I’m a mid-level backend dev, ~3 years YOE. I wanted to seriously start thinking about expanding my skillset and learning new stuff / new technologies outside of my daily tasks. But I’m unsure of how to start, how to decide, what would be most helpful to my career, etc. Any advice?
I think more info is needed. Are you looking for recent developments adjacent to stuff you already work with? Or something entirely different so you get some variety? Knowing your current experience will help know what’s relevant.
Yeah I was debating putting that info in OP because I’m also unsure of which direction I should go. I have experience in Java, Javascript, Python, database language / querying, systems design, cloud infra, etc. all the foundational stuff of backend devs (+ some full-stack experience).
As someone with more than 5LOE I’ve found that technology matters less and general concepts are more valuable.
So look at system design concepts, how infra you use typically works (pubsub, databases, etc), how companies solve problems (engineering blogs from companies like slack, meta etc)
Learning new languages only helps if you are currently working on something obscure.
I found it crazy useful to study old, established, mature technologies, like relational databases, storage, low-level networking stack, optimizing compilers, etc. Much more valuable than learning the fad of the year. For example, consider studying internals of Postgresql if you’re using it.
I mean I’m being honest I’m a little bit in love with Rust haha, so I can recommend learning that if you haven’t yet, it has teached me the most of how to design nice programs/libs (in an efficient manner) and generally just feels nice to write. And a very relevant side-effect: it seems like it has a rapid growth also on the job-market. I really feel that growth in terms of improving library quality and tooling (rust-analyzer is I think really the best language server by now), not the least seeing ever more often something like this: https://opensource.googleblog.com/2023/06/rust-fact-vs-fiction-5-insights-from-googles-rust-journey-2022.html)
What is 3 years LOE? I’ve tried searching online and the only thing coming up is “Level Of Effort,” which doesn’t seem to fit with the context.
