To specialise or not to specialise ?

[McThuggets]

Hey all,

Recent grad here looking for advice and just to discuss the idea of becoming a specialist vs a generalist.

I majored in Network Security and Software Dev. I have interests in Web and Mobile dev, CyberSec and designing Cloud solutions. I am really nervous about applying for work because I haven't had much experience outside of uni.

Over the last month and a bit I've been learning some Flutter, some Django, going through TryHackMe labs and working towards some AWS certs. I'm really enjoying learning all of these but I am not really that good at any of them.

I am worried that I am spreading myself too thin. Am I using my time wisely ?

I'd also love to read your thoughts about specialising in one area/technology vs becoming just competent enough in a variety of areas.

 

[SirPicka]

Hey man,

I can take a stab at my experience of it and hopefully there's some gold nuggets somewhere in here.

The main piece of advise I can give you is don't rush into trying to find a solution straight out of Uni. (Not sure of your age) But you've got time - Find job opportunities that are in line with your interests and figure out what you enjoy doing day in / day out.

I too, wanted to specialize in cyber security, did TryHackMe and HackTheBox modules but ultimately I landed up in Data science because of its freedom to code and build whilst analyzing data. This is all because I started as a data analyst and was exposed to that side through the company.

What you learn in Uni is not directly applicable in every day practice - Sure there are some depending on the job role you choose, but you won't know until you're exposed to it. Most companies give you a thorough training on the tech stack they use via their intern programs, so you'll get that exposure when you join.

Don't fret about not being a specialist in any particular field straight out of Uni. Do what you enjoy and learn as you do - it's the only way you'll really find out where your interest lies. The tech industry is on fire when it comes to hiring - attitude and willingness to learn goes a very long way.

Happy to answer questions or hop on a call.

Hope this ramble was worth it.

 

[ViVceptioN]

I personally won't specialize to early in a career. Uni and the work environments out there are not the same (heck two software companies aren't even the same). I enjoyed X in Uni but absolutely hate doing it now. I would say expose yourself to different environments/specialties etc. Broaden the horizons, when you find the horizon you like then you can specialize in it.

Also you are still a junior dev, no one is going to expect you to be perfect at your job. it's extremely rare I can promise you that. Applying for jobs and going through the interview process can do no harm, in fact those jobs you don't get is a learning opportunity on how to get the next. Learning how to present yourself in an interview is a skill not school or Uni ever teaches.

I can add this, make sure you absolutely enjoy what you do if you are going to do it every day. I absolutely LOVE my job, but I still get days where it's dreadful, I cannot imagine how it would feel if I hated every moment of it.

P.S. Cloud computing and security is in big demand currently and I don't see that to change anytime soon. Continue with those certs while you search for your job. I know AWS is always looking for people, maybe have a look at their jobs they are offering.

 

[McThuggets]

Hey man,

I can take a stab at my experience of it and hopefully there's some gold nuggets somewhere in here.

The main piece of advise I can give you is don't rush into trying to find a solution straight out of Uni. (Not sure of your age) But you've got time - Find job opportunities that are in line with your interests and figure out what you enjoy doing day in / day out.

I too, wanted to specialize in cyber security, did TryHackMe and HackTheBox modules but ultimately I landed up in Data science because of its freedom to code and build whilst analyzing data. This is all because I started as a data analyst and was exposed to that side through the company.

What you learn in Uni is not directly applicable in every day practice - Sure there are some depending on the job role you choose, but you won't know until you're exposed to it. Most companies give you a thorough training on the tech stack they use via their intern programs, so you'll get that exposure when you join.

Don't fret about not being a specialist in any particular field straight out of Uni. Do what you enjoy and learn as you do - it's the only way you'll really find out where your interest lies. The tech industry is on fire when it comes to hiring - attitude and willingness to learn goes a very long way.

Happy to answer questions or hop on a call.

Hope this ramble was worth it.

I definitely think that you're right about not specializing just yet.. maybe I'm jumping the gun just a little bit here🙈

Thank you so much for the response I think I will definitely take your advice of finding an opportunity in line with my interests and then figuring out if the day to day life suits me.

I hope it's alright for me to pm you with questions later on in the week

 

[McThuggets]

I personally won't specialize to early in a career. Uni and the work environments out there are not the same (heck two software companies aren't even the same). I enjoyed X in Uni but absolutely hate doing it now. I would say expose yourself to different environments/specialties etc. Broaden the horizons, when you find the horizon you like then you can specialize in it.

Also you are still a junior dev, no one is going to expect you to be perfect at your job. it's extremely rare I can promise you that. Applying for jobs and going through the interview process can do no harm, in fact those jobs you don't get is a learning opportunity on how to get the next. Learning how to present yourself in an interview is a skill not school or Uni ever teaches.

