I would ask the author to take another look at the meetups. Going to one, even consistently for a few months, will help in a variety of ways. 1) a lot of engine

I would ask the author to take another look at the meetups. Going to one, even consistently for a few months, will help in a variety of ways. 1) a lot of engineers are introverts, you have to keep showing your face if you want to be included. 2) while most of the time these meetups are “how I achieved X by using Y”, occasionally there’s some real meat to those presentations. 8 or so years ago I used to frequent a meetup only because it was hosted at our office. I figured a chance to hang with a few coworkers I liked and a free beer was worth it. I ended up learning scala. During those meetups we kept getting these really awesome presentations about concurrency and things. At the time a company who was just bought by a really known guy would present their solution to handling massive amounts of traffic. To us Java people we brushed it off as we’ve been handling volume for a while with Spring and stuff. Anyway, what I’m saying is. Keep going to the meetups for the tech you are interested in learning. You WILL learn something. Then, when you ask questions (because you won’t be able to help yourself), you’ll end up networking. Strange I know.