10 Steps to Become More Technical
Key Points
- The precise depth of technical knowledge isn’t as crucial as continuously moving up a learning curve and shifting from a non‑technical habit to a more technical one.
- Career growth for non‑technical professionals hinges on adopting habits that prioritize ongoing technical skill development rather than a fixed “technical ceiling.”
- One practical way to start is to have an engineer walk you through system‑design problems on a whiteboard (or use the abundance of engineering whiteboard videos on YouTube) to internalize how engineers think.
- The speaker promises a total of ten actionable strategies for becoming more technical, each based on personal experience and proven effectiveness.
- Embracing these habits creates a trajectory of technical growth that will keep your career prospects strong and increasingly future‑proof.
Full Transcript
# 10 Steps to Become More Technical **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMxZz6sUVek](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMxZz6sUVek) **Duration:** 00:12:49 ## Summary - The precise depth of technical knowledge isn’t as crucial as continuously moving up a learning curve and shifting from a non‑technical habit to a more technical one. - Career growth for non‑technical professionals hinges on adopting habits that prioritize ongoing technical skill development rather than a fixed “technical ceiling.” - One practical way to start is to have an engineer walk you through system‑design problems on a whiteboard (or use the abundance of engineering whiteboard videos on YouTube) to internalize how engineers think. - The speaker promises a total of ten actionable strategies for becoming more technical, each based on personal experience and proven effectiveness. - Embracing these habits creates a trajectory of technical growth that will keep your career prospects strong and increasingly future‑proof. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMxZz6sUVek&t=0s) **Beyond Technical Depth: Habit Shift** - The speaker advises non‑technical professionals to prioritize a continuous learning curve and habit changes to become more technical over time, rather than fixating on how deep their technical knowledge must be for career advancement. ## Full Transcript
you know this one is for the
non-technical folks out there Engineers
I hope this is up to your
standards so I get a question a lot from
folks who are not technical that is
basically what can I do to become more
technical people are rightly concerned
that their long-term career prospects
are affected by how technical they are
able to go everyone has a bottom out on
technicality right like even Engineers
will not go all the way to the Sol
almost like there's probably a couple
but for the most part everyone has a
bottom to their technical fluency
swimming pool like you swim down there
and there's that's the end the question
for most folks who are non- technical is
how deep do I need to get from a
technical point of view to drive my
career and what can I do to get there
and I am here to suggest to you that how
deep you need to get is not a super
relevant question so let's put that one
aside and the reason why is because you
can always get more technical and that
is pretty much always advantageous if
you do and so I think the better answer
is are you on a learning curve are you
on a path where you are getting more
technical over time and how do you put
yourself on on that path our lives are
made up of trajectories our lives are
made up of habits and that is true for
our careers as much as our personal
lives and so if you are in a habit of
being non- technical the real question
that will drive your career is can you
shift that habit set so you are more
technical than you were before so you
actually are starting to become more
technical over time it becomes a growth
curve okay with that introduction in
mind I want to give you 10 ways to
become more technical if you are not a
technical person and these are super
practical I've looked at all of these
I've done like almost all of these
myself and I found them super helpful I
did not used to be as technical as I am
I'm sure that in five or 10 years I will
be more technical than I am now is what
I want I want to be on a growth okay so
number one get an engineer to whiteboard
for you this was super useful when I was
trying to understand system design in
some of my earlier PM roles if you have
the opportunity to sit down and have
someone whiteboard for you and yes they
can use a an an iPad right and do that
remotely if you work remotely or in
person if you're in person just get a
room get a whiteboard start to draw it
out now if you're like oh well the
engineers are not going to listen to me
right like they're not going to give me
the time of
day I have news for you and it's called
YouTube there are more engineering
whiteboard videos than I can shake a
stick at on YouTube it's ridiculous how
many there are now a lot of them are
couched in terms of how you answer
questions from an engineering
perspective but I've got news for you
they're using real examples they're
using examples to sort of walk through
how you think as an engineer in
whiteboard and that is a skill that a
non-technical person can learn become
more technical in because at the end of
the day whiteboarding is just logical
thinking on the board drawing out a
system and it is really useful to
understand how that works because a lot
of the questions that you get asked in
non-technical roles amount to logical
thinking about Technical Systems so if
you can understand whiteboarding a
little bit you're going to be that much
ahead okay number two start scripting
with chat GPT and I'm going to give you
a really practical way to do this if you
use email if you use calendar and you're
using Google for those you have a
built-in place to start scripting with
chat GPT you can use Chad GPT to build
JavaScript that you can then run right
away in the scripting environment that
Google has set up for running operations
on email and calendar as an example you
can use chat GPT to help you build a
script that counts the number of
meetings averages the meeting minutes
and gives you a running average over
time or a report over time of how you
are doing at managing your meeting time
now that may be very depressing for you
if you're in a lot of me but that being
said the point is that you can build the
script really quickly you can read the
code and start to understand what it's
doing and you can apply it and learn
from it and I'm a big believer in that
try and apply Loop where like you learn
something by doing and I think that that
works a lot with technical stuff because
you have to be able to try try it to see
that it works and once you see that it
works you'll see the utility you'll see
the value in a practical way and you'll
try something else and so the nice thing
about that Google scripting environment
is there's no end to the kinds of things
you can do it will also do email
operations if you want
to automatically reply to your aunt with
a particular line every time she sends
an email not that I recommend this it's
not great for family but you could do
that there's basically no end to what
