Frustrated..of learning new things daily

[Jeevan Krishna]

Hi,

I'm into software job since four plus years and i really feel frustrated of learning new technologies and concepts. Every day new learning.

Sometimes I feel like running away. But I need to continue this job due to support my family.

I just like to ask you people ..do any one feel so? or am i unique

[Srikanth Basa]

Yes, new things keep on coming and there is no escape other than learning them but one thing I couldn't make out from your post. Did you mean that you try to learn every new framework/technology that you hear about ?
[ September 24, 2008: Message edited by: Srikanth Basavaraju ]

[Arvind Mahendra]

I think this is the same with every job. But rest assured unlike with school/college you are learning things which are actually useful to you today that you get to apply in the real world and will help your career in the long run. You are also getting paid for it

[Gabriel Claramunt]

On the other hand, in spite of eight plus years of experience, I'm delighted I'm always learning new stuff!
Every project involves a different technology or domain. You can always learn a new framework, a new language (or better ways to use the language you already know), even slowly learning a new paradigm...
To be honest, when I'm not learning I get bored and anxious because I feel stuck.
I understand your feelings, but I can't help it: I really enjoy software development

[Mark Herschberg]

Originally posted by Arvind Birla:
I think this is the same with every job.

Actually no. There are plenty of jobs which do not require significant learning--they just don't happen to be in technology.

If the pressure to keep learning is not appealing, you may want to consider a career switch into a different field. Plenty of large corporations need people to man the cubicles doing rote work for years on end.

--Mark

[arulk pillai]

Originally posted by Gabriel Claramunt:
[QB]On the other hand, in spite of eight plus years of experience, I'm delighted I'm always learning new stuff!
Every project involves a different technology or domain. You can always learn a new framework, a new language (or better ways to use the language you already know), even slowly learning a new paradigm...
To be honest, when I'm not learning I get bored and anxious because I feel stuck.

Same here.

[Oscar Johansson]

Originally posted by arulk pillai:



Same here.

Happy to add myself to the list.

So much to learn, so little time.

[Oscar Johansson]

Originally posted by Mark Herschberg:


Actually no. There are plenty of jobs which do not require significant learning--they just don't happen to be in technology.

If the pressure to keep learning is not appealing, you may want to consider a career switch into a different field. Plenty of large corporations need people to man the cubicles doing rote work for years on end.

--Mark

In India, for example, there are plenty of call center jobs around. Of course, there are others and not all such jobs would have a lower perceived social status like call center jobs.

In the IT industry, I know people in Testing or Support/ASG(Application Support Group) roles who have added little to their skills or knowledge over time and yet have a stable job and fulfill their roles well.

[Devi Sri]

Originally posted by arulk pillai:



Same here.

Mee too joining the list.
"same here".
Infact, Learning makes Life Interesting.

Thanks & Regards,

[Sagar Rohankar]

I do not have that much experience in s/w development , I'm 9 months old in it ! I too learn new things, technology and frameworks (More API , recently fall in love with AJAX ) . You didn't get bored or frustrated unless and until , your getting an output

[Joe San]

Even I like learning new stuff ecery often or else I feel stuck.

[Rajkamal Pillai]

Hi,

"The Only Thing That Is Constant Is Change".

Not that technology doesn't interest or excite me, I'd rather get myself to learn and be involved in different stuff as opposed to doing the very same things day in and day out. Well to think about it I do feel good to be on things that are new to the technology market!

Job security? Well in a dog eat dog world, anyone who starts to take things for granted could easily get gobbled up. I'd rather be contributing my puny bit to the future, helping developing solutions rather than answering calls even if the job is supposedly secure.

Cheers,
Raj.

[Tim Holloway]

Back when I started in this business in the pre-PC era, I think you could do that. There was a guy in the office in his later years who managed the COBOL payroll system and did the same thing day in and day out.

Those days are gone forever. If the pace of change in IT is vexing, you should consider another career option. No one can do well at a job they don't like.

If you live in South Asia, there should be a wealth of opportunities in the more traditional technologies. There's a lot of roads, water facilities and power plants that need to be designed and built there. Or if you prefer, options in finance or medicine.

My problem is actually the opposite - I enjoy the learning and experimentation phase to the point where people get annoyed at me not sticking to the more mature technologies.

[Maneesh Godbole]

Originally posted by Mark Herschberg:
Plenty of large corporations need people to man the cubicles doing rote work for years on end.

Then there is a possibility that the OP might feel frustrated, because he has to do the same thing day in day out !
Like Shaw once said, There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.

Jeevan,
Why dont you discuss this issue out with your manager?

[Pradeep bhatt]

I am learning groovy

[Dave Berkheimer]

I've got to agree with Gabriel above. I've been programming for about 14 years now and if I'm not learning, then I'm dying of boredom... so much so that it is one of the primary reasons for my looking for a new job. My advice, learn to like learning. Technology changes so fast that if you don't keep up, then you're left behind.

Dave

[arulk pillai]

I've got to agree with Gabriel above. I've been programming for about 14 years now and if I'm not learning, then I'm dying of boredom... so much so that it is one of the primary reasons for my looking for a new job. My advice, learn to like learning. Technology changes so fast that if you don't keep up, then you're left behind.

