Reflecting on Skills from a life of learning
There has been so much discussion on skills in Singapore for the past few years that I decided to analyse all 29,000+ Skill Futures courses from our Singapore government to try to understand what they are about. These discussions and my analysis got me interested to write more about my experience with skills. As a social science major turned technical analytics consultant, thinking about and acquiring skills was, and still is, something I do often enough.
For this piece, I am just loosely defining skills as abilities one acquire to perform a particular task well. Hence, my definition of skills includes activities like cooking, hairstyling to software engineering. In this post, I want to share some views on skills that I gained based on my own anecdotal experiences.
Nature v.s Nurture
First and foremost, despite our best efforts, we can still suck at certain skills. If I followed my passion, I would have pursued a career as a professional athlete. Be it upbringing or genes, I believe some are more gifted in certain tasks. While people have the right to chase their dreams, I also believe there is too much survivorship bias causing people to be overly confident in what they can achieve. Don’t chase the latest hype, because most hype dies off. Gaining some self-awareness on what you can be good at can help you decide what skills to best focus on.
It took me years to realise I can be a data analyst, not a great machine learning data scientist, and at best a lousy full-stack engineer. I see many aspiring stories of non-technical career-switchers landing full-time technical roles, but I have come to peace that I am most comfortable ( and valuable ) as a freelance analytics consultant focusing on actionable analytics.
Deep v.s Broad
Certain deep skills require more effort to acquire. Getting good in certain specialised deep skills can allow you entry into selected industries. Medical doctors, architects and lawyers are specialist professionals. However, having deep specialised skills also means you live and die by your industry’s boom and bust. As we have seen, tech workers who benefited from years of the tech boom are now facing more harsh times with the tech layoffs of recent months.
On the other hand, broad skills, like communication, management, ability to empathise and critical thinking are skills that apply well across different industries. In fact, many tech leaders frequently advise their tech workers to improve their communication and writing skills, because such soft skills can amplify the impact of their work and allow them to progress better at their technical roles.
This is why after years of learning technical skills, I decided to also work on broad skills in writing and communication to be more all-rounded. This was how I became an analytics trainer, where I teach applied analytics concepts to non-technical learners. This is also why in recent years I have been writing more analytics and non-technical content.
Independency
Even if you cannot reach full mastery for certain skills, it doesn’t mean that certain skills are not worth learning. I don’t need to be a Michelin chef, but knowing how to cook can help me in many ways. Similarly, in the tech world, a product manager with basic SQL skills will not always be dependent on your data analyst to extract data. A data analyst with basic task orchestration tools like Airflow ( and basic access rights ) will not be dependent on his data engineer for simple data transformation jobs. Even learning the basics of certain complementary skills that combine well with your core competencies can make you valuable to your organisation in a different way.
As a data analyst myself, the frontend work I learned have allowed me to better programmatically navigate websites to extract data. On the other hand, the backend work I learned have allowed me to better deal with APIs to get data too. Despite being a subpar, not production-ready, full-stack engineer, those skills translate me into a more well-rounded technical data analyst.
Complementary v.s Orthogonal
Loosely adapted from the concept of orthogonal learning, I see orthogonal skills as skills that are not related to each other. Picking up orthogonal skills may go against learning complementary skills, but one professional benefit of orthogonal skills is that they can potentially hedge against the woes of the industry that you are in. This could be a forced retrenchment or a pivot into a new industry due to personal reasons. There are stories of bankers becoming bakers or programmers becoming yoga instructors. Orthogonal skills may not directly add value to your current role, but it can potentially protect you from the downfall of your own industry, and set you up into a new one.
Putting Them Together
Generally speaking, my ideas on deep, core, broad, complementary and orthogonal skills are fluid concepts. Communication skills could be a broad skill to me, but a deep skill for a TV news anchor. Is SQL a core or complementary skill for software engineers? Shouldn’t all business analysts ( and management people! ) know how to use Tableau as their core skill?
More importantly, with how technology changes nowadays, these skill categories can change. Core deep skills may become redundant, while orthogonal skills may become complementary. A vet with a side hobby in video creation may utilise her video making skills to market her professional services on TikTok. A real estate agent with basic website design skills may design his own website to market his services using a no-code website builder.
I have no grand framework on the topic of skills, nor a roadmap on the skills people need to acquire to enter the next lucrative industry. What I shared are just interesting points about skills relating to our era of lifelong learning. You are your own creation, and it is definitely worth some of your time and effort to think about the combination of skills that you want to have to tackle our messy world moving forward.
Thanks to everyone who has read this post. If you are interested in analytics side projects with a social science spin, follow me on Medium or Linkedin. Some topics I have explored include (1) Singapore housing prices and the updated Singapore million dollar public home analysis, (2) accessibility of Singapore hotels, (3) Taiwan housing prices, and (4) I even built a small web app for Singaporeans to track the library books they want to borrow. I also share less technical topics, like (5) how I learned to deal with uncertaintyand (6) how I end up being a freelance analytics consultant.
Lastly, I have a Substack (it is still alive) as well, where I share ideas on data concepts and strategies for targeted at busy business people.
