Curious how, as a junior engineer, I should be growing and building my skills. I have always been pretty committed to what I do, but lately I feel a weird struggle with not really knowing the right path forward.
With my job, I feel like I am doing new things every day and a lot of random busy work with internal tools. What I do and what I need to learn seems to change often.
When you train for say sports, you go to practice and you do the same drills or lift weights, and over time your skills get better and you get bigger. But that's because you are doing those specific things over and over. You wouldn't get bigger if you lifted weights 3 times a week in March, then stopped for 6 months, then did once every week in August, then stopped again.
Even outside of work I have tried to improve my programming, but I feel like there is so much to do. I want to learn how say certain applications work, then how to write good code when making those apps, then the larger system design decisions, then how other apps work that are not like it. I could spend time learning system design for a while, but then my other skills will get rusty.
I just feel overloaded and I don't feel like I can master engineering or programmer if my skills and time are spread among so many things.
What even is a master software engineer? What should my long-term goal be as a software engineer? My goal was always to get a good job, now I am here and I am not sure what the next milestone is.
After 25 years at this, I'd say get good at the parts you are naturally interested in. Are you attracted to UI? Does big data get you excited? What part of the enormous spectrum of CS really resonates with you? Become an expert in that.