Trying to Suck Less and Challenge Myself More.

Trying to suck less....

Sometimes you just get complacent in life. It could be at home, at work, with your family/friends, etc. It happens and what do you do to combat it so you suck less when the need arises for you to "step up"?

Just over 2 months ago, I read an article on LinkedIn's CEO (Jeff Weiner) talking about it's recent stock price drop. Within that article was a video of the talk in which Jeff Weiner talks about the pace of change in technology aka "the 4th industrial revolution". 

"Historically when there are new innovations, it creates new opportunities, new levels of productivity, new jobs that are created. Historically, though, the rate of change was much slower. People had plenty of time to retrain and retool to take on these new opportunities. Today? Not the case. The world has never seen innovation moving at this rate and is outstripping our ability to train the workforce for the jobs that 'are' and 'will be', and not just the jobs that once were."

Now he was talking about it in terms of LinkedIn's value in the marketplace, but I had a different takeaway. Mine was around my current skillset and what did I need to learn now to position me for the next phase of my career. 

So in taking what Jeff W. said, I thought about 2 tangential areas related to Product Management - human-centered design (HCD) and data science. You see more and more job postings around user experience designers and data scientists, and I feel as though they are playing larger roles in helping to launch great products. 

Human Centered Design

The HCD course was free, which was a bonus, and took place online over 7 weeks. What was also attractive about it was that the course was being offered in partnership with IDEO.org, which is a known leader in HCD.

I wouldn't say HCD came naturally, but it was much easier for me to learn and apply the content without tons of extra study outside of the coursework. Much of the interviewing involved in HCD was similar to the type of work I do as a Product Manager. I had teammates from New York and Brazil, and we completed our project around "Products and Services for the 70-year old". It was a relevant challenge for me, given that my folks are in that demographic. I enjoyed the work and the people I partnered with on the project. 

Data Science Specialization

The Data Science Specialization was not free, but it was attractively priced. It actually is a group of 9 online courses plus a final project. This certificate program was being offered via Coursera through Johns Hopkins - Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHU).

With the exception of the 1st course, all of the coursework required programming in "R". Programming, software engineering, writing code, whatever you want to call it.... not my thing. I'm married to someone that does that very well for a living. I might work in tech, but lots of roles exist that do not require you to "write code". 

Troubleshooting Mom and Dad's PC and mobile phones

Here we are... outside of the proverbial comfort zone. Marc doesn't know "R", so while he could have learned it to help me out, I decided to just tell him about my progress and not ask for help on general "coding stuff". Does such a thing exist?

I created a Github site (please go easy on my coding skills), completed assignments, used coding tools and leveraged sites such as Stack Overflow. Thank goodness for that site!

The programming work brought on a fair amount of apprehension and dread. The course would say that the assignment should take 30 minutes. Well, I took on average of 3 hours per submission. The pic just above is a good indicator of my frustration while completing these.

Part of the Coursera model is that you "grade" your classmates (after you complete your assignment) so you get a scoring rubric to use for evaluation. When I compared my submissions to my classmates, some of them really exceeded the expectations of the assignment. I just tried to focus on hitting the minimum requirements of the exercise.

With the exception of one assignment, I passed each one on the 1st try. You would think that would build some confidence. But I still always worried about if I passed it once I submitted my work. 

Do I see myself coding much as a result of this work? Nah. I learned that while I enjoy working with engineers and have always respected their talent, I do not enjoy programming. Banging my head against my keyboard while trying to troubleshoot code because I didn't leave a space in the right place in the syntax... NOT FUN.

I found out that I passed my final project and received my certificate from JHU/Coursera. It was a huge relief. It also taught me that I could push myself to do something that is very much not in my comfort area, stick with it and see it though to completion. So I'll give myself a pat on the back for sucking less and challenging myself more. Onwards and upwards.