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Build skills before you need them Oh ok, then I'll win the lottery, trip over a cure for cancer and land inside a supermodel. That has to be one of the most v

Build skills before you need them Oh ok, then I'll win the lottery, trip over a cure for cancer and land inside a supermodel. That has to be one of the most vapid pieces of advice I've ever heard. It reeks of quintessential motivational-self-help-guru-dom. It sounds like great advice, but when you break it down, it brings absolutely nothing concrete to the table. He might as well add 'Water is wet, so take off your clothes before you jump into the beach'. Everyone, including 'Ryan', already knows this. I would usually ignore something like this, but doling out buzzword laden one-liners like 'Networking is not a dirty word' seems to have become a trend these days. Restating the obvious in memorable sentences doesn't help anything. What does help is taking his resume, deciding if he can hook him up, and directing him towards a contact he knows, since he's in the same field as Ryan. You know, actual concrete help. Or maybe it's the smug 'see how well I condense my ideas into 2 lines? that's just too cool to ignore' attitude dripping all over this self-promotional article. P.S. You know what's even shorter - 'Sorry. I have no clue how to help you.' It's just one line!

ramit 17y ago
(I'm the author of the article.) I actually know exactly what you mean -- if I had just stumbled upon this post, I would probably think the same thing. I wrote this for my community, who know exactly what I mean: Don't try to charge $ too early, focus on the long term, invest in yourself and be entrepreneurial, etc. Many of them have read my articles from years ago that go into detail on this. But for people that just clicked through and are seeing this for the first time, I can understand the skepticism. Hopefully this doesn't make you think of my site as just another guru-blah-blah-blah site, because my readers have really done some amazing things -- saving millions, starting companies, automating their money, etc -- over the years.
- knightinblue 17y ago
  Hey Ramit, I didn't mean to offend you. My apologies if you were. It was the smug attitude that really got me to comment. Still, I stand by my point - there are so many ways for people to offer concrete help for people in need and all I'm seeing is one-liner advices being bandied about. Especially considering the fact that Ryan seems to be a reader of your blog and already knows your advice regarding 'being rich'. He was obviously looking for more.
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- raheemm 17y ago
  If you had replied to Ryan with the thoughtfulness you display here, your post would have come across far better. You are giving very banal advice in a rude way to a guy who is temporarily down on his luck for very understandable reasons. Sorry but I called you a douchebag in your comments section (You can take it off)
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- badger7 17y ago
  Just out of interest, could you point me in the direction of a guru who does think of their site as just another guru-blah-blah-blah site?
  - icey 17y ago
    To be fair to Ramit, he is a pretty well received author of a book that's relevant to his blogging field: http://www.amazon.com/Will-Teach-You-Be-Rich/dp/0761147489 http://www.amazon.com/Will-Teach-You-Be-Rich/dp/0761147489 (As a disclaimer, I own a copy of said book, and I think it's good.)
    - badger7 17y ago
      I can make you a vast list of books that are pretty well-received, but still unadulterated bullshit from cover to cover. I'd have proved nothing relevant either. (Just to be clear: I'm not implying Ramit's book is or isn't bullshit - just that it's entirely beside the point)
      - ramit 17y ago
        Totally agree. Here are excerpts of my book -- feel free to take a look and decide for yourself: http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/book/excerpts/ http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/book/excerpts/
mseebach 17y ago
I don't agree. I've met plenty of people, especially in tech, who won't spend time broadening their horizon. At my previous job, a couple of my colleagues attitude was, "I was hired with no experience during the .com boom, I've taught myself VB, then forced to transition to C#, and I get by fine so I don't need to know anything new." At my current job, we're doing "boring" J2EE stuff, but not a day goes by without someone in the office discovering something new and exciting, and talking about it. We've tried three times to crowbar some Scala into the project, just to see if it sticks (it didn't, unfortunately), we're all excited about Ruby and Python and we know how they stack up against Java. That's building skills before you need them. If my colleague from the former job is fired, he will need to land exactly the same position somewhere else, while we're much better aligned to switch to something else.
- knightinblue 17y ago
  I never said people shouldn't build their skillset. Of course we should broaden our skillset. What I said was it's one of those incredibly obvious truisms that we're taught from the age of 4. So merely stating it doesn't help 'Ryan' in any way whatsoever, since Ryan already knows it. Instead, I would have preferred to see Ramit look over Ryan's resume, whip out his rolodex and see if he can hook him up somehow, given that Ramit is in the tech field. And if he can't, direct him towards someone who can. Basically, give him some actual help.
- bad_user 17y ago
  "I don't agree. I've met plenty of people, especially in tech, who won't spend time broadening their horizon" But 'learning things before you need them' is a different thing. It should be something like "always keep learning towards your goals". And that's what people do. Unfortunately different people have different goals and motivators. That's why many will stay away from books and from exciting new stuff, as long as they still get to keep their job. Since you talked about Scala, when I worked on my last Java project for a former employer (a period that lasted like a year) the architecture and the tools (imposed to us by upper management) were so bad, that I was desperate to find new things to alleviate the pain (that's when I read Code Generation in Action). When I got into a data-mining project I read something like 4 books in the research phase. Nobody likes learning for the purpose of learning. It's a painful process if the learned skills aren't applied (not to mention that memory tends to garbage collect useless information).
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jonathanberger 17y ago
I have no clue how to resolve this argument. Words put in the right style can have the most meaning to individuals. Ramit uses language everyone can understand. I do infact also wonder if Ramit actually "concretely" helped this guy. But I'd rather wonder.
dinkumthinkum 17y ago
I agree with you on that. However, I did think the advice about not acting like every other job candidate is particularly good and something many people fail to realize

