Free AI web copilot to create summaries, insights and extended knowledge, download it at here

Abstract

       <div style="background-image: url(https://miro.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:320/0*3eGaq3Bekingfpb5)"></div>
          </div>
        </div>
      </a>
    </div><p id="3187">In this chapter, we will cover the most important principle for anyone who’s working in the information technology industry:</p><h1 id="b8fa">Learn and Be Curious</h1><p id="38e9">Amazon’s definition goes as follows:</p><blockquote id="5723"><p>Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them.</p></blockquote><p id="2988">This principle is straightforward to understand, with no ambiguity whatsoever; however, it’s probably the most important one for anyone working in the IT industry. The reason is, the IT industry is a world where everything is changing all the time quickly, and if you don’t learn new things, you are already left behind.</p><p id="6912">Children are curious. They don’t have much experience with this world, and everything around them seems new to them. They ask “why”s and “stupid” questions all the time. When I was little, I used to ask questions literally about everything, even useless questions like “what’s the brand of this new motorcycle that just passed us?” And I read a lot. Back then, there was a famous series named “one hundred thousand whys,” and I read them all. Every weekend, my father would carry me on his bicycle, and we would go to the bookstore in the city to pick up a few books and magazines.</p><p id="b982">As time goes on, when we become older, it seems that we stopped being curious in many ways. We take things for granted; we don’t ask whys when things are already working; we are happy about the current state.</p><p id="439f">This can be quite dangerous, especially in the IT world.</p><p id="e808">Everybody has his own field of knowledge; it’s not possible to know everything. Yet, in real-world projects, you always encounter something new, something out of your comfort zone, but it must be done. While it’s important to know how to do things that everybody else knows, what makes you stand out, is the ability to learn quickly and solve issues quickly when facing uncertainty, ambiguity, and unknowns.</p><p id="98b3">I was lucky enough to get into the best university in China, majoring in computer science and technology, but the curriculum didn’t fully prepare me for my professional career. Looking back at my college years, I don’t think I have learned any particular knowledge or technical skill that prepared me for my career. Maybe the network, data structure, and operating system courses helped, but that was it, and they were only like 11 credits out of the 180 credits. All the other courses are math, physics, circuits, computer science fundamentals, and stuff like that. One skill that got sharpened significantly during my college years is the ability to learn quickly, absorb information, and put it into real-world use. After working professionally for so many years, I figured out that it is all I do — you meet something new, learn about it, and get the job done.</p><p id="aaf8">“Learn and Be Curious” is all about acting like a child: show curiosity about everything, explore new things, and learn new skills.</p><h1 id="2820">Dangerous Signs</h1><p id="76ca">The most dangerous sign of showing

Options

no curiosity is to stay with familiar solutions, use existing skills instead of learning something new and trying to improve.There are many times in my career when I tried to push forward something new, something better, and I got the response, “our current way already works; why changing it?”Many times in my career, people spent a lot of time fixing and maintaining a solution, way more than if just invest in a new solution.The lack of curiosity slows you down and blocks inovation. In the long run, the project, the team, the company would lose their competitiveness in the market.When I am an interviewer, one question I always like to ask is: how do you keep your knowledge up-to-date, what resources do you follow, or tell me something interesting you’ve read recently.Showing no interest in learning or having no method of improving yourself is dangerous. Always have a way of learning new things. Maybe videos and online learning work for you. Maybe it’s reading books. Maybe it’s reading official documents. Maybe you don’t like reading at all, but you prefer to get your hand dirty, trying it out, then googling what didn’t go well. The form doesn’t matter. It’s the fact that you are always learning that matters.<h1 id="c675">Mock Interview</h1>To test if a person shows curiosity and learns quickly, I would ask about an experience where you worked on the unknowns.For example, tell me about a project you’ve worked on where you didn't know (or didn’t know enough about ) about the subject matter. How did you learn, how did you tackle the project, and what is the outcome?For another example, I would ask you to give me an example where you worked out of your comfort zone.I’ll give a true story as an example:Once I was working on a project where I worked for a large German automotive corporation on their private cloud. It means I had to handle hardware automation as well. I have been a software engineer throughout my career, and I had never touched any server or switch once. Yet, I was tasked to install a Ceph cluster in those bare-metal servers.Back then, I knew neither Ceph nor how to connect the servers with the switches, but the servers for testing were already delivered. To this day, I still remember vividly that it was a Friday afternoon.I started googling and reading Ceph documentation and used local virtual machines as a playground. During the weekend, I found a good book on Ceph, and I perused it. The next Monday morning, I started the automation with Ansible, and by the end of the day, I already have a working set of playbooks that deploys a multi-node Ceph cluster.The key points are:<ul><li>not push back because it’s not in your comfort zone</li><li>show curiosity and interest in new things</li><li>demonstrate the ability to learn quickly towards the goal</li></ul>If you like this article and want to read more on the Amazon leadership principles, please like, comment, and subscribe! In the next chapter, we will cover the principle “hire and develop the best.” It will interest you if you are a team leader or involved in the hiring/interviewing process!</article></body>

Working like an Amazonian: Leadership Principles Explained — 5. Learn and Be Curious

In my previous articles, I have covered the first 4 Amazon Leadership Principles. If you haven’t read them, here are some links:

