(upbeat music) - Today is a brand new year. What are you going to do this
year to improve your life? In this video, I'm gonna
give you five skills that I think you should learn in 2021, if you haven't learned them already. I believe that if you study
what I'm gonna explain in this video, it will really
help you in your career. (upbeat music) I believe strongly in riding waves. I've ridden waves in my
career over the years. ♪ Time to wake up ♪ ♪ Time to wake up ♪ - I got ahead when I
learnt about Voice over IP. And the whole industry changed from traditional telephony
to Voice over IP. I got ahead when I learnt about open flow and network automation,
network programmability. I like to ride waves because I think it can really
accelerate your career. So my advice is, learn these five skills if
you wanna get ahead in 2021. They can really help you. Now, before I talk about the skills, I wanna talk about career paths. I'm often asked, "David,
what should I study? "What should I become in my career?" And that decision is a
decision that you need to make. My advice would be do what you love. You don't wanna spend
your whole life working in a career that you hate. If you enjoy development,
become a developer, or a coder, or a programmer,
whichever term you wanna use. But perhaps you don't enjoy coding, then you may wanna
become an ethical hacker. Decide what you wanna do with your life. You have one chance,
so make the most of it. Do what you love don't spend your time doing things that you hate, if you can at all possible. So work towards where you wanna go. If you wanna be a software developer, then spend time on skills that help you become a better software developer. If you wanna become an ethical hacker, then spend time on skills that help you become a better ethical hacker. The good news is that the five top skills that I'm talking about in this video, will help you in multiple career paths. So you could start more generalist and then become more specialized as you find out what you enjoy doing. Four paths and I think
can really help you. Software development,
become a software developer, or become an ethical hacker,
or work in cybersecurity, or become a network engineer, or have an understanding of networking or work with analytics, data
science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Any of those four paths
or tracks if you like I think can lead you to a lot of success but decide what you enjoy. Either focus on development
or on cybersecurity or ethical hacking or on networking or on the data science,
analytics, machine learning. But again, you could be a
developer as your core skill but have a strong knowledge of networking or you could become a network engineer and have understanding of programming. I don't think you can be
a network engineer today or a good network engineer if you don't understand development. So become the person that's a good network engineer but also very strong on programming using Python as an example. Differentiate yourself from others by having skills in multiple areas but focus in on one. There's too much information
to learn in a lifetime. So focus in on one of the technologies and become the best that you
can be in that specific area. But there's nothing stopping you from having skills in multiple domains but decide what you wanna do. And with that in mind, here
are the top five skills that I think you should get in 2021. Number one is Python. If you don't know Python you're
gonna be at a disadvantage. It doesn't matter if
you're a network engineer. Doesn't matter if you're a ethical hacker, doesn't matter if you work in data science it doesn't matter if you're a programmer you need to know Python today it really opens up doors for you. Number two, you need to know Linux. The world runs on Linux. If you work in the Cloud if you work in Internet
of Things devices or IoT if you work in networking, it
doesn't matter where you are. Linux runs a lot of the world so you need to know Linux. I don't know how many
times I need to say it but you need to learn Linux you need to learn Python. Thirdly you need to know the cloud. Networking has been
changing for many years, from on-premise to applications
hosted in the cloud. There's a reason that Amazon
are as big as they are. Cloud technologies,
AWS, Azure, Google Cloud make sure that you learn
about Cloud technologies. You don't have to learn about all of them but make sure you at least
have an understanding of one of those cloud technologies. So AWS or Azure or Google
Cloud as an example. You need to have an
understanding of networking, the world runs on networks. Applications, doesn't
matter what application you're using today. Generally today, you're
gonna have a client talking to a server a cross a network. Big issues are caused because
application developers write code, that works on their laptop but doesn't necessarily work in production because they make the mistake of thinking, unlimited bandwidth. The world doesn't have unlimited bandwidth networks don't have unlimited bandwidth. Your application will be
affected by bandwidth issues. There is delay in a network. You can't assume that because
it works on your local laptop it's gonna work in production because there is delay
or latency in a network. So a good application developer is aware of how networks work. Think about it as follows, is your application gonna use TCP? Is it gonna use UDP? Why is UDP better in some cases than TCP why is TCP better than UDP? You need to have an understanding
of basic networking. Do you understand IPv4
addressing IPv6 addressing, that stuff is really basic. Make sure that you at
least have understanding of networking. Now again, which path are you taking? If you're gonna be a software developer, your focus is on writing code but you need an
understanding of networking. If you're a networker,
your focus is on networking but you need to have an
understanding of coding. You may not code all the time but you need to know how
to automate networks. You need to know how to talk
to an application developer. And that gets me to the
next big topic, APIs. The world runs on APIs today because we have applications
talking to applications. And how do they communicate? through application programming interfaces We as humans use a language let's say English to communicate. Programs will use
something like a REST API to send information from
one application to another. So a client would talk to a server using a REST API. For instance using a
GET to get information or a POST or a PUT to put
information on a server. So you need to have an
understanding of APIs. And I've put this in as a bonus you need to understand Virtualization, learn technologies like virtual machines. VMware as an example has been in the game for many, many years with
software such as ESXi used in many enterprises around the world. You have a physical server with virtual machines running on it, but the world has also moved on and now we have containers. So you need to have an understanding of containers versus virtual machines. So think of technologies such
as Docker and Kubernetes. This is the way the world is going. Follow the trends, look at
where the world is going. I think if you focus your
time on these five areas it will help you in life. This is where the world is going. So make sure you learn Python,
make sure you learn Linux make sure you have an
understanding of the cloud. Again, depends where you
want to focus your time. You may wanna be a cloud engineer, so you become really good at AWS but you can't be a good cloud engineer if you don't understand networking, just because you put an
application into the cloud doesn't mean that you
can ignore networking. You actually have to understand networking because you have to
understand concepts such as, load balancing, you have
to understand subnetting you have to understand firewalls. You can't have one without the other. So if you wanna put
applications in the cloud and you wanna manage those applications you need to have an
understanding of networking. Even if you running applications
in Docker containers you need some kinda networking because how are your client applications gonna talk to your server applications? Notice how all of these
technologies work together. So learn networking if you
are gonna be a developer as an example, you may
just have a little bit of understanding of networking. If you're a network engineer you may have a strong focus on networking and a smaller focus on
application development. Make sure you learn APIs and make sure that you
learn virtualization. Just remember, no one expects
you to learn this by tomorrow. You may just be starting out but here is a roadmap that
I think can help you in 2021 if you focus your time in on these areas it will help you a lot
in the coming years. Okay, so that's my
viewpoint, what do you think, do you agree? Put in the comments below. Do you agree with what I've said, do you disagree? Is there anything that I've missed? Now if you enjoyed this
video, please like it please consider subscribing
to my YouTube channel and clicking on the bell
to get notifications. I'm David Bombal, and I wanna
wish you all the very best in 2021, go and make a
success of your life. (upbeat music)
