Become an industry expert

I was talking to an engineer, when he brought up an interesting topic: “I know I am learning a lot of stuff here. But how do I know I am becoming a better engineer in general, rather than just someone who knows a lot about KMS or AWS specifics?” Ah, indeed, the anxiety to transcend from a product SME (Subject Matter Expert) of one company into an industry expert recognized by all companies. There are three type of knowledge we accumulate from school and work: 1. General knowledge like math, physics, computer programming language skills etc. Anyone can learn them by reading a good book, they don't require “experience”. 2. Product knowledge we acquire by working on a product of one company. Engineers work inside AWS learn how services are built and operated from inside, using tools and frameworks very specific to AWS. They become less relevant once we are out of AWS context. 3. Industry knowledge and experience that are common and reusable. For examples, the cryptography algorithms used in Key Management Service (KMS) are applicable in any companies that require similar security engineering disciplines. This team member is leading a KMS’ load balancer scaling project - we need more AWS NLB (Network Load Balancer) to accommodate the fast growing customer traffic. So he is learning a lot about AWS networking. He needs to turn that AWS specific knowledge into generalized industry knowledge he can take with him when he leaves AWS one day. First, go for the breath. What is AWS NLB anyway? It is a software based Network Load Balancer operating at the connection level (Layer 4), routing connections to targets like AWS EC2 hosts. But how does it fit into the industry trend?NLB is AWS’ implementation of software load balancer, part of the Software Defined Network (SDN) momentum in the industry. Now let's learn something about SDN. Second, go deeper. The team member can dig into internal design artifacts about NLB and numerous tech talks about NLB architecture, to understand its strength and its limits. Those are gold! You can’t get this level of insights outside AWS. He can then read about how other companies like Google solves similar problem - how about this https://lnkd.in/gfW3VDk4. By going wider and deeper around the technical problem he is facing, the team member becomes knowledgeable not just about AWS NLB, but Software Defined Network industry. He gets an idea how NLB is implemented in AWS and how other companies innovate in this space. His NLB scaling project gives him the valuable hand-on experience other people cannot get by only reading stuff. That is his advantage. But going one level deeper and one level wider, he gets to know how his work fits into the big picture of the industry. How to become a industry expert? Learn and be curious - go one level deeper and one level wider.