The most self-reliant engineer I met this year is also one of the most stuck.
That’s not a coincidence.
Tony has 25 years of experience. Principal engineer at a top consulting firm. Every AI skill you’d want — RAG, agents, graph and vector databases, the lot.
And he’s stuck. Wrong job offers, no clarity on how to position himself, convinced “the market is bad.”
Everything about him is self-made. He taught himself everything, came up the hard way, relied on no one. He’s proud of that — and he should be.
But that same self-reliance has quietly become his ceiling.
Here’s what I’ve learned the hard way myself.
Self-reliance builds skill. Past a point, it starts to cost you — because you can’t see your own blind spots, and you burn months solving things someone could hand you in an afternoon.
Two Saturdays ago, one three-hour call with a mentor saved me twelve months of figuring it out alone. Twelve months. From a single conversation.
That’s the trade most skilled people refuse to make. They’d rather spend a year proving they can do it themselves than an hour learning it from someone who already has.
And it compounds. Every month you skip is a month your results start sooner — and start stacking.
It’s exactly why I built a community around this. Nobody levels up fastest alone.
So if you’re the smartest, most independent person you know, sit with an uncomfortable question: what are you grinding through alone right now that the right person could hand you in an afternoon?
The strongest engineers I know all share one trait — they know when to stop grinding alone and borrow a shortcut.
When did one conversation save you months?
Kirill
P.S. Independence is a superpower for building skills. Just don’t let it quietly become the reason your career stalls.