Being relevant even considered as irrelevant

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The TV series “Person of Interest” is one my favorite show.  Even my kids have exam the next day I will still watch this show whereas I will usually abstain from watching any TV the day before my kids have test or exam.  In this TV show, often times it will show the view of CCTV seeing different people walking on the street and labels such as “asset”, threat” or “irrelevant” are assigned to these people.

Last week at work, I have the unfortunate and sad experience of being marked as irrelevant in terms of my skill and knowledge in virtualization and cloud technologies as well as my presentation skill and the ability to engage with various audiences. Ironically, if you read my blog you will see that these past few years I have been trying to catch up with the virtualization and cloud technologies so that I will be relevant in the IT industry.  I was trying not to be the dinosaur and yet found myself being the opposite as seen by my employer. 

It was a strange feeling for me. I have been a loyal employee and I am doing what I am told and on top of that I use my own time to catch up with the latest development in the virtualization and cloud industry. I work for a networking equipment company and virtualization and cloud technology is very relevant to what we do.  Our product has to fit into virtualized data center or the networking product can operate on the cloud infrastructure.  I know Arista Network  is already using Docker container in some of their products.  In my mind my skill in virtualization and cloud technology is very relevant to my employee one of these days.  There is a Chinese Proverb - "Army is to be maintained in the course of long years, but to be used in the nick of time. Keep feeding the army and you will find a use for it”.  I hope my employer realizes this truth.

While this is a sad news to me, I did get tons of support from the community.  I got DMs from various people telling me to stay strong and to keep doing what I am doing as I am in the right course in my pursue of my destiny in the cloud.  This was very encouraging to me. And incidentally, I found a few job openings and I sent in my resume.   

From this incident, again I see that skill and knowledge is important and yet being involved in a community is equally important.  To be part of the community, everyone has to contribute into the community.  My slogan is "I know some, you know some, let's share what we know". 

Moving forward, even it was some what discouraging to me I will keep on doing what I am doing now which is to keep learning every day and stay relevant.  Over the pass few months, I did not blog so much because I was busy doing things with the home lab. I think I will get back to blog more.  In fact the title of this blog post says it all  - "Being relevant even considered as irrelevant".  I know one day I will be able to find my destiny in the cloud thanks to the continuous support of my family and this community.

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