Niche Expertise

Recently I had a call with a Principal Software Engineer named Michael.

He has over a decade of experience in engineering at a variety of start-ups and enterprises. He holds an advanced degree in computer science. As he unpacked his credentials to me at the beginning of the call, I was impressed.

And a bit intimidated.

We were on this call because Michael had scheduled this call with me to ask for help.

He’d been tasked with building data pipelines and the beginnings of a data platform at his company. Despite all his vast experience in software engineering, Michael was struggling to design and implement a solution.

We spent over an hour talking through data platform design fundamentals, data modeling practices, and noticing areas of his work that might be landmines waiting to explode. At the end of the call, he said “I’m going to schedule more time in a couple months. This was really helpful”.

Even with his advanced skills and extensive experience, he was honest enough to ask for help when tackling something he wasn’t confident in. That’s probably why he’s so accomplished in his career.

You likely have elite expertise in certain areas that make you great at what you do. That expertise also contains inherent blind spots. The fastest way to scale your expertise is to collaborate with an expert in another niche.

You be great at what you do. Let someone else be great at what they do. Work together when you are ready to scale.

I’m here,

Sawyer