I can add this, make sure you absolutely enjoy what you do if you are going to do it every day. I absolutely LOVE my job, but I still get days where it's dreadful, I cannot imagine how it would feel if I hated every moment of it.

P.S. Cloud computing and security is in big demand currently and I don't see that to change anytime soon. Continue with those certs while you search for your job. I know AWS is always looking for people, maybe have a look at their jobs they are offering.

I believe you're right about broadening my horizons. Right now, Im sure I've barely scratched the surface of what the industry has to offer.

What you said about the being a junior is really reassuring, idk how I got the idea that I need to be a god damn coding wizard straight out of uni into my head 🧙‍♂️.

I will definitely look at every interview as an opportunity to learn and will keep in mind that even in your dream job, there will be bad days.

Will do. Right now I'm working towards the SAA and Developer associate certs

Thanks so much for the advice

 

[kryptonzp]

Agree with the others focus on learning the basics .You should specialize later in your career it's a bit too early for it. But if you super passionate about something upskill in your spare time and one day the door will open ( honestly though a role is not what you think it is in a practical work setting) Also make sure you not taking a role early on in your career which will get you stuck there forever. Example if you start of in QA you might end up getting stuck there this could make you unhappy. Congrats on joining the IT field nice to see new blood on carbonite.

 

[McThuggets]

Agree with the others focus on learning the basics .You should specialize later in your career it's a bit too early for it. But if you super passionate about something upskill in your spare time and one day the door will open

Will do. I think I may have been getting a bit ahead of myself by considering specialising at this stage.

honestly though a role is not what you think it is in a practical work setting

100%. What I hadn't considered before is the fact that I don't actually know what these positions look like day-to-day. I want to get some exposure to these positions before making the decision to specialise.

Thanks for the advice!

 

[Reegz]

So, where are you at now?

 

[McThuggets]

So, where are you at now?

I'm part of a graduate program at a company in the insurance sector. They're currently in the process of rewriting their system and it looks like they will be ready to start rolling that out in about 2 months. From there, they're going to assign us to teams and we'll just do whatever our team needs us to do.

At the moment, they just want me to study and get comfortable with the tech stack they've chosen for the new system (ASP.NET, MS SQL, React and Azure). So that's my focus right now.

I'm studying towards my AWS certs on Sundays but at the moment my priority is getting good at the thing I'm getting paid for

 

[Reegz]

Ok cool cool.

So what are you doing right now, exactly? Are you guys coding, doing support?

If you have access to the Dev teams, find a friend or two there and if you show interest they'll likely start giving you some pointers as to what to focus on.

Cloud choices become religion. If the company has already chosen Azure then don't muddy the waters in your mind by focusing on AWS.

From my own experience, we would normally just slot newbies into our Dev teams and they'd be expected to catch up or we shipped them off to the support teams

I think for you with your education background you need to decide for yourself what area of focus is for you.

Software dev is awesome but it's not for everyone.

Traditional networking has been changed on its head thanks to concepts like the cloud. In big corporates they're still very much stuck to the old ways simply because it's worked for them, their entire architecture is built around it and there are many people who's careers rest on it. So trying to rock that boat could be a fool's errand.

You'll find pockets within the business that are transitioning over to cloud. It's a long process and a risk for large organisations so they're going to take their time with it.

Let's get some more info about your current day to day.

 

[ENT_DocY]

Saw the title and thought it was about medicine🤣 Sorry, I will be of NO help🤣🤣🤣

Edit: it being under "tech discussions" should have given it away but it's late and I'm tired.....

 

[McThuggets]

So what are you doing right now, exactly? Are you guys coding, doing support?

So, they've given us about 18 weeks of courses on the tech stack and we're expected to finish 1 per week. We're in week 5 now. Once I do my weekly course, I just work on little projects with ASP.NET and React because that is a serious weak point for me right now.

So my day to day is pretty much this:
- 8h00 - 13h00 : LinkedIn Courses
- 13h45 - 15h45 : ASP.NET + React projects
- 15h45 - 16h30 : Pretty much nothing. I'm finding it quite difficult to keep focusing on work at this point in the day.

Our manager said they might throw some SQL work at us later this week but I haven't heard anything from him yet

If you have access to the Dev teams, find a friend or two there and if you show interest they'll likely start giving you some pointers as to what to focus on.

Yeah, I do chat with the devs and they're all pretty cool. Very willing to take a few minutes to explain some of their day-to-days to us and give advice.

As for what to focus on...idk. Our manager basically just told us to get fairly competent at pretty much everything covered in the courses.

