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Teach Everything You Know
Plus: Apple Announces Billion Dollar Deal to Make Components in USA
Stetson Blake
May 26, 2023
This is an IT Support Group
Weekly IT Roundup 🤠
If accidentally read, induce vomiting.™
Happy Friday, IT Professional!
If you’re in the US, hopefully you have the pleasure of a long holiday memorial weekend — Thank you to the brave men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice.
I’ll be building a patio, spending time with friends and family and writing some code.
How about you?
Lastly, can I ask a favor once again?
We’re (still) doing deep research on how to create the most high value community in the world for IT professionals.
Would you mind taking a brief survey? 🙏
It’d mean the world.
Enjoy your Friday!
-Stetson
Tech News TL;DR
This week’s IT and tech news in 5 minutes or less
Cyber-Security
Whoa — I went a little overboard here, enjoy!
Business & Economy
Artificial Intelligence
Miscellaneous
Sponsored
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Who should attend: N‑central administrators and those who want to learn more about how to configure and deploy N‑central Patch Management for a variety of scenarios including how to create the an automated experience.
IT Support Meme of the Week
Learn Linux for Half Off This Weekend ☁️
Looking to start a career in cloud built on AWS, Azure or GCP?
Linux is gonna be an essential.
That’s why I spent hundreds of hours learning Linux and then 100 more writing about it this year.
My new e-book on Linux is a fantastic way to level up your Linux Skills!
The good news? It’s 50% off this weekend! Just use coupon code FREEDOM to snag a copy for half off!
Community Highlights
This week’s top posts from This is an IT Support Group
Our members came back with an absolute MEGATHREAD of YouTube Recommendations
Tons of great recommendations here
Anon wants to know thoughts on timetracking software
Far from the weirdest thing I’ve seen my remote coworkers do on Zoom…
A Cry For Help 😢
Dear IT Professional and Friend:
I've been hearing from our audience that people are interested in advancing their career, but they're not exactly sure how.
I’ve been insanely blessed and successful in my own career and so I want to find the best way to help IT professionals thrive in their careers.
We’re committed to doing deep research on how to create the most high value community in the world for IT professionals.
Would you take a short 5-minute survey to help me out?
Tech Support Gore of the Week 🕸️ 🕷️
The most disgusting still-in-use charger I’ve ever seen
Who’s got the bleach? and a termination form?
5 Minute Career Advice ⏱️👨💼
How much experience should you have before you share what you know with others?
I’m going to argue that you only need to be 1 step ahead of the person you’re teaching.
That’s right, nearly any level of experience in any skill will be enough to qualify you to share your learnings with others.
Last week in our humble little Facebook group, I asked folks what topics they wanted to see covered for 5 minute-career advice.
Someone asked me what credibility I had that qualified me to give someone else advice.
Oh no, that’s basically every online writer’s worst fear.
I proudly responded that I had nearly 10 years of experience in tech and had worked for fortune 500 companies and small start-ups and everything in between.
Well that wasn’t enough — because he had TWENTY years and if you have 10 years of experience, you just surely couldn’t know enough to dole it out to others with more YoE.
Of course I don’t know it all. There’s always more to learn. I write these bits and pieces not to tell people what to do, but to give my perspective and let people make up their own mind and think critically.
But this article isn’t about me.
It’s for you and why YOU should share everything you learn and know with others.
Here’s a few reasons I think you should share with others no matter your experience level:
Knowledge and Experience are not equally distributed
People’s knowledge is lumpy. Take any skill or topic and pick someone who practices it.
The sub-topics are vast and many.
For example, a Cloud Infrastructure Engineer might need to know about Linux, Load Balancing, HTTP, Containerization, Software Development, CI/CD, Unit-Testing, Cryptography and low-level networking. (among much more).
If life were an RPG and we all had “skill-levels” in each of these sub-topics, many of us might be “balanced”.
For example, our skills would all be about the same level…but there might be a topic or two that we are very, very good at. Like level 100 good.
This is often referred to as being “T-Shaped”:
Photo Cred: College Info Geek
When you share with others, you help level up the areas they might have a base skill level in but haven’t leveled up to where you are. And vice-versa.
Every practice is just too broad and vast to know it all. So you probably know something other’s don’t. Share it.
Teaching forces you to learn
When you teach someone else a topic, you’re forced to make sure that you get it right. It’d be an injustice to teach someone a topic incorrectly and lead them astray. The risk and fear of embarrassment of misleading someone is motivation to double-check your facts. At least that’s how I look at it.
Teaching Opens Opportunity Up
Teaching via the internet is one of the greatest opportunities we have today. The vast scale of the internet allows us to reach far to a diverse audience. When you share online, you never know what kind of connections you might make: friends, future employers, business partners, customers, your future wife or husband even?! The list goes on.
You only need to be one step ahead
I argued earlier that any amount of experience qualified you to teach. The reason for that is that you only need to be one step ahead of someone else in the learning journey for them to get value. You could be a level 100 tech wizard or just getting started in your career.
Either way, you’ve got something to teach.
Teaching In Practice
This is all great, but how can we actually practice teaching others?
Here’s a few ideas:
Lead a “Lunch and Learn” at work on a topic of your choosing
Write online via a blog, newsletter or other social media
Guest Post For a Blog Or Newsletter (we’re looking! Reply to this email!)
Make Videos Online that teach
Join a public speaking club like Toastmasters
What should you teach? Teach whatever you are most passionate and obsessed about.
What’d you think of this week’s 5 minute career advice?
Tell me. 👇
Should we keep doing 5 minute career-advice? |
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See ya next week!
-Stetson
ITSG Founder