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Subject:RE: Educational areas to pursue From:John Posada <JPosada -at- book -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 25 Feb 2003 15:42:00 -0500
Timing has an impact on learning in that ya need to look at the foreseeable
future...maybe a year or more down the road. Why a year? Because chance are
if you concentrate your learning effort on something that will be obsolete
by then, you've wasted your time.
Also, and this is best described by example...
About 5 years ago, I was doing heavy UNIX documentation...70 UNIX
programmers and me. At that time, if someone had come to me and offered me
free training on MS related technology, I would have turned it down...and
then I would offered to pay out of my own pocket for training on cron,
shells, tcl or anything UNIX related.
Now...I'm deep into MS; MSMQ, COM/COM+/DCOM, ADO, SOAP, etc. Offer me free
UNIX training and I'll decline, but I'll offer to pay for training on the
above.
Am I rejecting training? Not at all. I just have limited time (much of it I
need to do my job well) and while I insist on allocating time for training,
I need to be selective on what I'm allocating that time toward.
John Posada
Senior Technical Writer
Barnes&Noble.com
jposada -at- book -dot- com
NY: 212-414-6656
Dayton: 732-438-3372
"Alright, nobody move! I've got a dragon here, and I'm not afraid to use it"
---------- Donkey
> > > > But my desire to avoid Windows has nothing to do with my general
> > > > competence as a writer.
> >
> > > Yes it does...it makes you generally less competent to document
Windows
>
> > It does NOT. Remember, I learned what I needed to, as requested. I did
> > what my employer asked. That doesn't mean I have to *like* the thing
> > I was learning about. You seem to think that the mere opporunity to
> > learn something new is something to jump at. (Perhaps I'm putting words
> > in your mouth here, but that's the sense I get from your postings.)
> > I don't agree. There's a lot of things I'd like to know about, given
> > the time. There are a lot I couldn't care less about, no matter how
> > much time I have.
>Some of the things you couldn't care less about, employers DO care about.
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