Cloud choices become religion. If the company has already chosen Azure then don't muddy the waters in your mind by focusing on AWS.

See, this is going against the advice that some of the seniors here have given me. They told me to keep going with my AWS and that I'd be okay with Azure because many of their services are very similar.

From my own experience, we would normally just slot newbies into our Dev teams and they'd be expected to catch up or we shipped them off to the support teams

Sounds like thats their plan for us in a few months 😂

I think for you with your education background you need to decide for yourself what area of focus is for you.

Yeah, I'm exeperiencing a bit of choice paralysis on that note. There are a few things that seem interesting and I could see myself enjoying long-term. I'm really leaning towards a focus on security because of my uni background and the job security offered in that field.

Wow, that was a long read. Thanks if you've made it this far

 

[Reegz]

Dude, if you're tapping out at 3:45 then I'm gonna recommend you start getting familiar with this thing they call... Energade!

The only way to get good at code is to write a lot of it. At this point in your career you should be going home and continuing to write code well into the wee hours of the night. It should be a thrill to learn and implement new stuff.

I'm not sure if you did any database integration during your studies but if you wanted to get a head-start on the rest of the grads then you should start looking to do some basic DB integration right away.

If you were in a pool that I was going to choose from and you came to me with pointed questions about issues you were having with code that you wrote during your own time or code that's ahead of what the lessons are doing then you would have already moved yourself up on my list.

If you had some background knowledge and hands-on experience with any cloud platform then I would have agreed that you should look at AWS. At this point you don't know what you don't know and you have no point of reference either.

Learning Azure and using the company's deployments and architecture as reference for your learning will help you make sense of the concepts. Once you have a good understanding of the basics on one cloud platform, then it's easy to pick up another as you're just figuring out the delta between the two rather that starting from scratch.

I'm fully AWS at this point in my life so no reason for me to tell you to look at Azure unless I believed that it makes sense.

Back in the day we wrote "guest books" as applications to learn a new framework. In short, you would need some front end pages to capture and display data, some logic to process the requests to view and save the data, and some DB integration to, well, read and save the data.

It's a basic CRUD (create, read, update, delete) app that can teach you a heck of a lot.

Get cracking.

 

[McThuggets]

Dude, if you're tapping out at 3:45 then I'm gonna recommend you start getting familiar with this thing they call... Energade!

Haha, yeah. I realise that it's wayyy too early to be so out of it. An afternoon coffee and a better night's sleep is also in order.

The only way to get good at code is to write a lot of it. At this point in your career you should be going home and continuing to write code well into the wee hours of the night. It should be a thrill to learn and implement new stuff.

Yes! 100% agreed and I must call myself out for not doing my due diligence here. I try to do about an hour or so once I'm home but haven't been as consistent as I need to.

I'm mot sure if you did any database integration during your studies but if you wanted to get a head-start on the rest of the grads then you should start looking to do some basic DB integration right away.

I did do a small website for a friend of a friend last year so I am sort familiar with what needs to be done. I will do some projects to familiarize myself with these tools.

If you were in a pool that I was going to choose from and you came to me with pointed questions about issues you were having with code that you wrote during your own time or code that's ahead of what the lessons are doing then you would have already moved yourself up on my list.

Yeah, my seniors are very much the same. They're always very happy to help when I come to them with specific problems

If you had some background knowledge and hands-on experience with any cloud platform then I would have agreed that you should look at AWS. At this point you don't know what you don't know and you have no point of reference either.

Learning Azure and using the company's deployments and architecture as reference for your learning will help you make sense of the concepts. Once you have a good understanding of the basics on one cloud platform, then it's easy to pick up another as you're just figuring out the delta between the two rather that starting from scratch.

I'm fully AWS at this point in my life so no reason for me to tell you to look at Azure unless I believed that it makes sense.

Hmm, so I'm not sure how much experience may be needed to qualify myself as knowing the basics. I've been following along with a Udemy course and doing this Cloud Resume Challenge to learn some practical skills but I think I'm still far from competent.

So, I think I will finish up with this project on AWS and then swap over so I can take advantage of the free things you get on your first year with Azure.

Back in the day we wrote "guest books" as applications to learn a new framework. In short, you would need some front end pages to capture and display data, some logic to process the requests to view and save the data, and some DB integration to, well, read and save the data.

It's a basic CRUD (create, read, update, delete) app that can teach you a heck of a lot.

I think the kids these days are doing reddit clones At least that's what I've been doing with some of the other grads. I agree, you can learn a lot of the fundamentals of a new framework by doing a basic CRUD app.

Get cracking.

Sir, yes sir! Thanks so much for the advice, I will try to make the most of it.

 

[Reegz]

Rock on!