Engineering video
1:10 · 12 October 2026
The speaker explains: developing language-agnostic knowledge such as data structures, algorithms, and deep understanding of HTTP and JavaScript allows engineers to own larger features and make strong architectural decisions beyond the frontend framework level.
Hear it at 0:00 →So given you've been self-taught or you come from a boot camp, the one thing I would press on is transferable knowledge. And in software engineering, that tends to be very language agnostic, so going from whatever you're doing hands on with React to learning a bit more about algorithms and data structures. We're understanding trade offs at a high level. So be like, okay, what when we talk about state, let's say, and I give a lot of front end examples, but you got to think off, okay, what was the data structure I was using and how can I transfer that to the backend?
Because that will help you own a bigger surface, own a big feature that maybe has a backend component that you're not fully aware of the line by line code that it's there. But if you have strong reasoning, you can still make high quality decisions about it. So you got to expand yourself, both by going deeper, but in this case, usually with boot camp people and self-taught, they have the ability to get things done.
They can push things over. But they need to professionalize their knowledge a bit, they need to get better uh the additional CS concepts and algorithms and data structure, understanding how computer works, understanding HTTP in depth, understanding JavaScript, not just did the React layer, and that will give them a lot more confidence and make them able to own a bit more, to own bigger things.
