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Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?

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Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?

#22

Becoming too emotionally invested and involved in the welfare of the company where I worked for seven years. This had the opposite affect with my boss and management because I was making delusional organizational and engineering decisions with no authority to do so. Even though I thought my intentions were aligned with the future of the company, nothing could have been further from the truth. My advice is keep things…

I agree with this right up until the last sentence. If you feel the need to be an “impeccable toy model” I’d say leave. Sounds like a recipe for a life of misery.

Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?

#26
Twice I have built entire full-featured applications and then not shipped them out of embarrassment(fear of failing I guess?). Both times, a few years later similar applications became very popular. Very recently one of them showed upon the front page of HN to high praise.

It's a mistake I'm still making, I guess, which is to assume that it could never "be me". It can be anyone. Just ship the damn thing.

Re: Ask HN: What huge mistake did you make early in your career?

#30

Becoming too emotionally invested and involved in the welfare of the company where I worked for seven years. This had the opposite affect with my boss and management because I was making delusional organizational and engineering decisions with no authority to do so. Even though I thought my intentions were aligned with the future of the company, nothing could have been further from the truth. My advice is keep things…

This is a great point! I'm starting to realise this too. I work for a company where I really think the suggestions I make will set up the company now and in the future, but the more I fight for the decisions I make, the more I realise that a) my team mates aren't interested because they (mostly) don't understand the tech, and b) management isn't interested or doesn't care.
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