Swizec Teller - a geek with a hatswizec.com

Senior Mindset Book

Get promoted, earn a bigger salary, work for top companies

Senior Engineer Mindset cover
Learn more

    Reader question: Should you learn the latest hotness?

    "should you focus on your company's tech stack or learn the latest hotness?" was an audience question at a fireside chat about Senior Mindset last night.

    Great question. Common concern. What if I get stuck in a technology that isn't hot?? Or worse, burn out re-learning every new thing 😱

    Ideally you can skate where the puck is going. Be proficient at the tools you're using now and get shit done. Keep an eye out for the future and look for opportunities that nudge you there.

    Have a vision for where you're going. That helps. What problems do you like solving? What tools do you need? Don't learn shit you won't use.

    But here's a secret nobody told you:

    Specific tools don't matter. The underlying problems are all the same.

    The web is nothing special, neither is the blockchain stuff. Even the fancy-pants AI and machine learning algorithms need a product built around their innovative core.

    It's a thin or fat client talking to a fat or thin data source over a network. "We" have been building systems like that since the 1950's.

    Hell, modern cars are a client talking to servers over a network (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

    Learn these skills, they never go out of fashion and in the world of framework warriors they're surprisingly rare:

    • data modeling
    • domain modeling
    • system design
    • managing complexity
    • syncing state
    • teamwork

    Cheers,
    ~Swizec

    PS: once you know the principles, the details are in the docs

    Published on September 22nd, 2022 in Learning, Reader question, Opinions

    Did you enjoy this article?

    Continue reading about Reader question: Should you learn the latest hotness?

    Semantically similar articles hand-picked by GPT-4

    Senior Mindset Book

    Get promoted, earn a bigger salary, work for top companies

    Learn more

    Have a burning question that you think I can answer? Hit me up on twitter and I'll do my best.

    Who am I and who do I help? I'm Swizec Teller and I turn coders into engineers with "Raw and honest from the heart!" writing. No bullshit. Real insights into the career and skills of a modern software engineer.

    Want to become a true senior engineer? Take ownership, have autonomy, and be a force multiplier on your team. The Senior Engineer Mindset ebook can help 👉 swizec.com/senior-mindset. These are the shifts in mindset that unlocked my career.

    Curious about Serverless and the modern backend? Check out Serverless Handbook, for frontend engineers 👉 ServerlessHandbook.dev

    Want to Stop copy pasting D3 examples and create data visualizations of your own? Learn how to build scalable dataviz React components your whole team can understand with React for Data Visualization

    Want to get my best emails on JavaScript, React, Serverless, Fullstack Web, or Indie Hacking? Check out swizec.com/collections

    Did someone amazing share this letter with you? Wonderful! You can sign up for my weekly letters for software engineers on their path to greatness, here: swizec.com/blog

    Want to brush up on your modern JavaScript syntax? Check out my interactive cheatsheet: es6cheatsheet.com

    By the way, just in case no one has told you it yet today: I love and appreciate you for who you are ❤️

    Created by Swizec with ❤️