Ex-Google | Stanford LEAD | Ex-Founder | Sr. Engineering Manager. Career systems for engineers who want FAANG offers, faster promotions, and leadership roles. 650+ interviews conducted, 1,100+ engineers mentored. Read by 178,000+ engineers across platforms.
Where should I invest my learning time?" (my honest answer)
|
Hey Reader, Welcome back to Guided Growth where we talk about the skills that accelerate your career beyond just writing great code. Last month I hosted a meetup in Bangalore. Engineers from PhonePe, Goldman Sachs, Dell, Deloitte. Some with 2 years of experience. Some with 12. One on a career break, fighting her way back in. Different companies. Different levels. Same question. "Where should I invest my learning time?" It came in different costumes:
Underneath, it's the same anxiety. I'm working hard. But am I working on the right thing? Here's what I told them. Stop asking "what should I learn?" Start asking three filters. Filter 1: Does it compound? Some skills reset to zero. A framework you learn today is legacy in 3 years. Some skills stack. Every system you understand makes the next one easier. Filter 2: Does it survive AI? AI writes code faster than you. It doesn't know your system's edge cases, your users, your production limits. Skills AI can do are getting cheaper. Skills that direct AI are getting expensive. Filter 3: Can you show it? A skill nobody sees in an interview or a promo discussion might as well not exist. Now run the usual options through the filters. ❌ The newest framework. Doesn't compound. Doesn't survive AI. Expires. ⚠️ DSA. You need it to clear screens. But it stops paying after that. AI solves LeetCode better than both of us. ✅ System design. Compounds with every system you touch. AI can't do it for you — it doesn't know your constraints. And it shows up everywhere: senior interviews, design reviews, promo packets. In 8+ years of hiring, I've rejected far more engineers for shallow design thinking than for failing to code. Not because they couldn't build. Because they couldn't explain why: why this database, why this queue, what breaks at 10x. That's the skill the market is repricing upward. Right now. I put the three filters into one cheatsheet. Save it. Run your next "should I learn X?" decision through it. Which filter does your current learning plan fail? Hit reply and tell me. I read every response. P.S. Next Thursday's issue is the biggest one I've sent all year. Keep an eye out. Thanks, Abhishek The Guided Growth |
The Guided Growth
Ex-Google | Stanford LEAD | Ex-Founder | Sr. Engineering Manager. Career systems for engineers who want FAANG offers, faster promotions, and leadership roles. 650+ interviews conducted, 1,100+ engineers mentored. Read by 178,000+ engineers across platforms.
Hey Reader, I study every single day. You might assume I have a free hour somewhere. I don't. My workday is full, and my evenings have calls. So I don't look for a free hour. A book I am reading right now says it in one line. You don't need more time. You need better systems. The book is How to Be Good at Life, by my friend Ben Meer. I am part way through it, and it has 40+ systems like the one I am about to show you. You can get it here. Here is my system. It has 3 slots. The gap after...
Hey Reader, Two weeks ago I posted: build your exit on day one. This is the day it paid off for me. I had joined Flipkart a few months earlier. I was not looking. I was still learning where things were. A Google recruiter messaged me on LinkedIn. Then called. Would I interview? They offered me two months to prepare Most people take it. I had a reason not to. I had a medical procedure booked about three and a half weeks out. Recovery would take time, and I was not going to cut it short for...
Hey Reader, Over the last two weeks I posted how WhatsApp works, in four blocks. This is what I see when I ask someone to build it in an interview. I sit on the other side of that table often. What follows is a composite. Not one person. A pattern. It does not matter what I ask Design WhatsApp. Design a parking lot. Design a URL shortener. The question changes. The failure does not. The candidate nods. Then, inside the first two minutes: load balancer. Database. Cache. Queue. Each word is...