You might have come across my posts on Linkedin, where most of the time I ask people to be prepared and keep learning and upgrading. Recently, I was searching for stories to read (I am a fairy tale reader and it excites me a lot to read authors like Ruskin Bond). I came across Aesop's fables, the following is the fable which matched my perspective where I advocate upgrading and sharpening skills.
Here is the fable that Aesop wrote:
A Wild Boar was sharpening his tusks busily against the stump of a tree when a Fox happened by. Now the Fox was always looking for a chance to make fun of his neighbours. So he made a great show of looking anxiously about, as if in fear of some hidden enemy. But the Boar kept right on with his work.
"Why are you doing that?" asked the Fox at last with a grin. "There isn't any danger that I can see."
"True enough," replied the Boar, "but when danger does come there will not be time for such work as this. My weapons will have to be ready for use then, or I shall suffer for it."
Time to think upon
Now, if you are a developer or a test engineer or an infrastructure consultant or a DevOps engineer and if you take a close look and think in terms of technology and skills and your career path, the above story almost matches with present-day situation where you need to keep learning and upgrading to keep yourself abreast with the latest technology trends.
If you do not upgrade, the chances are you would be attacked!! Attacked brutally, I must say, and will have to again start afresh and chances are you might land into a situation where you would be stressed and frustrated at the same time leading to losing your job or if you are trying to find a new one, it wouldn't match the skills the employer needs.
Here are some of the suggestions I would provide which might help you in your career journey. You may also search on the internet based on your role in the IT industry. It is good if you could read some blogs related to your field, articles for process flows, knowledge-sharing articles or "How to" with regards to the usage of the tool. Books are anyways very useful to keep yourself busy learning new things and also upgrading your knowledge as per the author's experience in his career.
Awesome Learning Materials
Here is the curated list of awesome learning materials which I have created on GitHub. There are multiple topics to learn. From Programming language to DSA and Software Testing to DevOps there is a plethora of learning material available.
Do not forget to give it a Star and share it within your network to make it popular.
If you have any other references for the websites for learning which can help the QA community please feel free to add those to the list as well.
Check out my blogs on Medium and also on my website
Freelance Work / Paid Training/Mentoring
Contact me for Paid training/Mentoring related to Test Automation and Software Testing, ping me using any of the social media sites listed on LinkTree or email me @mohammadfaisalkhatri@gmail.com.
References: read.gov/aesop/014.html