On the Edge of Competence

A reflection on recognizing and refining one’s circle of competence to enhance fluency, decision-making, and impact as an engineer.

  • Fluency over surface knowledge: Your circle of competence isn’t about what you’ve memorized—it’s what you’re fluent in, where you move quickly, trust your instincts, and distinguish between knowable facts and irreducible uncertainty. Operating within this zone leads to sharper decisions, fewer errors, and more trust from others.
  • Naming your boundaries: A dynamic circle is built through experience, mistakes, and curiosity. A useful starting point is to clearly identify three things: what you know well, what you know you don’t know, and what’s genuinely unknowable. If you can’t name all three, you’ve found a boundary worth exploring.
  • Reinforce by revisiting fundamentals: Staying sharp means going back to basics—re-derive core principles like the CAP theorem or queuing theory as if teaching a beginner, ensuring your foundation remains firm despite shifting tools and trends.
  • Curate growth intentionally: Block weekly time to explore new areas—read papers, dive into source code, build prototypes. Take on at least one challenging project yearly. Sharing what you learn through documents, talks, or blog posts helps clarify your understanding and amplify impact.
  • Treat yourself as a system: After each project, log your assumptions, decisions, and outcomes. Reflect on discrepancies—did performance improvements materialize? Tracking these patterns sharpens judgment over time.
  • Seek honest feedback: Seniority can blind you to weak spots. Every quarter, ask peers: "What am I missing? Where am I weak?" It’s uncomfortable but invaluable for growth. Also, before diving into new skills, check whether they actually benefit the team or company in a tangible way.
  • Compounding payoff: Maintaining a sharp circle brings faster, smarter decisions, guards against overconfidence, aligns efforts with organizational impact, and enables you to scale your influence through teaching and collaboration. Growth is gradual, but enduring.
  • Actionable start: Write down one strength, one gap, and one true unknown today. That’s the seed of your circle—nurture it, and it’ll pay dividends for years.

The full post is available here.