Skilling Up When Your Role Skills Down

At times, a project or organization’s direction may shift, leaving our skill sets partially shelved. In these moments, staying competitive requires us to take charge of our growth. While it may seem daunting to work full-time and then dedicate nights and weekends to learning, the investment can pay off in the long run. Here’s how I navigated a similar situation and came out stronger on the other side.

The Challenge of a Changing Scope

The challenge arose when my QA work shifted to a more manual focus. Previously, my role had centered on skilled coding and technical responsibilities, but this new direction meant a reduction in technical work. I realized this shift could lead to skill stagnation and potentially make me less competitive in the job market. This created a critical impasse: I wasn’t willing to let my technical skills fade, but I still had full-time responsibilities to my current team. With that in mind, I knew there was only one way forward—as my Klingon friends would say, "with honor."

Finding Opportunities and Shifting Gears

After reflecting on the situation, I decided to fully embrace my more manual responsibilities, drawing from past roles where I had managed properties, coordinated teams, and created documents for diverse audiences that were non-technical in nature. In my new role, I now had ample time to write extensive documentation on features, processes, and best practices, creating training materials for new team members and how-to guides for existing employees. I also had time to get involved in product planning, creating detailed test plans using plain, Gherkin-style language for legal and compliance departments while continuing to produce the technical documentation that the testing and engineering teams had come to expect. But to maintain my own coding skills, I knew the unavoidable had arrived, I would now need to study on nights and weekends.

Skill-Building by Self-Investment

There was no way to avoid it, no workaround, no compromise with stakeholders. The responsibility could not be de-scoped, and there was no pushing back the release date. Unlike the usual tech strategies to relieve workload, I had no buzzowrds that would relieve this burden. I knew I had to fully commit to self-study, accepting that it would be challenging, necessary, and oddly familiar. In my younger years, I often worked multiple jobs—usually seven days a week and frequently doing double shifts, so being overworked felt second nature, like when an old friend drops by and stays far too late, you know them and you love then, but you just want sleep. Although I was still exposed to coding through consulting, it wasn’t the intense 10-hour-a-day routine I’d once maintained with pair programming, test automation, and bug fixes. To stay sharp, I began taking on personal projects that I had previously just never gotten around to, exploring modern web development and automation, new AI testing tools, and even getting into to open-source as a founder and contributor. This meant coding before work hours, after work hours, and on weekends. Creating projects with advanced frameworks, and then building testing frameworks on top of those advanced web frameworks-all to stay as sharp as possible.

Results

There’s a saying in the fitness community, "trust the process." With commitment and dedication, I delivered the high-quality results my team deserved, including completing long-overdue documentation tasks, while still maintaining my competitive edge in tech. Ironically, even though my team’s focus had shifted toward mostly manual tasks, I became a stronger coder during that same period of time and positioned myself as a viable candidate for more advanced coding roles. In my experience, staying relevant in tech isn’t just about keeping up with trends; it is now difinitively demonstrated to be about adapting skills to changing circumstances and taking initiative when job requirements shift. Self-investment is still important to me, but here’s to hoping I won’t endure that level of toil again anytime soon!

Choosing self-driven learning during slower periods can be a powerful way to maintain your skills, gain advantages in emerging technologies, and grow professionally, regardless of short-term changes in job scope. Just remember to breathe!