The IT industry is a world of rapid progress, and it is an industry that develops at a dizzying pace every day. Therefore, when working as an engineer, it can be said that you must always be conscious of improving your knowledge and skills. To improve knowledge and skills, it is effective to actively output.
Engineers must acquire a lot of knowledge and skills, but there are not many opportunities to output them. However, it can be said that the knowledge and skills you acquire can become your flesh and blood for the first time when you output them.
This time, we will introduce the benefits and output methods from the importance of output.
Why does Output Matter to Engineers?
There are several reasons why the output is important for engineers, but the most important one is the establishment of acquired knowledge and skills. If you break down the process of “learning” knowledge and technology, the meaning will be easier to understand.
1. Input from books, etc.
2. Processing in the brain
3. Output (including utilization of knowledge and technology)
4. Re-input the result for the output
To acquire knowledge and skills, people go through this process, but many people only go through steps 1 and 2 and neglect steps 3 and 4. However, it is easy to forget the knowledge and skills that you have acquired with only 1 and 2.
Therefore, by outputting the knowledge and skills that you have acquired, you will be able to establish them more reliably. Also, you will be able to acquire new knowledge such as know-how based on the output results.
In addition, the output includes the part of teaching and publishing the knowledge and skills that you have learned to others. Such output also leads to showing your value in the highly fluid IT industry.
Also, when the habit of output comes along, the reverse phenomenon of input to output will occur. This becomes important when acquiring deep knowledge.
When outputting what is input, it is often done shallowly and broadly to collectively output what has been vaguely caught up. However, if what you want to output is fixed first, you will inevitably focus on collecting information on what you want to output, so you will have to do it narrowly and deeply. By prioritizing output, the method of acquiring knowledge will also change.
It doesn’t matter where you output your work. There are a wide variety of places to output, such as seminars held in front of the public, presentations at workplaces, and online presentations.
Output is important because it can be used as a mechanism for continuing to refine one’s knowledge and skills, and can be a means of appealing to others for one’s value. Therefore, it can be said that it is important to continue the output.
Advantages of engineers outputting
Importance of output Next, let’s look at the benefits of output. Here, we will divide the benefits into four categories.
Establish input and improve knowledge and technical skills
Outputting is the same as re-learning what you have input. For example, when outputting, I am conscious of explaining it to others in an easy-to-understand manner, and because I reconstruct the information I input in my head, my understanding of the input content progresses.
Also, if there are any ambiguous parts, it is necessary to thoroughly understand them, so it is necessary to conduct research again.
become a communication tool
Nowadays, there are a lot of output places available online. By output, you will be able to receive evaluations and opinions on the content, and you will be able to connect with other engineers through the output.
Engineers often interact only with people in the company, but by actively outputting, they can interact with engineers from other companies, and if they receive appropriate advice, they can improve their skills. You can also
It is difficult to achieve this kind of communication with just input, but the output can also be used as a communication tool.
Useful for employment or career change
For example, if you create a web service as an output, it is possible to present it as a portfolio to a job or career change destination. Also, by making the source code public, you can show your competence, and you can also communicate your communication skills by exchanging comments there.
And the very fact that you produce output in the first place is proof that you want to grow as an engineer. Therefore, you can receive a positive evaluation just by the fact that you are actively outputting.
Having output makes it easier to receive evaluations from third parties. From this point of view, it can be said that the output can be used for finding a job or changing jobs.
How do engineers output?
Some people may say, “I understand the importance and benefits of output, but I don’t know how to output it specifically.” Therefore, here we introduce three methods of output.
Disseminate on SNS, blogs, sharing sites, etc.
As a way to do it immediately from now, it is to send information on SNS, blogs, sharing sites, etc. Today, with so many services open to the public, anyone can easily send out information.
Outputting on SNS, blogs, and sharing sites has the advantage that you can deepen your learning from the awareness that others will see it, and you can easily receive feedback on the output content. Also, if you can send good information, it will be evaluated, and it will also lead to the improvement of your market value.
In addition, the act of actively answering questions on the Q&A site for engineers is also a kind of output. The act of using your knowledge and skills to explain things to others in an easy-to-understand manner is output itself, so why not try outputting it little by little?
Participate in open source projects
The IT industry uses a lot of open sources. Open source is free and the source code is open to the public, and anyone can improve and redistribute it.
Anyone can participate in an open source project, and not only can you grow as an engineer, but you can also acquire the opportunity to receive an objective evaluation. The fact that you are participating in and committing to an open source project is also a “weapon” for engineers.
It can be appealing as a powerful weapon in finding a job or changing jobs, and through the project, the community will expand, and it may also lead to the acquisition of new jobs as a place to exchange information.
Publish your service
One of the output methods is to create and publish services and tools on your own, instead of using existing communities. Even if it’s a small service or tool, by making it public and using it, you can gain insights that you can’t get by just writing code. As the number of users of the service increases, we may also receive feedback from users who want to use it more conveniently.
If you create your services and publish them, you can use them as a portfolio for job hunting or changing jobs. In some cases, you may even consider expanding your business around the services you create.
Output leads to the growth of engineers!
Output is very important in continuing to work as an engineer. This is because the output can not only help you establish your knowledge and skills, but also serve as a communication tool and lead to the improvement of your value.
Engineers cannot survive by fighting with existing knowledge and technology alone. To survive in the ever-advancing IT industry, it is essential to be constantly learning, and for that reason, the output is necessary.
Currently, there are many SNS, blogs, sharing sites, etc. that are places to output, so it is good to use them or launch your service to output. To continue to grow as an engineer, let’s do output positively.
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