I'm not sure about other industries, but for me personally, my competency is in large part based on my ability to quickly pick up domain knowledge and apply it successfully.
I'm not really sure how you test for a base level of that, besides proven demonstration on your resume and doing semi-correlated coding quizzes.
That's a good way of looking at domain knowledge "one layer up". I'm have been terrible at this in the past and I have been making an effort to improve. Business knowledge seems to provide the most leverage, especially in fields like finance.
My problem is I find the knowing the lower level stuf way way more interesting. Heck I'm doing a udemy course on network programming which arguably won't help my career, I just have a secret shame about not really knowing networking. (Plus it's really interesting)
A good test of how well someone knows their subject of expertise is whether they can explain a concept within that field to a 5th grader in laymen’s terms. If you cannot, I really doubt you truly understand it beyond simple regurgitation of complicated sounding jargon. We can do it for code, and I'm confident you can do it for any other subject as well.
Before going into software full time, I got a degree in structural engineering and a few years of experience in construction engineering and management. That experience can be easily parlayed into a job at myriad companies producing project management tools, construction tools, etc. It has been something that allowed me to stand out amongst other engineers applying for the same job. As far as any employer is concerned, all the applicants can probably write the same quality code, but the ability to claim knowledge of why we're building some given feature has been a great boon.
Nice to see someone else mention domain knowledge. I know just enough about software/data engineering to be effective, but I have seen the greatest career growth by doubling down on my domain (generally finance).
Sure Domain Knowledge is important. But again this can all be discovered as you go along.
I had an interview at a this week for my next contract where they made redundant most of their employees as the business decided to just go with turnkey applications.
They will get someone like me in for 3 to 6 months to do application maintenance on anything they can't replace. This will be stuff like implementing stuff from penetration-testing, upgrading the applications and documenting missing bits and pieces and letting the business know what needs doing and where.
I don't need a pension being paid, no HR overhead (they can just ask me to leave whenever pretty much). I will be able to gleen enough from the business and their IT to piece the bits together. This is literally my bread and butter.
I'd say it's crucially important, especially if you want to advance over time. Technical knowledge alone can only get you so far. Especially in highly specialized domains like health-care (and I saw this as somebody whose dayjob is in healthcare analytics). Of course you have to strike a balance between leveling up on hard-core technical skills AND domain knowledge. Unfortunately I don't know any strictly deterministic and universally optimal way to decide where that balance is. :-(
How do you go about developing domain expertise?
Other than working "in the business" so to speak, of that domain, I can only thinking of the regular stuff: read books, read articles, watch videos, interview people, etc.
> Rather, I've accumulated lots more domain knowledge. ... And if you have that domain knowledge, ... it seems like you're massively smarter than everyone else.
It's interesting many traditional software companies seem to promote the idea of "subject matter experts" (SMEs) as a key part of their software development process. Although I think the concept of SMEs is somewhat flawed, the idea that domain knowledge is vitally important becomes more clear to me the longer I spend working in a particular area. You can't be an effective developer in any industry unless you work on building up your domain expertise.
Coding is simply translating human language into computer language. Having some other domain that interests you is pretty helpful. I was into {cars, music, movies, video games, comics, architecture, sports, etc}. I studied and took the exam for Real Estate sales.
After a company I worked at had a security incident, I studied up and started applying my weekend time towards HackerOne (freelance security penetration testing) -- that helped me land a job at a security software company.
If someone can quickly learn enough about a system that they can convince a domain expert they understand it well in a deep technical discussion, they're probably a good candidate for hiring, since your business likely consists of many complex systems, and the candidate will theoretically be able to onboard faster.
Absolutely. As long as you go and study something you don't already know. A competent programmer who is also a domain expert in some field will always be in a better position than someone who is just a competent programmer.
Exactly. And you can't learn domain knowledge that quickly. And there is a pile of money and senior-level engineering positions available to those who can marry understanding of the technology with domain expertise.
I'm not really sure how you test for a base level of that, besides proven demonstration on your resume and doing semi-correlated coding quizzes.
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