[dgrayman]

Thanks for the reply.

Have a lot of engineer & founder friends I talk to regularly. I think overall goal would be to go one step up from connecting and actually be a peer in some respects.

Build up skillset to be a founder-operator in the future. Along the way, I'm sure it's helpful to the day job in investing.

Re: 1. Definitely not this. I've realized my skillset / interests don't coincide with writing code at Big_Tech for a living.

RE 4. Have tried a lot of those programs. They don't click after the beginning stages, and don't do a good job graduating you or tracking you. Also intrinsic motivation is a problem -- i'd like to take a half year off to just do that.

RE 2 and 3: These are good ideas. Have been doing them to some extent. But taking next step of being in community -> contributing to it.

[itronitron]

One approach that would deepen your technical proficiency and also have side benefits for your day job would be to dive deep into a particular area of interest, research it's origins and then analyze/criticize/evaluate the current state of the art.