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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?

#141

Post by lemarchr »

sssilver wrote: post #119

Held too many strong opinions for really no good reason other than technical "virtue signaling" of sorts. At the time, it felt so right. I had all the perfect, rational arguments. Years passed, experience and nuance decayed the strength of my opinions, and it was fascinating to realize -- even where I was perfectly right, I was mostly only right accidentally, my arguments were just a story to fit the narrative, never…

This is frequently still beneficial for the organisation, even when you're doing it for the wrong reasons, and is almost a necessary stepping stone towards achieving true understanding. It's hard to identify nuance until you discover some strongly held belief doesn't apply as well you once thought.

But I suppose if you could go back and do it differently, you would, so I can appreciate why you consider this to be a mistake.

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

#142

Post by eyelidlessness »

logicchop wrote: post #138
ncmncm wrote: post #116

My biggest mistake, that I made again and again, was not leaving a job when it was time. I thought I had something to prove, but there was never any point to it. You don't owe anything to an employer. You can't prove anything to an employer. They have absolutely no loyalty to you, and care less than nothing about what is right or wrong, wise or foolish. So: If you ever think things might not turn out as well as you h…

I agree, but just a note: it doesn't do your career any good to hop a lot. I won't hire someone that looks flaky. If you find yourself at a bad job, sure, move on. But work on sussing out the good from the bad so you don't put yourself in a bad situation repeatedly.

Last I checked, nearly everyone in tech hops jobs frequently. In fact that’s common advice for comp advancement. In my personal experience that advice holds true, even though I change jobs much less frequently than most of my peers (which means my comp tends to lag behind theirs).

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

#143

Post by Arubis »

I stayed for almost four years at a job and in a location that I knew with great certainty was a poor culture fit for me by the one-year mark.

Similarly, I knew that I needed to do some therapy work, and deliberately did not do it so as not to end up with a diagnosis that could affect my potential admittance as a Peace Corps volunteer. (This was deeply misguided; the volunteers that did their work were both admitted and frankly more effective.)

Both of these mistakes were arguably the same mistake: I did not take care of myself. As a result, the first half-decade of my career was basically a wash. I burned out of the industry I went to school for, and a large chunk of time I could have spent deliberately learning and building was instead spent essentially coping and surviving.

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

#144

Post by zamadatix »

I created a 2x10 gigabit loop directly to the data center core of a regional health system on the consolidated virtualization rack that held ~80% of the applications back in 2012. It also took out the PBX. Thankfully it only took me just about 5 minutes to realize what I had done and run from the office area to the data center (in the same building thankfully) to set it back.

I thought for sure at minimum I was at least going to end up in a high pressure meeting about root cause and so on... no doctors complained, no ticket was ever created, the only mention that was ever made to me was "heh, was it you that broke things?" as the SAN guy was heading to his car and I ran past him.

Apparently 4:25 PM is a better time to break everything in a hospital system than the 2:00 AM change windows they schedule and nobody is going to bother calling support when things are working again by 4:30 and they just want to end the day. Service desk guy laughed at me when I apologized and he said he had 0 calls about it by 5:00.

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

#145

Post by santa_boy »

My biggest mistake for most of my youth was that I valued technical complexity over business utility. As a result, I kept moving from one trendy thing to the next one in technology, skills and domains.

Very late did I realize that putting simple php scripting to good and right use is enough to make the same money as trendy job and skill hopping. (on average ... i.e. ignoring outliers)

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

#146

Post by petsormeat »

Not asking what the promotion path of my first dev job would be. As it turns out, there wasn't one: I was hired to be a code monkey, and a year and three "annual" performance reviews later, I was still a code monkey, with no change in responsibilities.

Don't be shy about asking what the near future of a role is.

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

#147

Post by wait_a_minute »

santa_boy wrote: post #145

My biggest mistake for most of my youth was that I valued technical complexity over business utility. As a result, I kept moving from one trendy thing to the next one in technology, skills and domains. Very late did I realize that putting simple php scripting to good and right use is enough to make the same money as trendy job and skill hopping. (on average ... i.e. ignoring outliers)

Can you tell me more about simple php scripting? I enjoyed php when I was new to the industry a while back, but do you mean that someone can be good at php and just work contractually and actually get by still? That’s pretty incredible and tempting tbh.

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

#148

Post by [deleted] »

petsormeat wrote: post #146

Not asking what the promotion path of my first dev job would be. As it turns out, there wasn't one: I was hired to be a code monkey, and a year and three "annual" performance reviews later, I was still a code monkey, with no change in responsibilities. Don't be shy about asking what the near future of a role is.

[deleted]
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