Do you consider yourself _competent_ ?

If you think you are pretty good in ".NET", then probably you are "faking it" :-)

http://www.ftponline.com/vsm/2007_05/magazine/departments/guestop/

What Mdm Dollard writes about is true; there are simply too many aspects and facet within the .NET space to really claim swift and brutal conqueror of all.

The article IS very true, and not only applicable to .Net. Talk about database, web services, or 3D programming. How many specific technologies you can name out of them? Too bad not many organizations actually realize that. Even as of now, there are many organizations who are still breeding jack-of-all-trade developers. There's this assumption of "it's easy to pick up new technologies, so everybody should learn everything". Yes, new technologies are easy to pick up, but how many of us can actually easily master them? How many can describe COM like Don Box? How many actually have job titles like "Transaction Specialist"? (I was actually trying to find out Florin Lazar's or Jim Johnson's blog to find out what're their actual job title, but some how their blogs are no longer existed/updated?)

I was of the opinion that one should learn as much as possible. That said, there is simply too many emerging new technologies to pick up and there is no enough time even if one were to learn 24/7. Yet, bosses / clients would expect us to know everything so as to recommend the best technology and get it implemented in un-humanly possible time. Worse is when you are expected to know about non-Microsoft technologies as well so as to make comparisons.

One can only know each new technology skin deep and dive deep when required. That is provided one makes the right decision in selecting the one to dive into. And I will always be a young padawan. Er... okay, not really that young.