ramit 17y ago

(I'm the author of the article.) I actually know exactly what you mean -- if I had just stumbled upon this post, I would probably think the same thing. I wrote this for my community, who know exactly what I mean: Don't try to charge $ too early, focus on the long term, invest in yourself and be entrepreneurial, etc. Many of them have read my articles from years ago that go into detail on this. But for people that just clicked through and are seeing this for the first time, I can understand the skepticism. Hopefully this doesn't make you think of my site as just another guru-blah-blah-blah site, because my readers have really done some amazing things -- saving millions, starting companies, automating their money, etc -- over the years.

knightinblue 17y ago
Hey Ramit, I didn't mean to offend you. My apologies if you were. It was the smug attitude that really got me to comment. Still, I stand by my point - there are so many ways for people to offer concrete help for people in need and all I'm seeing is one-liner advices being bandied about. Especially considering the fact that Ryan seems to be a reader of your blog and already knows your advice regarding 'being rich'. He was obviously looking for more.
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raheemm 17y ago
If you had replied to Ryan with the thoughtfulness you display here, your post would have come across far better. You are giving very banal advice in a rude way to a guy who is temporarily down on his luck for very understandable reasons. Sorry but I called you a douchebag in your comments section (You can take it off)
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badger7 17y ago
Just out of interest, could you point me in the direction of a guru who does think of their site as just another guru-blah-blah-blah site?
- icey 17y ago
  To be fair to Ramit, he is a pretty well received author of a book that's relevant to his blogging field: http://www.amazon.com/Will-Teach-You-Be-Rich/dp/0761147489 http://www.amazon.com/Will-Teach-You-Be-Rich/dp/0761147489 (As a disclaimer, I own a copy of said book, and I think it's good.)
  - badger7 17y ago
    I can make you a vast list of books that are pretty well-received, but still unadulterated bullshit from cover to cover. I'd have proved nothing relevant either. (Just to be clear: I'm not implying Ramit's book is or isn't bullshit - just that it's entirely beside the point)
    - ramit 17y ago
      Totally agree. Here are excerpts of my book -- feel free to take a look and decide for yourself: http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/book/excerpts/ http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/book/excerpts/

mseebach 17y ago

I don't agree. I've met plenty of people, especially in tech, who won't spend time broadening their horizon. At my previous job, a couple of my colleagues attitude was, "I was hired with no experience during the .com boom, I've taught myself VB, then forced to transition to C#, and I get by fine so I don't need to know anything new." At my current job, we're doing "boring" J2EE stuff, but not a day goes by without someone in the office discovering something new and exciting, and talking about it. We've tried three times to crowbar some Scala into the project, just to see if it sticks (it didn't, unfortunately), we're all excited about Ruby and Python and we know how they stack up against Java. That's building skills before you need them. If my colleague from the former job is fired, he will need to land exactly the same position somewhere else, while we're much better aligned to switch to something else.

knightinblue 17y ago
I never said people shouldn't build their skillset. Of course we should broaden our skillset. What I said was it's one of those incredibly obvious truisms that we're taught from the age of 4. So merely stating it doesn't help 'Ryan' in any way whatsoever, since Ryan already knows it. Instead, I would have preferred to see Ramit look over Ryan's resume, whip out his rolodex and see if he can hook him up somehow, given that Ramit is in the tech field. And if he can't, direct him towards someone who can. Basically, give him some actual help.
bad_user 17y ago
"I don't agree. I've met plenty of people, especially in tech, who won't spend time broadening their horizon" But 'learning things before you need them' is a different thing. It should be something like "always keep learning towards your goals". And that's what people do. Unfortunately different people have different goals and motivators. That's why many will stay away from books and from exciting new stuff, as long as they still get to keep their job. Since you talked about Scala, when I worked on my last Java project for a former employer (a period that lasted like a year) the architecture and the tools (imposed to us by upper management) were so bad, that I was desperate to find new things to alleviate the pain (that's when I read Code Generation in Action). When I got into a data-mining project I read something like 4 books in the research phase. Nobody likes learning for the purpose of learning. It's a painful process if the learned skills aren't applied (not to mention that memory tends to garbage collect useless information).

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jonathanberger 17y ago

I have no clue how to resolve this argument. Words put in the right style can have the most meaning to individuals. Ramit uses language everyone can understand. I do infact also wonder if Ramit actually "concretely" helped this guy. But I'd rather wonder.

dinkumthinkum 17y ago

I agree with you on that. However, I did think the advice about not acting like every other job candidate is particularly good and something many people fail to realize