3 skills that make you stand out as an engineer

1. Read documentation

I can't stress enough the importance of documentation. It entails core knowledge of the language/framework/library in question.
A lot of time the solution to a problem is embedded in the docs.

2. Do not reinvent the wheel

There's no point in rewriting an already existing functionality in a codebase. If need be it should be an improvement on what's existing.

3. Research whenever you encounter a strange syntax.

Sometimes it only takes a simple search online to reveal a use case for a syntax you haven't encountered before.

Prior to Python 3.10, Python never had a feature that implemented "switch" statement like how Java, JavaScript, and some other languages do. The first time I came across it in Python was in a colleague codebase, 2 or 3 months after it was added to the language. A simple search online reveals this.