How Smart People Sabotage Their Success

My conclusion to the BS inherent to any job is this: get your "brain food" outside your job. Start today if you haven't been doing this. It's fine that sometimes we get to learn interesting things while on the clock, but we have way, way, way less control over what we learn. I have followed this strategy for some years:

1) Look for a low-stress job with manageable time. In tech this doesn't mean "low-pay" as well. I'm being paid quite well and I will never do more than 40 hours a week.

2) Treat that job as your day job to pay the bills, and learn whatever you want during your (relatively abundant) free time. Learn a new programming language, learn about any other topic of computer science or software engineering, get any skill not related to your job, get a new degree, whatever. It is up to you whether you want to learn something that will make you more money in the future or not. Beware: open source projects are nice but, unless it's a project of yours and yours only, you have less control over what you do, and in that sense it's a bit closer to a job.

It's also true that mundane tasks will make you much better at your job, but TBH, while that's helpful (and helps building a career more than most young people would think), it's not something that important to me. I'd rather be good at things that are important to me. A job is there to pay the bills and nothing more; anything else is a bonus which I won't take for granted, and this includes the social aspect of the job.

The problem I have with this, is that if you don't get to use your new shiny tech in your job, over the years you tend to forget the knowledge, at least that's the case for me. Does everyone else have eidetic memory?

I found myself having to look up syntax and idioms of languages I was productive in a decade ago.

This is why drugs like adderall are popular among people who get bored easily.

Honestly, I don't see why the smart kids would care. I knew plenty of people who cheated frequently, some even got better grades overall than me. I didn't hold it against anyone though. I was lucky enough to be able to do most of the same assignments very quickly without much effort because it came easy to me. I'm not going to begrudge others the same thing.

The real problem is that most high schools provide a completely worthless education. They don't genuinely challenge gifted students or most anybody, at most they just a larger volume of work at them. High schoolers who can pass the entrance exams should just be able to go straight to community college. Community college, even for talented young people, can actually be a humbling experience for a whole host of totally different reasons.

I get sick and tired of this nonsense being pushed as "wisdom".

Perhaps smart people, don't measure success the same way.

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I could, go and work, for a shit company, with a shit corporate culture, get "paid", while trading the few years I have on this planet, for worthless scrip, miserable colleagues and a corporate culture designed to kill intelligence...

OR,

I could use that time to locate a set of colleagues, who are equally as intelligent, in a company that tries to tackle the "big problems" and move the state of the art forward.

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I could work at a company where "relationship building" is the primary focus (i.e. small-minded politics), where I am either wasting all my time fielding constant attacks from the lower echelons, or consistently seen as a "resource" to be exploiting in some pointlessly complicated machiovellian scheme.

OR

I could go work with a bunch of adults, who come to work, do their job, get paid, and fuck off to go fuck their wives/husbands, and leave all that mini-munchkin shit, out of work.

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I could spend, the entire workweek, carrying worthless "team members", who don't even know enough to shut the fuck up, and let the only professional on the team, handle it.

OR.

I could actually get, shudder, competent team members who I rarely have to interface with because their shit just works, and who can coordinate without constantly having their balls held.

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I could join a company where the "corporate" advancement, is some ridiculous mating dance between you, HR, and some shit manager or where the "job title" is a straight jacket, not a definition of responsibilities to be handled....

OR

I could join a company that understands that smart people, should be let loose to handle the corporations problems, and that job title, is a reflection of necessary duties; but not something to straightjacket an employee who is handling there business.

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I could go to work for a company where things are always done last minute, two or three times, with regular failures

OR

I could join a company where the shit gets done right the first time; where long-term success matters just as much as short-term success.

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I could... simply not care, what someone with mediocre intelligence, thinks the problems people with intelligence "suffer from"....