A Critical Self Assessment

So I started brainstorming what I thought were the qualities of a great hacker, and I ended up with the above mind map. It’s incomplete, almost certainly wrong, and absolutely will change, but the details aren’t important right now. What is important to realize is that the field is diverse, constantly changing, and notice that only one of the branches refers to technical skills. I think it’s key to understand this when doing any kind of assessment or planning when it comes to ones own skills.

In the past year, I’ve been involved in networking, Rails, Java, XML, SOAP, virtualization, and other technologies that I’m forgetting. This list doesn’t feel very interesting, and it’s easy to think that I don’t know enough. However, there’s actually quite a lot of skill there, and you could probably say the same about yourself.

If you have any ambition at all in this industry, that’s going to be the default state. Despite what you’ve accomplished already, there is always something new to chase. I like that. What we need to do now is harness that dissatisfaction and ambition for positive sustainable growth.

I’ve defined four general growth tracks below based on my above brainstorm:

1. The computer
2. The network
3. Other people
4. Yourself

In the coming posts, I’m going to get into how to assess where you currently are, where you need to go, and what the immediate actions are to achieve sustainable growth.

Thanks!

Did this article help?

Welcome!

Published