Comment

Comment by JoblessWonder

I think you are spot on. I think a specific amount of hubris to go along with the intellectual curiosity and tenacity is important. It is the amount of confidence to say, "Hey, I can take this on. I'm not familiar with it directly but I understand enough of the context to help." You do have to be careful to not have too much confidence because then you will alienate your peers/management and be viewed as a know-it-all. It is a fine line that depends a lot on company culture. It sounds like Stripe really welcomes it, where other corporations are very "stay in your lane."

I wear an insane amount of hats at my company because 1) I'm confident/stupid enough to believe I can handle it [see the part above about hubris] and 2) I actually have a track record of being able to tackle whatever has been thrown at me. My curiosity helps me from getting bored because I'm fine jumping from researching DC EV chargers to file permissions issues to tax law to.... anything.

Discussion

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton