How to Overcome the Fear of Losing Your Technical Skills

Individual contributors (ICs) are terrified of something.

A fear that keeps them from advancing into leadership and management positions.

The fear of losing technical skills.

In a fast moving environment, plagued by AI, data professionals feel the pressure to keep their technical skills a level above everyone else. Do you feel it?

You want to get promoted but you know you'll be farther away from the tech. So what do you do?

Overcome your fear.

Get over the AI hype

Will AI change the world?

I don't know but what I do know is that part of AI is pure hype. I know this because I fell into the same hype pattern back in 2016 and it derailed my career. It gave me so much anxiety that I questioned every career decision.

It was the hype of Machine Learning and Deep Learning.

As a data professional, I thought I needed significant ML skills to build a meaningful career and to feel valuable. I was dead wrong. Ten years later, I know that a meaningful career comes from alignment with our innate strengths, not from the pursuit of the hype.

Instead of being caught up in the hype, we can just be "close" to it.

Stay "close" to the tech, not "in" it

When you move into leadership positions, you need a level of technical understanding to support your team effectively.

You can do this by staying "close" to the tech. You don't need to read research papers, implement the newest models, or spend 80% of your day doing technical work. All you need is to be aware of the technology and how the team can use it to solve problems.

You can:

• Have team members teach you about new tools
• Build basic prototypes to help you understand how it works
• Complete small technical tasks to keep foundational skills fresh
• Pick real projects where your team (not you) can utilize new technology

If you do these things, your technical skills will be sufficient to support the team and show your leadership that you are progressing with the tech.

Take pride in building transferrable skills

Tech skills change rapidly, leadership skills are timeless.

When skills are timeless, they don't change and are transferrable. That means you can take those skills to any industry, company, or team and be successful. Transferrable skills are effective at any level: junior, senior, manager, director, VP, etc.

Keep your tech skills fresh, but actively work towards the transferrable skills:

• influence
• concise writing
• prioritizing work
• project management
• effective communication
• giving/receiving feedback

There's no need to fear the loss of technical skills because you know the transferrable skills will be the real difference maker in your career.

Put these two together,

being close to the tech + building transferrable skills

and you have a career that can fulfill you indefinitely.