you can do creativ
and I think that's one of the cool
things about code okay so number two is
scripting uh and I gave you that example
in Google there's other ways of course
you can do scripting
as number three build a tiny app uh I
actually know someone who has been
building tiny apps using the po.com
platform Poe like poet um and they're
doing it in minutes instead of days like
they basically are able to chat with Po
and put an app together very very
quickly
now is this a super sophisticated app
not really is it an app that shows a
proof of concept absolutely and so one
of the other things that you want to do
is you want to Leverage The Power of
large language models to shorten the
learning Loop and basically say this is
what I can do now because I can use
plain English to express my thoughts
logically and you can start to see under
the surface like the llm is going to be
translating your plain English into
specific coding commands to build a
program now uh you can also do this with
other large language mods right I know
that Claude 3.5 has a very good
reputation for coding at the moment
there will be others as well that are
coming down the pike soon right you wait
a day you have a new uh sort of coding
tool to use but the point is this keep
experimenting and keep seeing if you can
build things quickly and I think what I
like about po.com is it makes the
journey to building an app really fast
and you want to accelerate that learning
Loop so you can express something that
you think is logical and then see how
the llm misinterprets it and that may
give you more Sympathy For Engineers who
do not understand your product
requirements if you are a
PM okay that's number three number four
read the technical documents at work
even if you don't fully understand them
I think that's really important you want
to get to a point where you're reading
them and then by next year you're
reading them and you understand about
10% 15% 20%
more that's a really big deal like if
you start to get to a point where you
can consistently understand over time
how
you think in technical terms in your own
system that you work against it's this
entire level up for your career at work
so read those technical documents that
you know exist in your Wiki in your
notion wherever your organization keeps
them read up and you might be telling me
hey I don't have technical documents to
read right now maybe they're locked away
maybe you're not in that kind of role
maybe you're looking to break into Tech
that's fine read the Netflix Tech blog
it's free it's available to the public I
cannot believe they do that it is an
astonishing repository of technical
knowledge I still go back there and read
it it's it's a wonderful thing to
discover because you can look at
anything from how they construct large
networks to how they do AB testing at
scale to how they understand how to
recognize content in videos at scale
phenomenal blog highly recommend the
Netflix Tech blog and there are other
good technical blogs out there I don't
want to just call them out but I will
say for me reading and learning from the
Netflix Tech blog was very formative
like it was super helpful to understand
sort of how they think about systems at
scale because you can often reason down
from a scale of hundreds of millions of
customers to something smaller but it's
difficult to go the other way okay
number
six this takes courage say something
badly and then invite Engineers to
correct you I vividly remember a moment
earlier in my career when I confused web
Hooks and
apis and I was corrected and rightly so
and that was very very good for me
because that's how I internalized a
Nuance that I hadn't fully internalized
before and so one of the things things
that I want to call out is that if you
aren't willing to be wrong it is very
difficult to learn so if you cultivate a
willingness to be wrong at work and a
show a willingness to improve learn have
a great attitude and grow it's going to
help you grow a lot faster and that's
probably a general hack frankly it's
probably not just for Tech but I'm
applying it
here okay number
seven ask someone who is not an engineer
who is more technical than you to
explain a concept to you and by the way
if you would like me on this YouTube
channel to explain a technical concept
for non-technical
people that's basically me at this point
like I'm a fairly technical product
person and so I'd be happy to do that
please in the comments let me know what
you would like me to explain I'd be
happy to do
that um and I think that that's helpful
right because at the end of the day if a
non-technical person explains it they're
often going to make sure that they are
not using dragon or assuming you know
acronyms that an engineer might assume
and so that it can be easier to sort of
bridge across that that gap of
understanding all right number eight
play around with Hardware uh I know
Raspberry Pi was all the rage just a few
years ago I vividly remember I do not
know this may be lost on the internet
but there was a great blog post uh I
think it might have been on AWS about
someone who was building a Ras Berry I
think it was a Raspberry p based machine
learning uh cat recognition device and
so let me explain like this guy was
basically as a home project playing
around with teaching and AI to recognize
his individual cat's face and to only
open the cat door for his
cat and so the cat door was locked
except when the device recognized his
cat's face and then would open the door
and the cat could go in but if another
cat tried to come in or or if like a dog
or a raccoon tried to come in it
wouldn't
work now I don't know how much value
that has uh other than being highly
amusing but I think that playing around
with the hardware was probably really
good for him right like it's a nice set
of sort of practice motions to go
through to build and launch something
with a hardware component because he had
to both do the AI piece and the training
piece but also do the hardware actuators
and actually building the door and I
think that's that's super fun
okay number nine read the classics um
and this one maybe you don't start here
but uh the pattern on the stone That's a
classic textbook for computer science
or The Art of Doing science and
engineering Learning To Learn by Hamming
another classic one there are other ones
as well I'm not saying only read those
two books uh my point is at some point
it's helpful to learn by reading people
who have been thinking about computers
for a lot longer than most of us have
and those are two that come to mind but
there are others as
well and then the last one number
10 be consistently curious and I know
that that sounds like a throwaway line
but one of the things that will sustain
you if you are trying to figure out how
to do this over time is curiosity and if
you are able to stay curious over time
about a technical subject you will feed
yourself what you need to know you will
go and find it and so in a sense my last
challenge to you is if you're looking
for a way in if you're trying to find a
way to be more technical find something
that makes you curious and follow that
thread stay curious all right tell me
what I missed in the comments