Comment by kelnos

> bringing back random knowledge from previous jobs or self study, and being able to apply it to the problem at hand

Yes, I feel like this is a huge part of the value that I bring to most software teams. I have enough experience, and good enough recall, to come up with solid critiques of proposals, or to think of gotchas before they bite, or to present with a plan where I've managed to consider more of the problem space than other people can do.

Certainly it's not just experience and recall; being able to apply that to the current problem is critical as well. That part often comes into play for me with debugging: I've lost track of the number of times someone came to me with a thorny problem that they'd spent hours or even days working on, but some random bit of past experience floats to the top of my consciousness and I set them on the right track within a few minutes.

(I realize after writing that this sounds like a brag or a flex, but I'm hoping it won't be taken that way.)