One of my colleagues—I’ll call him G.—recently told me how he had gotten his current job. He said it was because he had been unemployed for six months. In that time, he got up early every day, studied, and coded. What did he study? Everything listed in the job description.
Having a job can lull one into a false sense of security. Before his layoff, G. had been working for one of a handful of U.S. defense contractors where security, quality, and policy protocols dictated that every piece of technology was vetted and approved. This meant that G. was working with older tried–and–true languages and frameworks. So although he was well–versed in Java, he was walled off from newer developments such as Struts and Spring.
Employment might be the worst thing for one’s career. Not every company is willing to nurture your growth outside the office walls. Insider familiarity with an employer’s proprietary business algorithms might well come at the expense of a broader skill set.