Very true. In addition as a beginner your learning curve will be steeper, but once you undertsand the core concepts, you should be able pick up things a lot quicker and also will be more pleasurable.

[Mohan Karthick]

Jeevan,

If learning new things, every 6 month is not of your interest, then change some job other than software development.
1. You can do sotware maintainance job.(but at some time you need to upgrade-that would be more difficult - this is temp solution)
2. Join marketing or finance job.
3. If you are engineer join any manufacturing factory.
4. Join product base software.
5. Software testing
6. Software business development.

[Joe San]

The industry is for the people who can adapt themselves towards changes. So better get used to changes and be happy to learn something new.

[Ananth Chellathurai]

Hi Jeevan,

If you work to get paid, you will never be able to love your job. If you do not love your job then you can not learn new things to adopt yourself to fit to your job. If you do not fit to your place, your employer may get 4 freshers for the same money they pay you and kick you out. So there is no escape from learning if you are in IT. Better to change the career or your mind set that you feel frustrated to learn new things.

Regards
Ananth Chellathurai

[Srikanth Basa]

Mohan, many of the roles listed by you would need a person to upgrade his software skills.

Software testing

Even software testers need to keep themselves up-to-date with the automation tools, test frameworks and other stuff.

Join product base software.

Now thats weird. It shows you aren't aware of how things work in a product based company.

In a product based company you must always be open to learn anything (no restriction on technologies too) and that makes it fascinating for people interested in learning and boring for those who don't want to learn.

[Bobby Sharma]

Some people get bored and frustrated doing software development and moves to System and Network administration field.

best regards,
omi

[Mohan Karthick]

I have not given much detail about fields since most of the things are understood
But just to make you understand with out learning nothing is possible he frustrating about learning new things on every next month, if some body is in technology field in service industry that�s person needs to keep on learning new things, to maintain market requirement in addition to that never next project required which technology it could legacy one.

Now in case of testing things are not changing so frequently once you understand the domain and testing tool its easy or I can say not too much stress as compare to developer, many marriage girls or people who don�t want to do pure technical things they opt for this.

Now in Product , Once you understand the product you need to provide support and enhancement in the same boundary, even some thing new comes up that goes through lots of research and customized one, so may be learning is quite less, you are confined your self in that product and once you understand it, its easy to work on that.

Are you agreed on above points? Aggressive learning is not required for above fields.

You can be a domain expert and become a Business Analyst.

[Srikanth Basa]

Now in Product , Once you understand the product you need to provide support and enhancement in the same boundary

Let me make it clear that understanding the complete product is far difficult from what you are anticipating here. A product is an outcome of the many years of effort placed by many engineers and functional experts and believing that one can understand it completely is far from optimistic.

even some thing new comes up that goes through lots of research and customized one

Don't get what you mean here.

so may be learning is quite less, you are confined your self in that product and once you understand it, its easy to work on that.

You cannot give a generalized statement here. Now if it were that easy to work in a product based company then why do you think products being designed and developed at Top IT firms still carry bugs (for instance your OS by itself is a product) ?

[Mohan Karthick]

So you agreed with explanation of software testing field.

Now I need to give some more examples for Product Development

As I stated earlier, that initial hard work, experience and learning needs to be there, but if some one work with a product for 4-5 years, then implementation of any change is much easier, so if you supporting same product in terms of customer support or defect fixing or enhancement, there are lots of things which are repetitive so the overall learning curve is less (This is reason why product base company gives good pay and treat employees as an asset).

In service industries you need to proof you�re self again and again and every time technology, domain, client, process and life cycle varies.

So if Jeevan join some product base company, which may require him for customer support or defect fixing or enhancement then learning curve would be less and at the same time his employee value gets increase.

Implementing new things goes through R&D department of product and generaly architect group gives lots of effort on doing homework and making customized framework which can be easily merged into existing product code.

These advice are much feasible because Jeevan is already in IT industries for last 4 years, so best suitable is either he moves to testing or join a product company(Initial drain of brain is needed but gradually things will cool down- and you get better pay).

[Mohan Karthick]

So you agreed with explanation of software testing field.

Now I need to give some more examples for Product Development

As I stated earlier, that initial hard work, experience and learning needs to be there, but if some one work with a product for 4-5 years, then implementation of any change is much easier, so if you supporting same product in terms of customer support or defect fixing or enhancement, there are lots of things which are repetitive so the overall learning curve is less (This is reason why product base company gives good pay and treat employees as an asset).

In service industries you need to proof you�re self again and again and every time technology, domain, client, process and life cycle varies.

So if Jeevan join some product base company, which may require him for customer support or defect fixing or enhancement then learning curve would be less and at the same time his employee value gets increase.

Implementing new things goes through R&D department of product and generaly architect group gives lots of effort on doing homework and making customized framework which can be easily merged into existing product code.

These advice are much feasible because Jeevan is already in IT industries for last 4 years, so best suitable is either he moves to testing or join a product company(Initial drain of brain is needed but gradually things will cool down- and you get better pay).

