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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?

#391

Post by emptysongglass »

makapuf wrote: post #388
kqvamxurcagg wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not good advice for most people. You should always leave on good terms regardless of how much you hate a job. As an employee you often don’t know the constraints or risks of a project so you can’t make a firm judgement on ethics or transparency. It’s a small world and you’ll likely run into former colleagues again or rely on them for a reference (even without your knowledge). Under game theory there is no adv…

Telling the uncomfortable truth plainly is a reward, a grace to someone. Why would give this favour to a bad employer? Don't lie but let them sort out why you (and other valuable people) left. Find a friend to vent to.

Because that's not compassion. The mercies we offer are chances for redemption. My team lead was young and inexperienced. I hope, with wisdom, he learns that telling the truth maximizes good outcomes.

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

#393

Post by chiefalchemist »

Don't look for jobs, look for opportunities. Just because you like the work today doesn't mean you will continue to do so. If you can't grow and evolve...well, that's the worst thing ever.

Put another way, it's a relationship. The opportunity is relationship with your employer; a career is a relationship with yourself.

Don't get stuck in bad relationships.

To that point, when in doubt update your CV and look for work. When you eel helpless (i.e., you don't like your current work situation) looking for sonething else is empowering.

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

#394

Post by djmips »

madaxe_again wrote: post #321
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…

I had a similar screwup, different outcome. Was working for a brokerage as an intern, IT gopher stuff, pretty much my first office job. A month in, I’m told by my boss to delete a directory on the file server. Which I do. I scurry off and rm -rf it, think it’s taking a while, so saunter out for lunch. Turns out that that directory was an active mount point for the root of the filestore on which they kept all of their…

I did something just like that early in my career, working too long hours with little sleep. Someone was fired... the head of IT who was responsible for backups and didn't have one. Felt really bad about that. I was dressed down in front of the company like a scene from full metal jacket. I wasn't let go, but I took a hit which from which I never recovered and I left eventually a couple years later.

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

#395

Post by BrandoElFollito »

_huayra_ wrote: post #347

Perhaps it's not a huge mistake, but I definitely did not think through the pros and cons of getting a PhD. There have certainly been some benefits (e.g. being able to move from my home country to one I prefer), but the amount of forgone earnings and time working on problems all by myself (where I don't get the advantage of mentorship so much; profs really have checked out on coding since before y2k in the most part)…

I did a PhD in physics and it was fantastic. I knew I would not stay in academia (and actually moved at the very end of my PhD).

Money is not everything, there is also the joy of doing science (and in my case - teaching), many of my best memories are form that time.

My PhD did not really helped me (I work in a completely unrelated field), but neither it was a problem.

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

#396

Post by benhurmarcel »

lucb1e wrote: post #55
somtum wrote: post #11

Staying in the first company of my professional career for too long. I would have learnt more and earned more if I moved companies regularly early on.

What if you're happy where you are, you're perfectly satisfied with your salary (above median income right after leaving school and increased ~35% since then), and there is basically 1 alternative company nearby (where you'd have a lot more travel) and the rest is either a leap (hoping that you'll like a different kind of work) or more than doubles your commute time (to >1h one-way)? I heard this advice before and at…

I think it really depends on the industry and location. There's a clear tendency on HN to only consider the tech market in California, where it makes the most sense to hop companies regularly. It's not the case for everyone.

I work in a large European industrial company in aerospace, and the vast majority of the employees stay until retirement. Yes most change job regularly, even relocate to different countries, but within the same company. Outside options aren't great, you're not looking at large potential raises and will have difficulty finding as good of a package unless you go into another industry completely. If I was fired I'd probably have to move to a different country and get into another industry to get a good offer.

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

#397

Post by Kiro »

m463 wrote: post #226
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…

Every time I've left a job, I've been uncertain and conflicted. every. time. Then, after being in the new job for a short while, I thought, "wow! I should have done this sooner!" Related, I remember a friend telling me a story. It wasn't so much about leaving, but how to leave. She was in a job that was just a mess. Finally one day during a spectacle of mismanagement, she just quit in disgust. She said it was a mista…

Why was it a mistake? What happened?

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

#398

Post by andrewclunn »

Everyone in the reporting team was out. Hey, Drew is a coder with access to the datavase, maybe he can write us up a report real quick. Say I can, do it on test, works great. They just want the results exported as a CSV, so no problem. Run it in production. Takes 2 minutes, but works. Give the the report. Didn't use NOLOCK. Pharmacy system was down for those two minutes.

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

#399

Post by Werewolf255 »

kqvamxurcagg wrote: post #374
emptysongglass wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about this one. Sometimes it's important to take a principled stand. I was at a stocks company for all of two weeks, hired by a former friend. The very first day I was told not to email the security team directly and that all my emails from then on must be approved by my team lead. Within a week, I was told to lie to the security team. I spent most of those two weeks either in meetings or as a glorified…

This is not good advice for most people. You should always leave on good terms regardless of how much you hate a job. As an employee you often don’t know the constraints or risks of a project so you can’t make a firm judgement on ethics or transparency. It’s a small world and you’ll likely run into former colleagues again or rely on them for a reference (even without your knowledge). Under game theory there is no adv…

I appreciate this advice, and generally agree, but game theory doesn't take externalities into account. If your employer is particularly toxic and hiding it, a noisy exit might bring extra scrutiny that could help other people who stay with the organization, though maybe not. Plus, sometimes the previous employer makes leaving on good terms impossible, like if your employer is being criminally investigated for tax fraud.

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

#400

Post by benhurmarcel »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #165
rsynnott wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a strange attitude; if you change jobs every three years, then how much are you going to get done, really? If everyone took this approach, then would any large project ever get finished?

Why wouldn't six months be more than enough time to ship a project?

Not every company works only on small software products.
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