Once a deadline hits, it's a little late to START learning (some percentage of learning will always have to happen, but its a bit rough if it's a big piece, ESP

Once a deadline hits, it's a little late to START learning (some percentage of learning will always have to happen, but its a bit rough if it's a big piece, ESPECIALLY if other people around you don't have to. If this happens all the time, it starts looking bad on your performance). Then you add the fact that learning something similar to what you already know is much easier than going from scratch (eg: learning a state management pattern/library if you already know another is much easier than if you have no experience with them). You're totally right that learning everything up front is a waste of time, but you do need SOME foundation, especially as more and more people enter the market and you start competing with candidates (the days of infinite entry level positions are coming to an end, if they ever existed). That map looks like it's a lot, but it really isn't, especially if you think of it as "things you should have cursory knowledge of" rather than "things you should be expert in". Eg: I've never built a production app with the CSS libraries mentioned (even Bootstrap I've only used in throwaway projects for a few hours), but I've taken a peek at the doc of most of them, so I at least know where to start if it's ever necessary.