Ask HN: How to Keep the Edge as an Engineer?

As you mention in your post its more about keeping up with the moving bleeding edge rather than keeping what you have. The most important point/habit is to be invested in lifelong learning.

The moment you stop learning, only doing rote work, is when you stagnate. Thankfully I don't know almost anyone in software who can do even a days worth of work without something unexpected happening. As we all know, execution of a plan is never as simple as the plan. Each unexpected moment is an opportunity to learn, make sure to squeeze those moments for learning and knowledge as much as you (and your employer) will allow.

If your job doesn't present many opportunities for learning then the answer would be to look for another job or hobby-projects if you have the time and energy available.

I believe this is a good time for going from Engineer -> Architect mindset. You don’t need to wait for a formal career progression.

When I got into tech, as an engineer, I enjoyed learning as much as I could about building systems.

Systems are comprised of technology, people, and business needs.

How can we help our customers in the best way possible given some constraints (usually $$).

For example, perhaps at the current scale, the customer needs search but the company cannot afford deploying ElasticSearch. You are already using postgres, and you have 80 million candidate records. How can you make this system work until you have a billion records and need ES?

Honestly, I have no idea what the future holds but this is how I view things.