Ask HN: How do you keep your SWE skills sharp outside of work?
4 myanonymousacct 6 6/25/2025, 4:34:02 AM
For context I am employed as a SWE and I find my job generally enjoyable but I also feel like I’m not learning any new skills and maybe falling behind the industry. I’m not in a position to look for a new job at the moment but I want to do a little something each day to stay sharp.
What is currently worth focusing on for general longevity in this field?
After being in the field for a little while you come to realize that languages are just dialects on the same core, new tech and frameworks are mostly just different wrapping, and that the core tenets and fundamentals that you know will always be there in some form.
What will help you with longevity are things that are not traditionally looked at as SWE skills. Things like empathy for users and other developers, communication skills, being able to iteratively create user value, understanding costs of delays and that perfect is rarely what we want, etc, etc, etc.. Solving logic issues with algorithms is such a minute part of what we do, and the part most likely to be automated at some point.
Only work, i.e. producing, creating something, getting your hands dirty.
Beware also about the simple fact that most of so called youtube experts are only experts in youtube. By design.
Real experts are busy engineering things. You can’t be both because each area is extremely time and energy consuming.
> I’m not learning any new skills and maybe falling behind the industry
Welcome to reality. You are not falling behind. Majority of work “in the industry” is like this - boring, repetitive, not challenging.
Only challenging goal will push you to raise the skill bar.
Challenging software engineering goal == complex problem that you think is _almost_ beyond your current abilities.
That turned into trying out simple hello world programs and eventually I found it started becoming way more interesting than my current job and found a job using it.
A lot of my network often read books and attend conferences so there's that too (not my cup of tea but everyone's got their preferred outlet)
I'd say if you feel stuck and feel like you are not progressing, it might the right time to look for a new challenge?
There are a million things I would rather think about after getting off work than software development.
At work, more important than software engineering skills, I make sure that I never become a ticket taker and make sure I’m doing something with larger scope, impact and “ambiguity”.
https://www.levels.fyi/blog/swe-level-framework.html