Working like an Amazonian: Leadership Principles Explained — 1. Customer Obsession

In this series, I will explain all the leadership principles so that you too can work like an Amazonian, and nail the…

medium.com

Working like an Amazonian: Leadership Principles Explained — 2. Ownership

In the second chapter of this series, we talk about ownership — how Amazonians do it and what you can learn from it.

medium.com

Working like an Amazonian: Leadership Principles Explained — 3. Invent and Simplify

An introduction to AWS leadership principle — invent and simplify. How to do it right, what to avoid, and how to ace…

medium.com

Working like an Amazonian: Leadership Principles Explained — 4. Are Right, A Lot

What “are right, a lot” really means and how to be “more” right than not in an Amazonian way.

medium.com

In this chapter, we will cover the most important principle for anyone who’s working in the information technology industry:

Learn and Be Curious

Amazon’s definition goes as follows:

Leaders are never done learning and always seek to improve themselves. They are curious about new possibilities and act to explore them.

This principle is straightforward to understand, with no ambiguity whatsoever; however, it’s probably the most important one for anyone working in the IT industry. The reason is, the IT industry is a world where everything is changing all the time quickly, and if you don’t learn new things, you are already left behind.

Children are curious. They don’t have much experience with this world, and everything around them seems new to them. They ask “why”s and “stupid” questions all the time. When I was little, I used to ask questions literally about everything, even useless questions like “what’s the brand of this new motorcycle that just passed us?” And I read a lot. Back then, there was a famous series named “one hundred thousand whys,” and I read them all. Every weekend, my father would carry me on his bicycle, and we would go to the bookstore in the city to pick up a few books and magazines.

As time goes on, when we become older, it seems that we stopped being curious in many ways. We take things for granted; we don’t ask whys when things are already working; we are happy about the current state.

This can be quite dangerous, especially in the IT world.

Everybody has his own field of knowledge; it’s not possible to know everything. Yet, in real-world projects, you always encounter something new, something out of your comfort zone, but it must be done. While it’s important to know how to do things that everybody else knows, what makes you stand out, is the ability to learn quickly and solve issues quickly when facing uncertainty, ambiguity, and unknowns.

I was lucky enough to get into the best university in China, majoring in computer science and technology, but the curriculum didn’t fully prepare me for my professional career. Looking back at my college years, I don’t think I have learned any particular knowledge or technical skill that prepared me for my career. Maybe the network, data structure, and operating system courses helped, but that was it, and they were only like 11 credits out of the 180 credits. All the other courses are math, physics, circuits, computer science fundamentals, and stuff like that. One skill that got sharpened significantly during my college years is the ability to learn quickly, absorb information, and put it into real-world use. After working professionally for so many years, I figured out that it is all I do — you meet something new, learn about it, and get the job done.

“Learn and Be Curious” is all about acting like a child: show curiosity about everything, explore new things, and learn new skills.

Dangerous Signs

The most dangerous sign of showing no curiosity is to stay with familiar solutions, use existing skills instead of learning something new and trying to improve.

There are many times in my career when I tried to push forward something new, something better, and I got the response, “our current way already works; why changing it?”

Many times in my career, people spent a lot of time fixing and maintaining a solution, way more than if just invest in a new solution.

The lack of curiosity slows you down and blocks inovation. In the long run, the project, the team, the company would lose their competitiveness in the market.

When I am an interviewer, one question I always like to ask is: how do you keep your knowledge up-to-date, what resources do you follow, or tell me something interesting you’ve read recently.

Showing no interest in learning or having no method of improving yourself is dangerous. Always have a way of learning new things. Maybe videos and online learning work for you. Maybe it’s reading books. Maybe it’s reading official documents. Maybe you don’t like reading at all, but you prefer to get your hand dirty, trying it out, then googling what didn’t go well. The form doesn’t matter. It’s the fact that you are always learning that matters.

Mock Interview

To test if a person shows curiosity and learns quickly, I would ask about an experience where you worked on the unknowns.

For example, tell me about a project you’ve worked on where you didn't know (or didn’t know enough about ) about the subject matter. How did you learn, how did you tackle the project, and what is the outcome?

For another example, I would ask you to give me an example where you worked out of your comfort zone.

I’ll give a true story as an example:

Once I was working on a project where I worked for a large German automotive corporation on their private cloud. It means I had to handle hardware automation as well. I have been a software engineer throughout my career, and I had never touched any server or switch once. Yet, I was tasked to install a Ceph cluster in those bare-metal servers.

Back then, I knew neither Ceph nor how to connect the servers with the switches, but the servers for testing were already delivered. To this day, I still remember vividly that it was a Friday afternoon.

I started googling and reading Ceph documentation and used local virtual machines as a playground. During the weekend, I found a good book on Ceph, and I perused it. The next Monday morning, I started the automation with Ansible, and by the end of the day, I already have a working set of playbooks that deploys a multi-node Ceph cluster.

The key points are:

not push back because it’s not in your comfort zone
show curiosity and interest in new things
demonstrate the ability to learn quickly towards the goal

If you like this article and want to read more on the Amazon leadership principles, please like, comment, and subscribe! In the next chapter, we will cover the principle “hire and develop the best.” It will interest you if you are a team leader or involved in the hiring/interviewing process!