Knowing What You Don't Know: The Most Valuable Skill in Learning
Three months into my first software engineering job, I was absolutely certain I knew everything. Well, not everything. But I’d built a few projects, shipped some features, and felt pretty comfortable. When senior engineers talked about “architectural concerns” or “scalability tradeoffs,” I’d nod knowingly, thinking I got it. Then the production incident happened. Friday, 4:47 PM. The API started returning 500 errors. Users were locked out. Revenue was bleeding. My manager: “Can you look into this? You built this service.” ...