John Carmack: Career Advice

When you actually understand and question everything, you understand why things are how they are and then you are able to just fix the critical things because you acutally understand the system.

After a while the technical deep dive will not matter that much anymore as they become systems, you become a system expert and you only need to look at technical details here and there.

"I'm usually advocating for undestanding deeply the problem and being an expert in the matter, not in the tools that solve it that come and go quickly. But in reality it's ok to be learn the tool, as it also brings you knowledge on the same matter, eventually. It may not be as comprehensive, but it's still desired. And people who understand tools that solve the problem are also needed and it may fill some real world needs."

I find it very relatable, as I'm kinda doing that at my work. I'm no expert in anything but solve problems very skillfull coders embarrass themselves at. Not that they are dumb. They are smarter than me, more expierienced as well. But they often lack a wider view of the issue, don't take account so many things. The OS in their code, neglect the existance of network, delays, assume weird things about how other software work and so on. The almost always neglect that people just lie sometimes or will fight to death to prove they tested corectly while I know they made trivial mistakes while testing. All people do. I just verify that once more. Sometimes coders ask me (after I help them with an issue) what apps do I code at our company, while I don't code at all. It would take me a year to Hello World using company internal standards. I just troubleshoot a lot. I know options. I read what you guys write here and try to understand what problems you have or don't have when using different aproaches. So I can suggest new ways of debugging, solving issues, simplifying things.

I like my job. Except for the part when developers lie to me, but in general it's a cool job ;)

1. Learning (fundamental) stuff deeply is the way to become great.

2. But knowing how stuff works fundamentally at an abstract level (e.g. being able to write your own toy OS) is not directly economically useful (and/or very time consuming to get to that stage). So it won't get you a job.

3. So for starters learn just one thing that people actually use (say git) deeply at a concrete level. That is economically useful, because most devs will only have fairly superficial git skills, so you becoming the go-to person for git will provide economic value to the company.

4. At the same time, this is an effective way to bootstrap a more abstract deep understanding. E.g. if you really master git, you will also learn a fair amount of abstract concepts that go beyond the concrete tool (deep understanding of git implies the ability to implement at least a toy version yourself, which will teach you useful stuff; in particular if you can implement your own version of git you are probably already better than 90% of programmers).

5. Be mindful that you will be blinkered at this stage (because you only know a single thing and thus lack a basis for comparison), so don't become opinionated yet.

I think this a great early career strategy as long as you pick the right thing to deep-dive into. E.g. if you picked AspectJ or Agent Learning or CASE tools or the semantic web around 15-20 years ago (at the peak of their hype-cycle), this possibly wouldn't have worked out so hot. In particular, learning some things like Spring or Freudian Psychology will probably harm rather than help your intellectual development.

Making a good pick is hard if you lack experience; I'd say if in doubt pick something really everyone in your line of work uses but most people have not mastered and where there is value in mastery (and you can see how mastery might tie into things you want to learn more about at a fundamental level). Also, preferably pick something that has been around for at least 5 years (unless you are quite confident in your nose for trends).