Hardest job skill you had to self-learn?

[Sam_2.0]

Right now I am trying to learn SQL with basically no background at all. I do know the system I am trying to query, so that helps, but writing the queries is difficult for me and takes a long time. Side note: If anyone knows of an SQL for dummies site, please share

What's the hardest job skill you've had to self-learn?

[ArchietheDragon]

Organization and filing. I still have not learned it and it shows.

[The Captain]

Income tax accounting.  FAS 109 (an accounting pronouncement) came out about three years after I graduated college and I had to implement it for the company I worked for at the time.  There were no textbooks, no examples, just pages and pages of technical mumbo-jumbo to decipher.

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

The software for our HPLC machines.  We got one walk thru and of course they never tell you how to the basic stuff they just go on and on about all the fancy stuff you don't end up needing.

Took me 3 months to master it. The manual was joke so I had to figure it out with trial and error and daily emails to the company's IT department.

[midjd]

I have been flying blind since I got here

My first job out of law school was to design and implement a statewide mediation program for a law that had just been passed a few months earlier. The nice thing was that no one really knew what it was "supposed" to look like or do, so I got cut a lot of slack  Five years later it is going strong. I don't spend much time on that project anymore (it's pretty self-sustaining) but it's my baby and I'm proud of it.

I also had to learn how to use our website designer and Oracle for payroll, neither of which is really in my wheelhouse, but I'm glad I did. (A lot of the other attorneys never bothered to learn the website designer so are stuck trying to funnel everything through our development team, while I can just pop on there and upload a document or change a date). 

[mroped]

Not a skill per se, but the names of all tools...in English!
And it seems that for every litle different thing that you have to do there is a tool designed for that that has a very specific name.

That and cutting wood with a circular saw. Even to this day I'm having hard time making a square cut on a 2X4 with a circular saw. 

[Sam_2.0]

I also had to learn how to use our website designer and Oracle for payroll

We are in the process of upgrading to all Oracle products. For as much as they are paying, and all the crap we are going through, this thing better fart golden bricks when it's done.

[shanendoah]

How to delegate and not try and do everything myself.

[midjd]

Feb 20, 2015 16:32:18 GMT -5 Sam_2.0 said:

I also had to learn how to use our website designer and Oracle for payroll

We are in the process of upgrading to all Oracle products. For as much as they are paying, and all the crap we are going through, this thing better fart golden bricks when it's done.

I will just refrain from comment then.

(I think most of my headaches are from our unbelievably convoluted payroll process, not Oracle itself...but it has been 4 years since the conversion and people are still complaining!)

[swamp]

Civil Procedures Law And Rules.

[Deleted]

Feb 20, 2015 15:56:22 GMT -5 ArchietheDragon said:

Organization and filing. I still have not learned it and it shows.

Organization for me too. I have only learned from copying others but I'm still not great at it.

It's not intuitive to me at all. Dh makes fun of me and wonders how I keep my job.

I am better at work than home.

[tskeeter]

Feb 20, 2015 16:27:42 GMT -5 mroped said:

Not a skill per se, but the names of all tools...in English!
And it seems that for every litle different thing that you have to do there is a tool designed for that that has a very specific name.

That and cutting wood with a circular saw. Even to this day I'm having hard time making a square cut on a 2X4 with a circular saw. 

You go to Home Depot, the tool department, and buy a Swanson Speed Square, one that eight inches per side works well.  (Get the metal one.  There are plastic versions, but the metal one will last for decades.)  To cut, you hold the flange of the speed square against the 2X4 with your left hand and use the square to guide the sole plate of your circular saw as you make the cut.  If this description leaves you a little confused, watch about a half dozen episodes of This Old House.  Sooner or later, Tommy Silva will use this technique.

[mroped]

Thanks for the tip tskeeter! I got some speed squares arround so I might try that.
To head the problem I got myself a 12" Bosch sliding saw.

[taz157]

Feb 20, 2015 16:36:44 GMT -5 shanendoah said:

How to delegate and not try and do everything myself.

What doesn't help is we don't have enough staff and they are already fully booked at the moment. We'll see what happens after this busy season...

[Shooby]

People skills , schmoozing , etc.

[Shooby]

Office politics . Learning who to trust. Playing the "team" game.

[thyme4change]

Either office politics or managing people.  

[wvugurl26]

Sam I google when I get in a jam with SQL. I took a course from Learning Tree. It was expensive like $2k but it is one of the ones you can take online anywhere. For me the best thing is to do it daily. I'm picking it back up after a year long hiatus and it's brutal.

[Deleted]

Feb 21, 2015 10:22:51 GMT -5 Shooby said:

Office politics . Learning who to trust. Playing the "team" game.

Definitely my biggest challenge; never did get the hang of it. I was also described by a perceptive boss as "non-confrontational". Plenty of people took advantage of that.

Computer problems, OTOH, were fun.  I LOVED outsmarting Excel or whatever software I was working with to get it to do what I wanted. 

Sam, try doing a search on whatever your SQL questions are.  I had to convert a patchwork of Excel spreadsheets into SQL and there were a ton of helpful people out there.  Many were in India, but that's what I love about the Web.  I bought "SQL for Dummies" but rarely used it because there was so much good on-line help.

