Divide By Zero - a blog by Kamran Ayub

I was skimming reading an article we had for my Human Resource Management class called The War for Talent. Well, it was a research paper but there was one sentence that really stuck out to me as being incredibly important.

But like it or not, people learn by being put in situations that require skills they don’t have -- a truth poorly served when "Who can do this job best right now?" dominates staffing decisions.

I find that statement to be common sense but it seems like a lot of people either don't realize that or are too busy with corporate politics to think about it.

That is exactly how I came to learn everything I know. I constantly seek new things beyond my skill level to learn. Over winter break I taught myself how to use Microsoft Expression Blend 2 and how to develop Windows Presentation Foundation-based client applications (I bought a book on each subject). I learned how to make a proper object-oriented program and I also wrote my new Intrepid Studios website in C#, a language I just started to use this summer. In the site I use Linq-to-SQL and Dynamic Data, both brand new technologies in ASP.NET. At work, I am developing a room viewing application that will replace our existing static one using PHP and MySQL. I am learning about Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture and PHP all at the same time.

So you see, that is exactly why I think that quote is important. Of course, I can't assume everyone is like me, but if we are going by "talented" individuals as the article is talking about, I think that people will work better on the job when you give them work to do that they may not be familiar with. I don't believe that if you give a marketing person a balance sheet and tell them to audit it that they will be very passionate about working on it, but for the right person giving them something to do within their realm of experience that they aren't familiar with may be just what they need.