[Career] Why you should keep finding a job even though you are on the job

pic source: http://www.isironline.org/category/job-and-workshop-postings/
Hope my boss would not see this article.

Keeping finding a job is very important especially to who are in the IT industry. Why? Keep in step with market needs.


IT is a industry moving very very fast. “Moore’s law” is not only for hardware, but software. Apache Spark push a version every two months in average and it’ hot than Hadoop. Docker is published just in two years, but docker rock’n roll the whole process of software development.
Every IT company has it own technical debt. According to Wiki:

Technical debt (also known as design debt[1] or code debt) is a recent
metaphor referring to the eventual consequences of any system design,
software architecture or software development within a codebase. The
debt can be thought of as work that needs to be done before a
particular job can be considered complete or proper. If the debt is
not repaid, then it will keep on accumulating interest, making it hard
to implement changes later on.

For example, I built a Hadoop cluster(version 2.0) and Hive(version 0.6) last year. Although I want to upgrade the Hadoop and hive version this year, I can not because of considering the stability of service on-line and support of other components.Because of technical debt, you are hardly to update your technical skill in the current position. If I do not follow the industry news, It is very likely that I do not know the latest feature of Hadoop or Spark is on fire now.

Reading job descriptions will help you realize market needs. According to job requirement, you could know what basic skills have to own and what skills need to upgrade or learn if you want to be that position some day no matter in current company or others.

In my experience, reading job lists help me rethinking my career path. To see if any other possibility of my career, or to find if something I need to learn on the way to next career stage.
In closing, keeping finding a job will keep you thinking your career development and keep you learning.