[mgkimsal]

"Curiosity" has caused me to try to get more involved in business meetings/decisions, but that's often not the 'curiosity' tech managers want. As you say, they want people who are 'curious' about new tech and will learn in their personal time.

I've done this for decades, and there's a degree of regret about how much time I've spent 'learning' and 'being curious'. Not a huge regret, but... it's help reduce the need to dive in to some things altogether. But.. that comes across as "not interested in learning" to some people. No... I can usually just tell after a quick skim if there's going to be business value in tech X. We don't need to spend weeks prototyping something that is obviously not a fit... unless... we're doing this for show, or politics, or something else. If that's the case, just say "we're using X" not "let's investigate X to see if it can meet our needs".

Good on you for having non-tech hobbies. I doodle on guitar, and am 'curious' about that, but it's not going to land me any tech jobs. :)