The “Alien-Level Skills” Hack
Why not just wait to learn math until you have a job in a math-adjacent field, and then backfill all the useful math as you encounter specific problems on the job?
On the surface, that might sound like a way to reduce the amount of work that it takes to develop alien-level math skills that set you apart and boost your career.
However, in practice, this “wait to backfill” approach greatly REDUCES your chance of being able to capitalize on the “alien-level skills” hack.
1) You’ll underestimate how often mathy tasks come up. Even when one does, without plenty of math background, you probably won’t realize how mathy it is.
2) Even if you do come across a task you know is mathy, you likely won’t have enough math background to even realize what mathy approach you need to take to complete the task (i.e., what specific math do you have to apply or spin up on).
3) Even if you do know what mathy approach you need to take, the task might be handed off to someone else who already has more math background (because it will take them much less time to spin up and solve the problem).
