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> I have deep technical expertise in a very uncommon intersection of economically valuable topics. Now I'm curious. What is your secret power?

• frockington1 5y ago
  At your place of employment, talk to the business side and learn what they are doing and why. Copy/paste front end javascript workers are a dime a dozen compared to someone with competence and knowledge surrounding the industry. Simplest way is to talk to the product side. People like talking about themselves, particularly when the other person takes an active interest
  • throwawaygh 5y ago
    I'm not really sure this provides a meaningful moat these days. Talking to people on the business side is not difficult -- it's probably even less of a moat than knowing how to copy/paste javascript.
• throwawaygh 5y ago
  Answering this in any detail would almost certainly dox myself, but I have a PhD in a hot topic that was nascent and not in vogue when I started, so my thesis work was immediately useful to lots of companies and there are very few other people who are experts in this niche. On top of that I have some deep industry background in a key application domain that, again, few other people with phds in my particular niche know anything about. (By deep I mean "hard earned knowledge about all the gritty details", not "spoke with a guy about it in the office once") The topic is more popular now and funding agencies are starting to fund more graduate training in this area, so my current moat won't exist forever. But by then I'll have dug my current moat deeper, hopefully.