255: Share What You Know and Be Willing to Have Your Views Challenged with Bret Fisher

<p>Phil’s guest on this episode of the IT Career Energizer podcast is Bret Fisher. Bret is a freelance DevOps and Docker consultant, Udemy Instructor, trainer, speaker, and Open Source volunteer.  He teaches courses on Docker and Container technology and often does live training workshops.</p> <p>He’s also a volunteer Docker Captain and has been blogging about tech for more than 15 years.</p> <p>In this episode, Phil and Bret Fisher discuss the importance of holding strong opinions on things that are fact-based. While still listening, with an open mind, to what others have to say on the matter and not being afraid to change your view when appropriate.</p> <p>They also discuss how to effectively use even short online courses to greatly improve your career prospects. Bret also shares why employers now want to employ people who are willing and able to help others.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>KEY TAKEAWAYS:</strong></p> <p><strong>(4.43) TOP CAREER TIP</strong></p> <p>Here Bret talks about the importance of having “strong opinions that are weakly held”. It is important to know why you hold the opinions you do, but you also have to be prepared to discuss other possibilities. Even change your opinions should someone make a strong argument that proves you need to do so.</p> <p>This approach ensures you become a decisive person who is also able to move with the time and use other people´s ideas to improve things</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>(9.36) WORST CAREER MOMENT</strong></p> <p>Bret´s worst moment happened when, for a blog he was working on, he forgot to tick the AWS auto-scale box. So, when one of their posts went viral and was number one on the Reddit homepage, the site went down. As a result, they missed out on a ton of traffic. It was fixed within an hour, but it was an awful mistake to make.</p> <p>In the podcast, Bret explained how he changed the way he works to make sure it could not happen again.</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>(13.32) CAREER HIGHLIGHT</strong></p> <p>Bret describes what he is doing now as being his career h