How to Gain Technical Wisdom

October 7, 2011 · 2 min read

I previously blogged about technical wisdom here.  Here's the my definition of that:

Technical wisdom: Knowing why a particular solution is a bad idea even if you are technically capable of implementing the solution.

So today I want to discuss one of the best ways to get technical wisdom.

I read a great article about the benefits of maintaining bad code here and I was in complete agreement with his thoughts.  And that led me into a discussion where eventually David Adsit commented on the value of job hopping (codeobsession.blogspot.com/).

After some thought, I felt as though I was struck by en epiphany.  Job hopping truly is one of the best ways to gain technical wisdom.  You get to work with more people with more ideas, you get the chance to work on greenfield and brownfield projects, you get to maintain other people's crappy code, so that you know not to inflict that on the next guy, you get to see more industries, see multiple team practices, and see what makes teams work well, and see more of what makes employees happy, and more of what makes them unhappy.  You get to hear new complaints about the mistakes of the past at your company.

You get to be excited more often for new opportunities, practice your interpersonal skills more (although that may make some people shudder) as you convince new people that you are not only good to work with, but also know what you're doing, and you get to get out of that rut you're in and do something new.  

And best of all you can reset you.  Were you a little too negative in your last job?  Too timid? Too complacent?  Too uncommitted?  Much easier to change that with a new environment.

So.  Should you switch jobs every 6 months?  No.  You should definitely not do that.  But if you've been at your current company in your current role for 5 years, and you've been doing the same thing with mostly the same people on the same product building/maintaining the same code base, then it's probably time to make a move.

This article is part of the GWB Archives. Original Author: joeeames

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