Serguey Asael Shinder – IT Professional

Early on I fell in love with my tools. A framework I knew inside out, an editor tuned to perfection, a stack I could defend at any dinner. My skill and my tools felt like the same thing, so when the industry moved, I took it personally.

That’s an exhausting way to have a career. Every new framework felt like a threat. Every shift meant a little grief for the thing I’d mastered and a little panic that I was falling behind.

What finally calmed me down was separating two things I’d fused together. The tools are rented. The framework, the language, even the model — I’m leasing all of it, and the rent goes up every year. But the problem is mine. The domain, the users, the reason the software exists — that I actually own.

So I moved my sense of self off the tool and onto the problem. Now when a better tool arrives, I’m not losing anything. I’m just swapping the thing I was renting anyway and carrying the same understanding forward.

Learn the shiny thing. Use it fully. Just don’t marry it — a better one is always coming, and the problem you own isn’t going anywhere.

– Serguey Asael Shinder