When I understood this simple concept, I was able to become a beast.

I used to be a pentester for a consultancy firm. And every year, they gave me a raise.

I never questioned it, it was just part of the tech culture.

But, when you think about it, why do you get a raise?

These are for profit companies, and we know how capitalism works. They wouldn’t lose on some profits just to be nice to you.

Skill is how they define your value

They give you a raise because you gained a year of experience since the last raise.

They assume that this experience made you level up your skills.

As a developer, you code faster. You produce fewer bugs. You write better emails. You estimate project completion times more precisely …

And since your skills have leveled up, the value you bring to the company has increased.

Faster work, better quality and better team collaboration. These are all quantifiable metrics that increase the productivity of the company as a whole.

Better productivity means more revenue for the company.

So, since you bring more value to the company, it’s only natural to assume that your own value increased in the marketplace. You as a worker became more valuable.

The increase in salary then is due to the improvement of your skills.

This happens when you passively increase your skill level thanks to experience.

Imagine what would happen if you actively work on improving your skills.

You could improve your skills in a considerable way. Enough to get a 11% salary increase, instead of the default 6% you would get by being passive.

If the difference doesn’t seem that big, let me remind you of the concept of compounding interest.

Imagine 2 developers Bob and Alex who start with the same salary.

Bob gets the default 6% salary increase every year. Whereas Alex actively improves his skills and gets a 11% increase every year.

The following shows the increase of the two salaries over time:

You see how over time the gap between the 2 salaries keeps increasing.

Bob will retire with an annual salary of $549,259.

Alex will retire with an annual salary of $2,244,284.

What skills to learn?

To increase your value, you need to identify the right skills to learn.

If you’re a developer, learning how to juggle balls will not increase your value in the work marketplace —unless you want to work for a circus.

You need to either improve a skill you already use daily for your job. Or, you need to learn a new skill that can help you improve the quality or the productivity of your work.

Skills can be split into 2 categories:

• Core skills: these are skills you directly need to perform your job.
• Auxiliary skills: these are skills not directly needed, but can help you advance your career.

Let’s make all this clear with examples. Below are the skills you can learn or improve as a backend web developer:

• Core skills
  • Master that backend framework your team uses.
  • Learn how to optimize SQL queries
  • Learn how to use cloud services (Azure/AWS/Google cloud…)
  • Learn how to secure your applications
  • Learn how Docker and Kubernetes work
  • Learn how to setup CI/CD
• Auxiliary skills
  • Social skills: helps you create connections and network. This will land you new opportunities and promotions
  • Technical writing: learn how to write about technical subjects. This helps you showcase your technical skills to non-technical colleagues/bosses.
  • Public speaking: when presenting a technical solution in front of your bosses, being eloquent and relaxed shows confidence and authority in the subject matter.
  • Search Engine Optimization: this is not your core function as a backend web developer, but knowing this subject can help you make choices when you implement new features.
  • Networking: this also is not your core function. But learning how networks work helps you better manage your applications and debug your environment (Virtual Private Network or Kubernetes pods).

Break through glass ceilings

There is a certain salary you will not exceed in a certain role.

This is how the game is played.

If you want a bigger salary, you will need to level up your role in the company. You need a promotion.

If you are a developer, the next step is tech lead.

If you are a tech lead, the next step is CTO.

If you are a CTO, the next step is CEO.

If you are a CEO, the next step is business owner.

Most people stay stuck in one role for their whole life.

They get bitter and sad every time someone is chosen for a promotion over them.

They think that because they are good at their jobs, they deserve the promotion.

What they don’t know is that being good at your current role, doesn’t mean you’ll be good at the next role.

The secret here, again, is skills.

If you are a developer, you need to learn a certain set of skills to be a good tech lead:

• Communication: you will become the interface between your team of developers and management. You need to be able to explain technical aspects of your job to non-technical people.
• Project management: your role requires you to take a project and build it with the help of your team. You need to know how to split a project into tasks, and how to distribute these tasks amongst your team.
• People management: You need to know the strengths and weaknesses of everyone on your team so that you know what task to give to whom.

For a tech lead who wants to become CTO, you need to learn leadership, public speaking and human psychology.

If you are a CTO and want to become CEO, you need to learn about business, finances and other market related skills.

You can achieve everything by learning the right skills

Invest for your future

Learning a skill is an investment.

You put in some effort now for a bigger reward later.

You focus on a skill for days/weeks/months/years.

Then you get a salary increase.

You have 2 resources that you can invest to learn a skill: your time and money.

Time is the duration it takes you to master a skill.

Money is all you spend to learn a skill. This can be buying books or training programs.

This can also take the form of salary lost because you took a break from work to learn a skill.

You will spend a certain amount of time and money to learn a skill. And the distribution of those 2 is up to you.

You can learn everything for free using resources from the internet. But it will take you more time to sort the outdated material from the recent ones. The useless noise from the golden nuggets.

Or, you can spend money on a training program or a book that lays down all you need to know. This will save you time.

What to learn first

The question you need to ask yourself is: what skill should I learn first that can give me the biggest return on investment.

If you are a developer, the list I gave above is a good start.

You can also ask someone you admire in your field to help you identify all the skills he had to learn.

You can also have a conversation with your boss.

“I want to be better at my job. What skill can I learn that will help me grow”.

This last method has a hidden benefit. Once you learn the skill your boss told you to learn, he will have to give you a raise.

Slow and steady wins the race

Your task is to tackle that list of skills like a checklist.

Master them one by one to climb up the corporate ladder.

The best way to learn a skill is consistency.

Book 40 minutes every day to learn a skill. 40 minutes of undistracted focused learning will get you very far if you do it consistently. Even improving 1% every day will yield a 3700% improvement over one year.

Read the book Atomic Habits for tips on how to create learning habits that stick.

Let’s get you started

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You will experience the thrill of being a hacker.

Then we teach you how to fix that vulnerability. You will then implement a patch to secure the workshop application.

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