This has become crystal clear to me at my current job. As much as I’ve had success teaching myself things about computers, nothing, nothing, beats spending time with experts and learning from them.

I had never truly experienced this before and was shocked at how much I was able to learn, in such little time — about C++, git, Linux, and more.

It can be a significant price to pay, but nothing beats literally becoming an employee at a company with experts in a field you care about and joining their team. This is ideal from a learning perspective because as a team member, the experts become invested in your growth and are incentivized to transfer knowledge to you. You just need to be ready to receive it.

Once you’ve tasted this, this truth is also bittersweet. You can only work at so many places. If you have many interests, you now have to live with the fact that for most areas, your learning will be stunted relative to what it could be.

My deep gratitude to the experts in my life: STK, DIR, CSK, MKL, RYB, MZA — thank you.