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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?

#121

Post by majjam »

Zelphyr wrote: post #57

At my first real technology job I worked at an early web hosting company. Cutting edge stuff in 1996. We hosted full domains for $60/mo and tilde domains (e.g.; domain.tld/~myname) for $25 or $30 per month. We hosted on BSDi, a proprietary BSD and every domain customer had their own sub-directory with user and group ownership. As an aside, BSDi would happily let you run `rm -rf . ` and would walk up to root and back…

Would you mind elaborating on how you went about learning the fundamentals? I think id benefit from the same.

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

#122

Post by ramesh31 »

etamponi wrote: post #61

Thought that I could replace lower-than-average communication skills with higher-than-average technical skills. The story goes that software engineering is about knowing how to design a system a build it. The truth is: you also have to know how to _sell_ your design, how to document your decisions, how to push forward with your agenda. You won't go anywhere without a team that values you. This means that interpersona…

This goes for pretty much everything in life. People generally won't care how competent you are if they like having you around.

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

#123

Post by ramesh31 »

Getting too big for my britches, and thinking that recruiter emails = job offers. I quit a lucrative junior position that had just promoted me to mid level thinking I would have multiple big offers lined up immediately. After 6 months of desperately interviewing and going broke I ended up somewhere I could work my way back up, but I learned the hard way to never quit a job without another offer letter signed.

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

#124

Post by georgeburdell »

Accepting a job with QA out of school. It was 4 months before graduation, and I had been searching 2 months and my morale was low at having been rejected a few times. I was a very good student with many accolades so rejection was new.

As it happened, 1 month before I graduated, a job opened up in my ideal group, one I had interned in before and gotten a strong review, but by then I had already accepted the QA position (at the same company) and it was impossible to transfer. Took me nine years to transition to being a dev, studying nights and weekends.

At least in the U.S., your first job out of school tends to become your "career"

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

#126

Post by ramesh31 »

elevenoh wrote: post #79

Working for a company that exploits [mostly] kids/teens' attention while being aware of the long term negative psychological effects of such.

We all hate it, but it pays the bills. It's ultimately better to be in this position as a thoughtful person aware of the consequences of your work, since they would just replace you with someone less conscionable otherwise.

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

#127

Post by Zelphyr »

majjam wrote: post #121
Zelphyr wrote: post #57

At my first real technology job I worked at an early web hosting company. Cutting edge stuff in 1996. We hosted full domains for $60/mo and tilde domains (e.g.; domain.tld/~myname) for $25 or $30 per month. We hosted on BSDi, a proprietary BSD and every domain customer had their own sub-directory with user and group ownership. As an aside, BSDi would happily let you run `rm -rf . ` and would walk up to root and back…

Would you mind elaborating on how you went about learning the fundamentals? I think id benefit from the same.

“ Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software” by Charles Petzold and “The Elements of Computing Systems” by Noam Nisan and Shimon Shocken are both a great introduction.

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

#128

Post by abhishektwr »

Not starting with a big name tech corp or a high-growth VC-funded company. Big brand on CV makes big difference when recruiters are doing initial screening. A CS/MBA degree from top university helps. Do whatever you can to work with a big tech brand early in career, otherwise later you will regret.

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

#129

Post by babelfish »

majjam wrote: post #121
Zelphyr wrote: post #57

At my first real technology job I worked at an early web hosting company. Cutting edge stuff in 1996. We hosted full domains for $60/mo and tilde domains (e.g.; domain.tld/~myname) for $25 or $30 per month. We hosted on BSDi, a proprietary BSD and every domain customer had their own sub-directory with user and group ownership. As an aside, BSDi would happily let you run `rm -rf . ` and would walk up to root and back…

Would you mind elaborating on how you went about learning the fundamentals? I think id benefit from the same.

Check out the online course Nand2Tetris. I took it my senior year of college as a business major (but had a SWE internship/full-time offer). It was an interesting course and definitely filled the gaps in my knowledge OP describes, but didn’t really make a difference for me as a SWE.
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