This is good advice that I’ve seen work very well, both for myself and others.
There is, however, a related problem, or rather a metaproblem: how do you choose what to whitebox?
Going with the programming example, the field is huge. Do you invest time into ML? Linux? Rust? Data engineering? SRE?
Then, within each of those categories you can find vast categories: as an SRE do you focus on observability or CI/CD or orchestration or...? Each is a 1-3+ year subfield in itself.
You can use a heuristic like “what’s useful for my job” but even then, unless you’re already an expert and working in exactly your domain, the number of categories could be vast.
I’ve been investing my time in seemingly evergreen domains like Linux, programming (python/go), and containers. I want to expand into statistics/metrics.
I’m curious how you and others here have managed this question though.
I think the gold standard is getting advice from someone more experienced. I can easily point out the most valuable things to white-box for people less experienced then me.
Perhaps the 80⁄20 is posting recordings of you programming online and asking publicly for tips? Haven’t tried this yet but seems potentially valuable.
This is good advice that I’ve seen work very well, both for myself and others.
There is, however, a related problem, or rather a metaproblem: how do you choose what to whitebox?
Going with the programming example, the field is huge. Do you invest time into ML? Linux? Rust? Data engineering? SRE?
Then, within each of those categories you can find vast categories: as an SRE do you focus on observability or CI/CD or orchestration or...? Each is a 1-3+ year subfield in itself.
You can use a heuristic like “what’s useful for my job” but even then, unless you’re already an expert and working in exactly your domain, the number of categories could be vast.
I’ve been investing my time in seemingly evergreen domains like Linux, programming (python/go), and containers. I want to expand into statistics/metrics.
I’m curious how you and others here have managed this question though.
I think the gold standard is getting advice from someone more experienced. I can easily point out the most valuable things to white-box for people less experienced then me.
Perhaps the 80⁄20 is posting recordings of you programming online and asking publicly for tips? Haven’t tried this yet but seems potentially valuable.
General principles of OSes and Networks is invaluable to basically everyone.
How programming languages, compilers, and interpreters work will help you master specific programming languages.