles valuable. The template is simple: Write generic advice that sounds nice, and is never controversial. Make sure it's super vague so you don't have to take any accountability for it, you can move the goalposts of what you're saying. If we remove all the filler in this article (more or less the entire article), it amounts to "be okay at multiple things rather than trying to be good a…

Also he's just plagiarizing Scott Adams's notion of a "talent stack."

I was going to say the same, no attribution at all, and dubious claims about how your success will increase.

I believe the talent stack is a valid principle, but it doesn't just double your success if you go to toastmasters and learn how to present and at your job you have neither a commission nor any customer contact.

Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success

#44

Post by ascar »

nostrademons wrote: post #39

Not sure if I really believe this. I'm someone who likes to pick up new skills for fun & fulfillment. And yet, when it to career success , roughly 80% of my net worth is attributable to two, maybe three skills: being really good at Javascript, and having solid CS fundamentals in data structures and algorithms. Together they got me into Google, where I picked up the third skill (knowing the full Search stack from the…

Thanks for sharing.

I think it all comes down to the role and career path. Engineers that are specialized are way more interesting for large corporations, because they have a lot of engineers and most of them work on very specialized problems. A CTO of a tech startup should be a decent engineer, but with a much broader knowledge-base than someone, let's say, optimizing V8.

I'm currently finishing my master's degree and got a contract for after graduation for one of the best management trainee programs in Germany for a technical R&D management career path (the company has roughly 1 such position across all roles and departments for every 4000 employees) and it pays over 50% of the average starting salary. I see that as a very successful career start.

What made me interesting for the company wasn't just my internship/work experience as a software engineer (equivalent to about 2 years full-time work) that should place me among the top 10-20% of my fellow students, but my broader experience as a leader in several clubs. The best fit for the role wasn't someone specialized in engineering, but someone with a genuine interest in leading that is still capable and at least somewhat knowledgeable of software engineering.

My skills in hacking LaTeX to do my bidding or knowing the insides of Office Open XML format were absolutely irrelevant or only marginally emphasized that I can learn some niche stuff. Broadening your skillset only helps career success, when the learned skills supplement the requirements of the position.

Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success

#45

Post by techstrategist »

mathattack wrote: post #3
jolmg wrote: post #2

It's rare to see arguments in favor of being a generalist over a specialist. In the end, they both have their pros and cons. > You simply have more chance of career success if you have more skills. I think that depends on how one intends to apply those skills. Being a generalist means that you don't depend on any one particular skill to always keep you in demand, and you can do more on your own to do tasks that speci…

Ups and downs on being a generalist. - If I stuck with a focus on database programming from my early career, I would have a very valuable specialty. - If I stayed more technical I probably would have weathered 2008 with more sanity. But... - Being a generalist opened up some international work. - I met my wife on a career tangent. - I get bored doing the same thing over and over. - My last two roles (in a long career…

That last point is key. You can’t always see how things could come together, but there may be a serendipitous connection there. In my (shorter) experience, when I’m looking for a role I can’t see ahead to predict or drive how things will pull together, but when I look back a few months into a new job they usually do.

Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success

#46

Post by techstrategist »

indigochill wrote: post #30
jolmg wrote: post #2

It's rare to see arguments in favor of being a generalist over a specialist. In the end, they both have their pros and cons. > You simply have more chance of career success if you have more skills. I think that depends on how one intends to apply those skills. Being a generalist means that you don't depend on any one particular skill to always keep you in demand, and you can do more on your own to do tasks that speci…

I've sort of accidentally jumped all over the place. In high school I excelled in writing but ran calculations at an electrical engineering company. In college (studying journalism/marketing) I helped a startup with ethical stealth social marketing. Then I left college to do tech support at my dream company while completing my degree remotely. Eventually taught myself just enough Python to pivot into a junior fullsta…

Very curious about the “ethical stealth social marketing” if you care to share more.

Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success

#47

Post by csomar »

nopinsight wrote: post #32
SpanishConf wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Live in Europe

This assumes that the pension system there will be able to sustain itself in a few decades hence despite low birth rates and limited immigration. Also, most people in developing countries, i.e. most people in the world, do not have that option.

Yes. Many people cites Europe/France as a good example of retirement/healthcare and forget that the pension system is a Scam.

They are basically paying current retirees with what the current employees are paying. A state-lead Ponzi Scheme.

The system will eventually implode.

Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success

#48

Post by OJFord »

tomcam wrote: post #17
scarface74 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I restarted my software development career around 2009 after being at one company too long and after 8 years and 4 job changes, I went from being what for all intents and purposes a junior .Net developer to the dev team lead based solely on knowing the Microsoft stack really well. At the company where I was the dev lead, I first encountered outside consultants who were there to “help” us transform the company and “mo…

Are you sure you need certifications? Not skeptical, just curious. And what would certifications be?

I tend to assume consultancies are exactly the target audience for these sorts of certifications - and it probably does make sense, so they can pitch to a client that they can offer X-many Y-certified consultants for $Z.

Whether their clients tend to actually be familiar with the organisations endorsing or providing the Y certification I have no idea, but even if all it does is give them a warm fuzzy feeling, that's probably enough to make it worthwhile for the consultancy that wants their business.

Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success

#49

Post by ensiferum »

_kxbd wrote: post #19

I don't find these sorts of articles valuable. The template is simple: Write generic advice that sounds nice, and is never controversial. Make sure it's super vague so you don't have to take any accountability for it, you can move the goalposts of what you're saying. If we remove all the filler in this article (more or less the entire article), it amounts to "be okay at multiple things rather than trying to be good a…

It's just this "empty" content that every blogger is spewing these days just to publish something.

Re: Skill Stacking: A Practical Strategy to Achieve Career Success

#50

Post by bertjk »

carlmr wrote: post #43
User23 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also he's just plagiarizing Scott Adams's notion of a "talent stack."

I was going to say the same, no attribution at all, and dubious claims about how your success will increase. I believe the talent stack is a valid principle, but it doesn't just double your success if you go to toastmasters and learn how to present and at your job you have neither a commission nor any customer contact.

He does attribute, right in the second line of the whole piece:

>> The more skills we have, the more odds we have to become successful. I like how Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, explains the concept of Skill Stacking ...

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