Keith Watanabe * NET 2.0

In the technology field, the greatest advantage is that you're never truly bored by the field itself.  Bad offices can turn any field into a disaster, but the field itself is hot and far too fascinating for those of us who enjoy seeing evolution take place through the advancement of technology.  To grow though, we must be provided with ways to grow with technologies.  Some offices (in a lot of large companies) tend to departmentalize and pigeon hole employees into special tasks, never allow them to grow.  Yet I'm a firm believer that those companies end up hurting themselves through stagnate and even useless employees who are rigid in their habits and end up costing the company in question key opportunities to grow in the market during key trend periods.

To mitigate this, I've come up with a methodology for increasing productivity, killing the idea of job stagnation and improving technology in companies.  This methodology is what I call the consuming-producing methodology.  What it entails is this: 2-3 months of training and 2-3 months of utilizing that knowledge and producing a product or improving upon an exist one.  These phases are cyclical.  In technology, I suppose, my idea is focused more towards developers more than any other group.  It seems that the heaviest amount of responsibility is placed upon developers since their targets change the most frequently.  Certainly, system administration, database administration, and networks change, but not nearly at the rate as the number of APIs, frameworks, and techniques coming down the pipe for development.  And even for project managers and QA, this is probably less true.

However, I think these idealisms can apply across borders. My feeling has been that while school can only teach about 4 years of limited views on the entire spectrum of technology, it is up to companies (good ones at least) to continue educating their employees to meet the demands of technology.  So it is true that people are more specialists these days when it comes to technology.  However, the best ones I've met can wear multiple hats.  The only unfortunate thing is that gaps in knowledge that inevitably occur whenever one splits their focus on their profession.

To compensate for that gap, companies should allow for their technologists (and those closest to the technologists) to provide them with 2-3 months time of training.  Now, training can involve paying for courses and certifications, but also for self-learning.  Some of the avant garde technologies coming out don't even have books yet.  Perhaps, this 2-3 month training period also implies allowing for people to thoroughly evaluate a technology rather than push it to the moon and thereby making a rationale decision whether or not the company can utilize it.

For individuals whose companies are unwilling to provide such an environment, I highly suggest that you take 2-3 months and focus on a new technology or two and learn it well.  Then attempt to employ it within your company to gain practical experience with it.

For myself, I've noticed that I can keep my enthusiasm up for technology through these cycles.  Prior to AJAX, web programming was really getting stagnate for me.  Just CRUD, some validation, and organizing data in a certain manner.  However, right now I'm seeing my best productivity come out as a result of these 2-3 month cycles.  I feel that I reach a point where my brain gets overloaded on a certain technology then requires a kind of buffer flush.  The nice thing about my approach is that my job never feels stagnate (unless I work in a pit like HLIKK) and that I can constantly push myself forward.

Part of the reason why people quit their jobs isn't just about the money, but the stagnation of what they do.  Technologists in particular require challenges, new mountains to top in order to retain their interest in a company.  Companies that provide these environments have better chances of retaining than companies that simply try to hike up a person's salary level.  The salary hike is okay, but I still think people want to be stimulated.  Only the most useless and lazy people want to remain stagnate.  In implementing this type of program though, companies can quickly identify those people who simply don't care.