What are some examples of rare and valuable skills that Cal Newport talks about?

antiquarks

I have been reading of Cal Newport's stuff where he writes:


"1. Master a skill that is rare and valuable.
2. Cash in the career capital this generates for the right rewards.


The world doesn’t owe you happiness. Your boss has no reason to let you choose your own projects, or spend one week out of every four writing a novel at your beach house. These rewards are valuable. To earn them, you must accumulate your own career capital by mastering a skill that’s equally rare and valuable."


What IT skills are, or will be, rare and valuable?

soccarplayer29

I don't know who Cal Newport but IMHO this sounds like a bunch of bs jargon.

Sounds like he's actually saying acquire skills/experience which make you attractive to employers/managers. Don't be just an average employee and instead be a superstar and you'll have earned more opportunities (flexibility, $, etc.).

To this end I'd say searching job boards/posting for positions you're interested in (long term) and then create a plan to develop your skills/experience (certs, education, job experience, etc.) to put you in a position to reach your long term career goals aka "dream job".

The big thing is to do things on purpose to set yourself up to "win".

gespenstern

Symantec DLP, for example. This is a clear path to large enterprise, no small/medium businesses employ that. Having an SCS DLP cert and appropriate skillset & knowledge isn't as easy, but pays off. It is much easier than, say, getting MCSA skill-wise but pays much better than your typical Microsoft generalist. Just recently I was approached to take a 6 month gig in Cincinnati for $85/hour for Symantec DLP work. Just so you know, Cincinnati usually doesn't pay much, very unusual for this city.

One has to be ready though for short implementation contracts that last a few months and ready to move anywhere for those contracts, including overseas. This is a trade-off, with MCSA you can find a job quickly in almost any town, with SCS -- not so much, jobs are rare but they pay at least twice more.

Another good example would be an e-commerce consultant, let's say, Oracle ATG e-commerce suite. Everything -- deploying, fine tuning, other systems integration. Have to have Java experience though, overall this requires more investment, but pays even better than Symantec DLP consultant jobs.

Given that, as many things in IT, besides probably Microsoft which is stable for who knows how many years as of now, they can soar and they can decline and one has to be ready to jump the ship and switch to something else when the market shrinks. Otherwise you are doomed to stay in the field that requires a ton of knowledge and skills, but pays peanuts, like happened to almost all the IBM folks.

thomas_

Sounds like that guy is ripping off Napolean Hill.

EANx

All he's saying is to become good at something few other people (relatively) are. The only "rare" component is the willingness to follow-through, most people get to a point they're happy with then get lazy. It's the ability to keep going and become the type of expert that commands 200k per year that's rare. It takes a lot of time and effort to become a top-tier engineer or architect but you can do it in pretty much any area; networking, data-center, Active Directory, etc. Just be sure to do it in the right area. Iowa isn't a hot-bed of data-center design.