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Ask HN: What's a surprisingly useful tech skill that's underrated today?

30 points Userrr | 1 comments | 12 Apr 25 08:13 UTC | HN request time: 0.263s | source

We often talk about mastering popular languages, frameworks, and AI tools. But what about the less-hyped skills that quietly make you 10x more effective?

For example:

Knowing how to write a custom shell script that replaces a SaaS tool

Building internal tools with no-code + cron + GitHub Actions

Understanding how to optimize a slow SQL query line-by-line

Crafting a bash one-liner that saves you hours every week

Using the command line like a superpower

I'm curious: What are the most underrated but highly valuable tech skills you've learned that more people should know about?

Would love to hear stories, examples, or even niche tools you swear by. Bonus points if it’s something you only discovered by accident or necessity, not through a tutorial.

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dsq ◴[12 Apr 25 09:12 UTC] No.43662737[source]▶
The question is what you mean by highly valuable. The sad truth is that in most workplaces many just coast along doing only what's necessary to not get fired. In which case doing your job more efficiently might draw negative attention (tall poppy syndrome).

Having said that, I think that having a good (both broad and deep) knowledge of the database schemas is invaluable for almost any information related role. Also, being able to manipulate large text very quickly (with vi/sed/awk, let's say), is useful for production emergency debugging on servers.

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Userrr ◴[12 Apr 25 09:21 UTC] No.43662783[source]▶
That’s a fair point, and I get where you're coming from. By “highly valuable,” I meant consistently making a meaningful impact—whether that’s through solving key problems, improving processes, or just being someone others can rely on. But yeah, you're right—sometimes doing more than the norm can backfire in certain environments. I guess the goal is to be valuable and strategic—knowing when to push and when to hold back depending on the culture.
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dsq ◴[12 Apr 25 09:31 UTC] No.43662836[source]▶
Right, so when discussing a high productivity role, havig mastery of both the structure (such as a DB) and of the tools to investigate the structure (text manipulation, SQL querying) are key.

In my experience most developers like to skip knowing about the data.

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1. Userrr ◴[12 Apr 25 10:37 UTC] No.43663188[source]▶
Yeah, exactly—that deep understanding of both the structure and the tools makes all the difference. It’s surprising how often people overlook the data itself, even though it’s usually where the real insights (and problems) are hiding. Mastery there really separates someone who’s just coding from someone who’s solving.