
Ask HN: Gaining Experience as a Full-Stack Developer - alharbi
TL;DR, How do you keep your knowledge&#x2F;experience sharp as a full-stack developer and still not feeling burned out?<p>I work as a full-stack developer, I enjoy it, but I find the amount of things to learn and keep up to date with are very overwhelming. I&#x27;m new to the software industry, it&#x27;s less than 5 years since I graduated college, and I&#x27;m still not even near the &quot;good enough&quot; stage, and the reason I guess is that I&#x27;m still trying to catch up with too many things, starting from server configuration&#x2F;setup, up to following the latest changes&#x2F;trends in the front-end world. I do side projects&#x2F;freelancing outside my full-time job, and some of these projects are pure UI design, some others are pure backend and API development, in these projects, I feel more relaxed and enjoying the work I do, compared to when I jump from layer to another as a full-stack developer. So I guess my question is for those who do the same thing, how do you keep your knowledge&#x2F;experience sharp in each stack?
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johngalt
You _don 't_ stay sharp across the entire discipline, that's the trade off.
Inherently a generalist will always be behind a specialist. As someone in a
similar spot. I've found that two practices keep me effective.

1\. Stay on the '80' side of the 80/20 rule. Find breakpoints where you are
getting diminishing returns. Stop yourself when you are getting into
specialist territory, by asking 'how often am I going to need this?'

2\. Have a network of specialists who you can call when you need abilities in
that last 20%. This is the hardest part because you will have made a lot of
progress and want to just keep going on your own. It's important to take a
step back and think "I could call <specialist> and they would knock this down
in a day".

As a generalist think of yourself as consumer rather than a producer.

