Suppose after I stay on a job for 2 years, I now only have some “familiar, un-fresh” tech topics to learn (beside lots of local system knowledge), like 2 of the following
- Java — serialization, Eclipse, ..
- Linux commands
- Some domain jargons
- Perl, or python
- SQL
- git
- A bit of math # always turns me on!
… but none of the following
- algos
- low latency
- quant
- .. other hot domains
Q: Would I lose interest and feel bored? Note 80% of my peers are in this situation. They are coping fine!
A: I think I will but need to see the reality. Looking at my past “strategic” learning, I think many are similar to my TriTech direction — my naive preference for opamps design in my 1997 third year IA at TriTech — Nothing strategic after all.
Hoping for a job with something engaging and challenging is realistic and reasonable. Hoping for “strategic” is naive. For many years, I was driven by this TriTech motivation which inevitably made me feel I’m in the wrong job. (Only Barclays job felt “strategic” for 6 months.) Now looking back, ## past vindicative specializations shows a small number of vindicative examples. I feel that’s 30%, so most of my trySomethingNew or other specializations didn’t prove strategic.
However, Quartz is different. Learning something familiar but generic like java is still better than learning Quartz. Quartz is a killer.
