One word: Epistemology Having been at this for over twenty years. The one distinguishing factor I've found between the great and the good, is their personal ep

One word: Epistemology Having been at this for over twenty years. The one distinguishing factor I've found between the great and the good, is their personal epistemological process; How they seek out, evaluate, and incorporate new knowledge, then transfer that knowledge into skills. The good ones have a great process for this, and they do it constantly. Mad props for recognizing your problem, there is a solution, and it is the thing to which other posters have mentioned. I was in your same position about 7 years into my career. I went from a small town, in jobs with 1 or 2 engineers, to a major city with thousands of very talented engineers. I nearly drowned at first, but I rose to the challenge and adapted and you can to. Every day will be like drinking from the firehose for a while. You should be learning. Constantly. Being in small shops, you likely suffered from the fact that your work was not being challenged, and therefor you were not being challenged. It is easy to get comfortable and to stop learning and growing in this state. When you are frequently challenged, you have to seek out new ideas, algorithms, techniques, languages. This all adds to your knowledge base and skill set.