Careers Career Paths Top 6 Resources for Keeping Your Tech Skills Current Stay lucrative with these helpful resources Print Career Paths Technology Careers Sports Careers Sales Project Management Professional Writer Music Careers Media Legal Careers US Military Careers Government Careers Finance Careers Fiction Writing Careers Entertainment Careers Criminology Careers Book Publishing Aviation Animal Careers Advertising Learn More By Laura Schneider Laura Schneider Laura Schneider is a freelance writer who wrote about technology career paths for The Balance Careers. Learn about our Editorial Process Updated on 11/20/19 Any career path requires a person to study and learn more about their field. This goes double for a career in tech. Keeping your skills current can make or break your career in the tech industry. Technology can change rapidly, and it is vital to keep current. Here are six resources for staying lucrative in tech. 01 of 06 Codewars vgajic/Getty Images The site offers a series of martial-arts themed challenges called “kata”. You complete kata to gain honor and ranks. More honor and ranks mean more difficult challenges, so there’s always something new to work on. This option is great if you have little free time to practice. Currently, they offer challenges in CoffeeScript, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Java, Clojure, Haskell, with more on the way, including C++ and PHP. 02 of 06 Webmaker Mozilla’s Webmaker project is a part of the organization’s greater goal of educating the world on how to develop for the Web. Their utilities are free and the community is growing. The best way to keep your skills sharp using this tool is by working on projects in Webmaker, or by organizing an educational session and teaching others fundamentals in the community. Reviewing simple concepts is a great way to keep your skills sharp. 03 of 06 CodePen You may already know what CodePen is - it’s a social coding platform that you can use to troubleshoot front-end projects. However, looking through CodePen is also a great way to get inspiration for projects by tweaking ideas that you like or by attempting to replicate an idea in a different way, and this is a useful skill that any coder should have. 04 of 06 Read, Read, Read! It was true when you were in elementary school and it’s true now - the best way to keep your skills sharp in the tech field is to read everything - even if it’s stuff that has little to do with your field at this time. It’s a good possibility that it will become part of your field at one time in the future. A couple of places to start: Coding Horror: Stack Overflow co-founder Jeff Atwood’s blog Scott Hanselman, a member of Microsoft’s web platform team 05 of 06 Volunteer Projects This is not an online utility or gamified platform like what some people expect to find. Let’s be honest, the best way to keep your skills sharp isn’t always going to be found in a pre-programmed system or a book. Volunteering to help non-profit ventures with coding projects is a great way to keep your skills sharp. You can challenge yourself to create something awesome that would go on your portfolio, and then possibly becomes a paying job later. 06 of 06 Keep Pushing the Envelope The best way to keep your skills sharp in any job is to keep doing that job. Try to do something difficult and it will benefit you in one way or another, even if it doesn’t look great or work the first time. That just gives you a challenge for next time, and don’t feel complacent in what works already in your role right now. Conclusion Try these steps to keep your skills sharp in tech. Even if it is looking at a new approach to solving a problem you have already solved. Keeping sharp doesn't necessarily have to be learning about something you didn't already or finding some new language to practice, it can also be a challenge of your existing knowledge.