You are responsible for your own career growth!
For many years I would complain about not being able to work with newer technologies and not being where I thought I should be in my career. What did I do about it? Absolutely nothing... I basically had a "woe is me" attitude about it all until I happened to have a conversation with someone at a user group meeting. He told me that it was my career and that it would be what I made of it. I could not depend on others to push me to the next level I wanted to reach. If I wanted to continuously learn and grow with new technologies it would have to start with me diving into them and then find a way to teach those around me so that I could enlighten others. That was the moment the light bulb blinked on for me and I have not looked back. I am currently going through and learning all the things I should have been learning all this time. Not only is it making me more marketable, but I am relishing the opportunity to finally be taking the next step in my career.
As a side note, here are a few technologies I've learned that most developers need to be current, regardless of their language of choice.
- IoC Container
- ORM Framework
- Unit Test Framework
Feel free to add to the list.