[billisonboard]

On the job: "Just because you think it doesn't mean you should say it."

In relationships: "Just because you think it doesn't mean you should say it."

On Your Money and More: Nah 

[dannylion]

I once had to teach myself to read Bulgarian.

[The Walk of the Penguin Mich]

It had to be our new data analysis program we bought for the Luminex.  I don't know why this company went so far off the beaten track, but just to get the last part of the files to run it, we had to contact someone in China with our product code, have them send us a file, and install the file.  

Apparently the university didnt like us either sending or receiving files from China, so we had to jump through other hoops....like I needed to use my hotmail account instead of my university account to get the file.  

No instructions on how o use it, and the program was no where near intuitive.

[Spellbound454]

I lived as a single parent for years so had to do pretty much everything whether I knew how to do it or not

I couldn't afford to pay someone so it was give it a go or it stays broken.

Best example of "cluelessness" was when I was trying to fix the drivers side lock on the car

I got the tool kit out.... and levered the inside panel off.

I noticed there was a big bit of glass in the door and couldn't work out why it was there. 

Eventually I decided it was something to do with "waterproofing" .... as I struggled to get my had behind it to reach the lock.

An hour later the lock was fixed.....so I smugly put the panel back on

Then wound the window up

I had absolutely no idea that the windows were inside the door.

[Formerly SK]

Parenting. 

[HoneyBBQ]

being nice.

[NastyWoman]

Feb 21, 2015 12:35:14 GMT -5 dannylion said:

I once had to teach myself to read Bulgarian.

That would be a very handy skill for me for the next 3-4 years. Would you mind sharing which materials you used for this dannylion ?

[Wisconsin Beth]

Feb 20, 2015 15:36:50 GMT -5 Sam_2.0 said:

Right now I am trying to learn SQL with basically no background at all. I do know the system I am trying to query, so that helps, but writing the queries is difficult for me and takes a long time. Side note: If anyone knows of an SQL for dummies site, please share

What's the hardest job skill you've had to self-learn?

Parenting.    

[dannylion]

Feb 23, 2015 0:20:38 GMT -5 NastyWoman said:

Feb 21, 2015 12:35:14 GMT -5 dannylion said:

I once had to teach myself to read Bulgarian.

That would be a very handy skill for me for the next 3-4 years. Would you mind sharing which materials you used for this dannylion ?

Unfortunately, that particular learning experience would be very difficult to replicate in different circumstances.  At the time, I had many years of experience with learning/teaching/using Russian and studying and teaching linguistics, and I knew, in theory, how Bulgarian grammar worked and how it differed from the grammar of other Slavic languages.  So it was just a matter of using what I knew to figure out what I didn't know and using some specialized dictionaries and grammar references.  I only needed to be able to read the language, not speak it, so I could use whatever resources were necessary.  Having to resort to a dictionary or grammar reference several times in the course of a conversation would be problematic.

There are two fairly well-known self-teaching methods that might work for you, though they are mostly for learning to speak a language.  They are not so good for learning to read languages, at least not at a level of discourse above "the pen of my aunt is in the refrigerator."   One is Rosetta Stone, which I'm sure you've heard of, and the other is the Pimsleur method.  They are designed to be used without an instructor.  You will have two major challenges in learning Bulgarian if you're learning it from scratch:  The Cyrillic alphabet and the grammar, which is unlike the grammar of the most commonly taught Western languages.  Learning to read Cyrillic is just a matter of memorization and practice, so the big thing will be the grammar and structure of the language. 

If what you will need to be able to do is read the language and only a short time to learn to do it, I would recommend focusing primarily on learning the grammar and structure at the expense of building vocabulary.  Once you know how the language works and can recognize the framework, you can always look up vocabulary in a dictionary.  If you focus on memorizing vast amounts of vocabulary but don't know much about how the words work together, you will find yourself struggling more than necessary. 

If you what you will need to be able to do is carry on a conversation in Bulgarian, then you might as well use Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur.  They will not train you to a high level of discourse (persuasion and argument, presentation and explication of complex ideas, nuances, etc.), but they will train to a level of everyday social and business interaction fairly quickly. 

[zibazinski]

How to keep a poker face when idiots say stupid things. It's one thing when people are actually stupid but when they're not supposed to be and they say something really dumb? Oh, boy. I learned that in a meeting when this dipsy doodle said something really stupid and I started laughing because I thought it was a joke. Oops. The only one who laughed was me. Everyone knew the person was dumb but "connected." Live and learn. 

[mroped]

I did that once zib!

was looking at a possible project so while talking to the homeowner(her) husband walks in comming from work. Shirt and tie, nice suit and hair cut and he asked something at which my reply was: " that would be a dumb thing to do!"

i realized what i've said immediately but was already late! 
Luckly the wife had the same opinion and saved my ass instantly with: "see honey, I'm not the only one to think that!" 
Got the job and the guy even asked me : are you always this blunt with your customers?

Since, I'm much more careful and when asked what I think about something the answer is invariably : that depends! and I have a few seconds to read their faces and reactions