[Srikanth Basa]

I do disagree with your comment on testing. Look at the desired skills asked in any tester job openings (these days). You can hardly (though not impossible) find openings which where they don't ask for knowledge on different APIs, technologies.

You seem to have forgotten one basic point here. Do you think, in a duration of 4-5 years the product would still remain on the same technology stack as it previously was ? I seriously doubt.

With ever changing technology, they slowly but steadily would migrate to a newer tech stack and that involves understanding the new versions of technology. After having said that, no product can market itself in the market unless the company releases great features with every new release. Generally,those features would need a lot of research, design, development and testing so the conclusion is - The product dev is not only about defect fixing !

Yes, at times there are teams which actively work on bug fixes but at the end of all, being in a development team, its not a life full of defect fixes. You may want to note that there are dedicated teams for customer support.

You gave a good reason why you think the product based companies pay better but thats not the primary reason. For a service based company, the client pays for the engineers and with so many vendors competing to attract a client, companies quote very less price and that results in lesser pay

...which may require him for [b]customer support

From your statement and further points, I think you are suggesting him to get into customer support role (Product Support) and NOT Product Development

Don't forget that the grass is always greener on the other side. Ask a developer he would speak for himself and so is the case with a tester, technical writer or anyone in the software field. The essence is, to survive in software sector one needs to keep himself up-to-date.
[ September 25, 2008: Message edited by: Srikanth Basavaraju ]

[Lok Manick]

Hi Jeevan Krishna,

Only thing that do not change in the world is CHANGE. So its everyones duty to change and keep up to the change. Hope you would have heard the concept of 'Survival of the fittest'. There are two ways to be fittest in the IT industry
1. you have to learn and keep yourself updated.
2. The other way is to let others learn from you.

[Sri Anand]

Compare the Work environment at your current work place to other places and see if something else is causing all this.look chaning your job if you notice something else to be problem
Probably contracts/permanent in Governament Sector which goes at slow pace compared to private sector will help definatley there is learning but at slower pace and pressure is not immense, believe me i am working on a govt contract and earlier at private sector, and difference is huge. Actually i noticed that since i am not pressured by deadlines i was actually learning more and quickly also productive than in my earlier jobs which were all in private sector. Some people tend to slow down on things if they are pressured by deadlines and other stuff

Also learning becomes difficult if you keep working on same project and place for years togather,stick not more than 18 months in a project else you will get frustated with same kind of issues

if you had'nt had good performance review for couple of years even after good work that might even frustate you,check if your company has enough scope for growth.

Taking up a differemt role like tester or Business analyst will help you learn some others stuff which you might be a change and looks more fresh to you

If you are on a hectic project break the stress away with a vacation and it will definatly improve your approach to learning
[ September 25, 2008: Message edited by: Raghunandan Mamidala ]

[Mohan Karthick]

I think Srikanth you will never agree with my statement.

Anyways here are some more details for tester requirement
Designation: Test Lead/Project Manager
Job Description�Experience on testing tools like QTP, SilkTest, Quality Center
* Ability to create automation test plans / strategy
* Experience in Planning, estimation & execution of automation projects
* Experience on manual testing
* Knowledge of Java, J2EE, .NET desirable
* Excellent troubleshooting skills
Desired Profile�Should have excellent background on testing concepts and automation testing
* Good conversational and interpersonal skills
* Should be a self-starter, pro-active, pragmatic and motivated
* Good multi-tasking abilities
* Good problem management skills
* Knowledge of P&C, Health care Insurance domain desirable
Experience: 6-9 years
Industry Type: IT-Software/ Software Services
Functional Area: QA & Testing

Now do you say that a Technical Lead requirement and Test lead requirement is same. I am not saying that above description is downward than technical both carries equal importance, but in above functional and execution knowledge is important , and a person who is having a good development experience and if he wants to shift to testing field he is going to do great job at testing.
When some one says knowledge of Java, J2EE, .NET is desirable, this just a knowledge.

Learning is part of any field but aggressive learning is there in software , in that sense even marketing and finance is not an easy task.

[Rajkamal Pillai]

Hi guys,

:-) Since the topic is about to move into a debate between testing and development, let me add the choice is a personal call and it is up to each individual in IT to decide what he likes to be doing most! :-)

I started of as a Software Engineer and have by now have moved on to a Technical Lead position and I can happily say that I have not worked a day in life! What I mean is I have always enjoyed being part of development and the salary was always like the icing on the cake ;-)

I'm NOT trying to say Development is better than Testing or vice versa. My only suggestion would be "On this go with your heart!"

Cheers,
Raj.

[Srikanth Basa]

Mohan, with due respect to you first statement I won't elaborate it further

Though I am not a tester, I always feel that testers are often taken for granted. It is assumed that any developer can become a good tester. Poor testers !

[Sri Anand]

i am devolper and tester for my application , I do coding in Java then i write the Robot scripts for regression testing.Both require significant effort, but generally those doing manaul testing have lesser learning but they definately need analytical skills to make sure they cover all the scenarios

Both Jobs require learning one a bit lesser and definately both are challenging
[ September 26, 2008: Message edited by: Raghunandan Mamidala ]