Too Much Time? Learn a New Computer Skill!

Bored and Unemployed?

Back in 2009 and early 2010, I found myself unexpectedly between jobs. The economy was in a downturn, and there were lots of professionals looking for jobs. I spent a fair amount of time looking for jobs, hoping for at least a phone interview. It took six months to find a job.

But I didn't stop there. So what else did I do?

Best Advice

One of the best pieces of advice I was given was join a bi-weekly networking group. We met for about two hours, practiced our "30 second intros," talked about what we had done (accountability), and listened and gave feedback to others. Sometimes a nugget would come out: "ASKIT Tech has an opening an SW Engineer to work on COBOL. If you know some who knows COBOL, I can tell them who to talk to."

While joining the network group was great advice, it wasn't the best advice I got. The BEST advice was:

Don't let your skills rust while you are waiting. Do Something with them. Learn a new Skill!

Learn a New Skill

If you are software developer, one of the best places to find some great books and training programs is Packt Publishing. They have a Huge catalog of resources.

Personally, I recommend you learn Qt 5. Why?

1. Qt 5 is cool!
1. It runs on almost anything these days! Embedded to desktop. Linux - Windows - Mac - QNX
2. It's fun to say correctly like "cute," or incorrectly "Q T."
3. It's some much more than just a graphics framework.
2. I wrote a Packt Hand-On book that teaches you how to go from a basic knowledge of C++ to a Qt developer. Along the way, you learn as you do.

Hands-on Embedded Programming with Qt

Don't be scared off by the "Embedded" in the title! The book was written so that 90% of the exercises can be completed without using the embedded target, a Raspberry Pi!  Part of what you learn is how to build and debug on a host system and then re-build and final test on the target! 

(Don't take my word, read the reviews on Amazon!)

Free Stuff!

Packt is currently offering Free Access to their Workshops. I've already taken advantage of this and grabbed a couple of ones that match some of the job listings I am seeing.