Be jack of all or define yourself

Listen to this, and that question is answered by people who know a hell of lot more than I do about it.

http://www.muleradio.net/mistakes/89/

Lets see.....I left college with a diploma in robotics and programmable automation, by trade I am a Certified Glazier / Sheet metal worker, then I went back to night school for a business diploma, got my A+ certification, lets not forget MCSE plus a host of lesser certifications, started CCNA then the tech bubble burst. In order to keep food of the table I went back to union work as a glazier. Right now I am working on my Treehouse and my CSP certification.

Heres the deal. This is the new world economy and he have know idea where your next pay cheque is coming from or even if you will have a job. Jobs are shipped overseas and coders are a dime a dozen in India. Heck check any crowd funded site and you realize that its a very thin line between having a future and having no future.

There is a way for you to cover your bases. Cover as much ground as you can. Do not specialize. Rather generalize. I tell anyone who will listen. DEVELOP YOUR SOFT SKILLS. They will save you. 1) Learn to sell. Get a real estate license. You don't have to sell just know and understand people. This skill applies to cars as well as website design. 2) Learn to code. In as many languages as you can. Its not important to be a great coder but it is important to understand the principals and techniques. 3) Read the "Start up of You" 4) Make sure you are excellent in your communication skills. Know your word processing like the back of your hand. 5) Lean AI, Corel, Video editing understand marketing. 6) Learn about and understand what makes "good marketing" 7) Build your business network. You need friends in high and low places.

Alright I'm ranting but you get the idea. Don't specialize. You will box yourself in and when opportunity comes you wouldn't be able to re-act.

M

Hey christopher wood,

This is a question that I have struggled with myself. I have watched almost all of areas covered on Treehouse. I also thought to myself that should I focus on one area or one language or do I have to be a jack of all trades to be successful. I realized after a while that in order to be very good at one language, you still need to have knowledge of the other languages. So, no matter what you kind of have to be a jack of all trades. We can take PHP for example. In order to really fully understand PHP you need to know HTML, CSS, and a little bit of JavaScript. Without having a basic understanding of those languages, PHP will be very hard to learn and understand. So, if I want to master PHP I still have to be a jack of all trades. That is just an example that I thought of.

I also would love to hear what Nick Pettit has to say about this question.

Dan

I get that dan yet Javascript, Php, html, CSS, Ruby on Rails, MySQL. That quite a lot of languages hence the question.

Yet I focus on areas of website design and website developer cause their is bit a difference, so how do you know what area to define self to?

Ty John for audio it good

You should try to learn as much as you can. Personal computers and the Internet have created a brand new world that moves fast. Learning one language or one skill is going to seriously hurt your ability to stay relevant. The idea of going to school and then working the same job until you retire is gone. You have to learn continuously in order to easily adapt to new situations.

I'll use myself as an example: I was an actor for most of my childhood. Then I became interested in fine art and filmmaking. That eventually carried me into web design and development through college (useless) and my first few jobs. All of those cross-disciplinary skills allowed me to have this weird and awesome career that nobody could have ever predicted; teaching people on-camera how to design websites.

How do you prepare yourself for the unpredictable? Never stop learning.

Hi,

I just recently found Treehouse and was so excited that I just stumbled onto the right Web Development education environment. I can I learn as much as I can about everything! I definitely believe in knowing as much as possible about every aspect of your industry or profession.

I was also waiting to hear from Nick Pettit - I didn't know who he was, but it was worth the wait.