1157 I Don't Have Time To Learn The Skills For A New Job... What Should I Do? - Simple Programmer Podcast
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Welcome to the Simple Programmer Podcast. Making complex programming simple and fast. With everything from career advice to philosophy. It's the Simple Programmer Podcast.

Hey, what's up? John Sonmez from simpleprogrammer.com. I thought I would answer a question here that I got from Travis. Travis is asking about going part-time because he's getting overwhelmed by trying to learn too much at his new job. Travis says, Hi John, I've been following your blog for a while and I've even purchased and worked through the How to Market Yourself course.

I'll put the course right there, How to Market Yourself as a Software Developer. You can get that and it will help you to market yourself, to build a brand, to build a blog, be successful. Anyway, so Travis goes on to say, ìAs a result, I've recently landed a contract to hire position at a consulting agency and so far I think it's a pretty cool place to work.î

I've been at this agency for the last couple of weeks and they've already got me on 4 different projects at the same time. I'm required to learn—or at the same time, I'm required to learn a dozen different technologies and tools to do the job. I'm already feeling quite overwhelmed by the number of things I have to learn and the number of projects I have to keep up with. I'm constantly feeling like I'm not producing enough.

and spending too much time learning. I'm considering asking them to reduce the number of projects and hours to part-time so I can spend my own time learning. Not sure if this is a good idea or if I should just try to power through it. I don't want to end up burning out too soon. Do you have any advice for this kind of situation?"

Travis, definitely I would say don't ask them to reduce your hours part time. I think you're a conscientious person obviously so this is good. You're concerned that you're spending too much time learning. They have you on a lot of projects and you feel like you got to learn all this stuff. Don't worry. Don't get too overwhelmed with this.

This is good, right? It's supposed to be hard and it's supposed to be challenging and you don't have to learn at all. What's up, guys? John Sonmez here from simpleprogrammer.com. I want to tell you about my free blogging course that you can sign up for at simpleprogrammer.com/pblog.

Now, this free blogging course is going to tell you how to create a blog to boost your career. It's something that you definitely don't want to miss. Thousands of developers have already gone through the course, the free course that you're going to get by email, and have learned how to create a blog to boost your career, to make more money, and even to grow their own side business. It's something that every single developer should do, especially if you're a web developer. You should have your own blog. I'm going to show you exactly how to do it, how to be successful, how to get traffic,

everything that you need to know about creating a blog and even making money from it. Just go to simpleprogrammer.com forward slash pblog to sign up now. Once again, it's simpleprogrammer.com forward slash pblog. You definitely don't want to reduce your hours and start learning on your own. That's too much. Your employer, my perspective has always been...

that your employer should be paying for you to learn when you need to learn things to do the job. They hire you with a skill set but you can't have the full skill set to do a job especially in software development environment.

unreasonable to learn on the job. In fact, training is part of—when I bring an employee on I expect them to have a certain skill set but I also expect to train them. You got to train people. This is your training and your learning phase. As long as your employer is not complaining with your output then don't worry, man. Just learn, have a good time and try to learn as much as possible and to use this—just don't put too much pressure on yourself. Just learn what you need to learn.

Get through it. If you need some help, I've got a course on 10 Steps to Learning Anything Quickly. Anyway, I don't want to plug it too much here but that can help you if you're struggling with having to learn something quickly. It's a course that I developed because of being overwhelmed just like you were.

Don't worry about it, Travis. I think you're totally fine. Like I said, if your employer is not complaining then just learn. Don't reduce your hours. Don't feel like you need to do that. Congratulations and I'm glad that you found success with how to market yourself. If you've got a question for me email me at john at simpleprogrammer.com and I will talk to you next time. Take care.