Ask HN: Is rapid early growth crucial as an engineer? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is rapid early growth crucial as an engineer?

1 pointxenocratus4 comments

Hi all,

I'm a software engineer in my late 20s. I love the security side of computing, so I'm doing a masters in information security in parallel with working on software in this field. But at the same time, I feel like I'm not "growing" fast enough, that there's so much to know - things that others are already experts in - and it's putting a lot of mental pressure on me.

I think at least part of it is due to my upbringing, parents pressuring me to "work hard to reap the benefits later on". That's what I don't have a good sense for, though: is it worth focusing a lot of my time and energy now on learning and doing side-projects, expanding my knowledge in this field? Or is it better to let things sink in over a longer period of time

I'm aware that this is a fairly personal question in the end, but it's difficult to know what to expect or how things might (not) turn out.

Once you reach your mid- to late-30s, you'll find your ability to spend time learning decreasing due to aging and increased personal and family time commitments. You also find that, much like compound interest, the more you know, the easier it is to learn more because of how interrelated computing topics are. So, yes, it's worth investing as much time as you can afford on learning while still in your twenties will pay off very well.

There are caveats, of course:

- "Afford" is rather an important word in the last sentence above; burnout and stunting your personal relationships are genuine hazards.

- Choose carefully learn because of the "half-life of knowledge" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-life_of_knowledge). You will want to concentrate on fundamental topics that hold their value over the long term, like security, performance analysis, etc. rather than ephemeral knowledge like tools, frameworks, and libraries.

Thanks, that's a really useful perspective, sounds like you did a lot of thinking/observations on that :)

The beauty of being a software engineer is that you can learn at any stage about anything and start adding more value by making a living out of it.

I think the more you explore as an Engineer, the more more your value will increase. Keep hustling.

I think my issue is that there are some very deep topics (e.g. cryptography) that require a lot of work to understand, including knowledge in tangential fields (e.g. number theory). It's a big decision to decide whether to go all-in and potentially lose years working towards something

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