3 ms·

> With the exception of a few niche domains (scientific research, pharma, etc), it doesn't take very many years to master a domain. I'd argue many areas of tec

> With the exception of a few niche domains (scientific research, pharma, etc), it doesn't take very many years to master a domain. I'd argue many areas of tech are an exception as well, at least if you're doing some of the more complex foundational work (which admittedly many tech employees are not). For example, the people who have been working on Postgres for 10+ years understand both databases and that specific database extremely well, in a way someone who's been working on databases for 3 years doesn't.

tonyedgecombe 9y ago
The trouble is the demand for deep technical knowledge tends to be quite fickle, you only need the market to move slightly and your narrow specialism is completely redundant. Domain knowledge seems to be longer lived.
- anarazel 9y ago
  > The trouble is the demand for deep technical knowledge tends to be quite fickle, you only need the market to move slightly and your narrow specialism is completely redundant. Domain knowledge seems to be longer lived. I don't think the specialization _delirium was talking about is usually that narrow. I happen to be a long-time contributor to postgres, _delirium's example. While I obviously don't need ramp up time while changing jobs where I only work on postgres, it's not hard to find other jobs that share significant amount of knowledge. Even if postgres were to die, I sure hope not, there's plenty of other data stores which share a good chunk of the techniques. I know other people that were deep into one OS kernel, and changed into another one, and the technical background isn't the big issue, it's the difference in social processes.