Think of knowledge as a circle on a board. https://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ https://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ is a

Think of knowledge as a circle on a board. https://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ https://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ is a great example. Everyone that goes through university learns within a pretty similar circle initially. That circle is surprisingly narrow in the broader field. Who has time to teach the dmc algorithm (used in all highest ratio data compression software) for example. Instead everyone's taught a pretty common curricula in all comp sci courses despite the field being much much larger than that. Now some who go through university will go well beyond that circle of knowledge. These are the most amazing programmers you'll ever meet. They'll know algorithms that are mentioned in white papers, not taught in courses and they'll kick ass. Those who've been in the industry a while have met a few like this. Likewise self-taught engineers. They may have humbling gaps in knowledge of that big circle of knowledge that everyone that went through a comp sci course was taught. This may be a constant source of imposter syndrome but also humbling motivation for them. What they'll also know is a whole lot of stuff outside any standard curricula. After all they have the same motivation that the super engineers who went through university and continued to self-teach had. Their circle of knowledge was organically created through passion and that passion is actually one of the best signals for performance in not just engineering but anything in life.