[anniely]

Wow. This was such a valuable post.

Can you describe some of the insights you learned from the exit interview -- about growing your career and becoming a subject matter expert? I'm new to the field and I feel like that'd be immensely valuable to me and many others.

[Darkphibre]

Sure! It's been a decade, but the biggest thing that stuck out was to pick something that needs an SME. Fill a gap on the team, even if it's something you may not have a huge interest in. Find the interest in it, and _own it_.

But most importantly, give talks and brownbags about the technology. Understand that there's going to be someone in the room that knows more than you... but they aren't giving the talk and helping everyone else, you are. They will chime in, and that's OK. You are the one putting yourself out there educating yourself and others. This helped me so much when I gave talks at GDC... even if I'm helping ONE person, it makes the event worth it (and the talk serves as my unique perspective / take on the industry).

Pour over source materials. Bruce read the 600+ page CPU documentation front-to-back, twice over. He said the second time, he gleaned so much more insight.

The engineers didn't realize just how much knowledge they were trying to distill, so you might read a comment that says "Of course, the second parameter determines XYZ." The first read-through, you might gloss over that. The second read-through, you realize the instruction they're documenting is doing double-duty elsewhere, and the comment is an important indicator of how that interaction plays out on the die.

Good luck!!