Ask HN: How did you specialize as a software engineer?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47733904

by legerdemain • 3 months ago

2 3 3 months ago

news.ycombinator.com

If you work as a software engineer, how did you go from being a generalist to becoming expert at something more specific?

adinhitlore• 3 months ago

it just clicks with me, i like the syntax of the language or i believe it may solve important problems (e.q. AI helping with cancer cures, helping engineers design propulsion, improve loneliness etc). Existing documentation was important too back in the days before 2023 and the AI boom, for example asking question about c# on stackoverflow is one thing but asking about the Ring programming language totally different. Finally: versatility of language, i tend to avoid limited purpose languages like say perl or ruby which may be amazing idk but lack of gui tools, ai ecosystem, gaming development, app development etc i'd rather avoid them.

rvz• 3 months ago

If you do specialize, do not be a web developer as I already warned. [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44087600

apothegm• 3 months ago

Not with intention, personally.

There was a framework I started using because it seemed interesting; but I still used several others.

It aligned well enough with the way I think about software, and I liked its ecosystem and maintenance approach well enough that I started choosing it by default for new projects unless there was a good reason not to.

I was hired for a couple roles where they wanted familiarity with it, and ended up having reason to look more and more under the hood to understand its internals when debugging. Not to mention learning how to and how not to scale it in terms of both traffic and development.

Now I find myself an expert in it and at an advantage when the need is for someone more than just conversant in it. And I still like it enough to look forward to working with it every day.

And I maintained enough broad knowledge and familiarity with other aspects of development not to be a one-trick pony. Which is important for staff and principal level engineering roles.

Another direction and one I’m working on establishing now is to choose a vertical to become well versed in. There are a few — especially in highly regulated environments like fintech or health tech; or where it takes a lot to ramp up on the subject matter, particularly in other science/engineering fields like aerospace engineering, biotech, and the like — where having previous experience in that vertical will give you not just a 10-25% advantage over a candidate who doesn’t (all else being equal) like in your bog standard app startup, but more like a 5x or 10x advantage. It can be tough to get your foot in the door; but once you do that door becomes a bit of a moat.

Ask HN: How did you specialize as a software engineer?

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