Learn from the IT Masters == Empty your cup

* For you guys tired of reading from google-trans :-), thanks for passing by.


There's an old chinese saying: "you cannot fill a cup which is already full" (yep, and from the Avatar thing too).

In IT training, you could say it something like this "you need to learn not to listen, but to understand".


The issue
The chinese saying applies when you're training in IT: you probably know something, a little, more than a little, but when you're about to learn from an IT master, you've got to empty your cup.

Some IT guys/girls don't like to be trained, they just want you to provide them the information, accurate, straight, with a "please-go-to-the-point" attitude included. This won't work when you're trying to teach many complex IT topics, and the guy/girl will learn little to nothing in the end.

Trying "to distill" the key points in the information you're "just listening" (not "learning"), will just prevent you to understand the full scope of the topics, and you'll end in fact, learning much less - very, very close to nothing - than what you think you did.


Masters
At information technology there's a lot people who knows quite a lot of things, there are newbies, semi-seniors, and also there are masters. 

The masters are IT guys senior enough to provide deep technical and toughful answers and insights about most to all of the usual hard topics in her/his professional scope (without having to google much, or google at all, for doing so), for an infrastructure guy/girl that would be probably:

http://www.kitchensoap.com/2012/10/25/on-being-a-senior-engineer/

Not to mention common technical topics...

http://meta.serverfault.com/questions/1986/what-are-the-canonical-answers-weve-discovered-over-the-years


Previous knowledge
But anyway, when you're learning something from an IT master, what you already know is mostly an obstacle for what you're about, for what you need to (re)learn. This is because what you know is more than knowledge about something, is a point of view about the information you have.

The master has another point of view, looking at, understanding the topics he/she is about to teach you about, from a usually deeper insight in the knowledge.

That point of view provides a much perfect picture of the topics you need to (re)learn about. Following that lead, you'll get to achieve a comprehension far more interesting and useful, than what you have now. And actually a lot faster than what you could learn not emptying the damn cup.

But first, you need to empty your cup.

Conclusions
The IT masters actually know their s#$"t, all the way to the binaries and/or source, deep down inside the protocols he/she knows, or even protocols he/she haven't seen ever before right know. 

To get a clue about that kind of sorcery, you've got to release control a little, and let the IT master do her/his job, letting her/him train you in her/his "fu", in the way she/he sees/thinks/does the things, you being truely commited not only to be merely "listening about stuff", but to learn from him/her.

When you're done with the training, the training will provide you a refined point of view, summarizing your previous knowledge and expertise with the new insights you learned, creating a full new vision and scope, and actual new skills.


# Found typos? Tell me about, thanks in advance.