I have some experience with optimizing, scaling, and administering less-than-web-scale systems. Much of the knowledge comes from reading posts like this or presentations (thank God for Slideshare), or attending conferences where they give talks with titles like How We Scaled Linkedin (that was JavaOne if I remember correctly, and that talk was single-handedly worth the price of sending me to America for my company).
You can also learn from observation when working with people who are better than you. This is one of the best reasons to have some industry experience prior to raring off into startup land. I am a much, much, much better engineer in 2011 than I was in 2007 partly because I am older and wiser but mostly because I sat next to the second best engineer I've ever met and took notes when he told me that everything I knew was wrong.
Then there is the last option: your lack of expertise with X bites you in the keister, you fix X, you now have expertise with X and hopefully write up your experience somewhere to decrease the net amount of keister-biting in the world.
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I have some experience with optimizing, scaling, and administering less-than-web-scale systems. Much of the knowledge comes from reading posts like this or presentations (thank God for Slideshare), or attending conferences where they give talks with titles like How We Scaled Linkedin (that was JavaOne if I remember correctly, and that talk was single-handedly worth the price of sending me to America for my company).
You can also learn from observation when working with people who are better than you. This is one of the best reasons to have some industry experience prior to raring off into startup land. I am a much, much, much better engineer in 2011 than I was in 2007 partly because I am older and wiser but mostly because I sat next to the second best engineer I've ever met and took notes when he told me that everything I knew was wrong.
Then there is the last option: your lack of expertise with X bites you in the keister, you fix X, you now have expertise with X and hopefully write up your experience somewhere to decrease the net amount of keister-biting in the world.