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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?

#471

Post by makapuf »

emptysongglass wrote: post #391
makapuf wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, that's a nice thing to share with people. But im not sure you should give such favour to a (bad) company.

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

#472

Post by ju_sh »

Zelphyr wrote: post #127
majjam wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

+1 for Code, fantastic book especially for self taught developers

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

#473

Post by bobbydreamer »

I am in my second company, I am here for 9yrs now. In the first company I was there for around 3.5yrs. Reason to leave was, I had nothing new to learn, I basically automated most my work, trained subordinates well enough to give me reports also trained them to review reports and send me one-liner like something needs attention or not. Learnt MS-SQL SERVER, SSIS AND SSAS and Cognos me originally being mainframe z/OS Db2 DBA. Lead SQL Server and Db2 team. Salary was avg but life was good, good managers, good place, location U.S Vermont, I am chennai, south india, it's summer throughout the year. Seeing snow was awesome.

I quit to learn new things. Now in this company I learnt and learning, made lots of automations but I always look back and feel why did I leave for that reason.

Like I have automated most my work, I have subordinates who report well, my lead DBA, managers are good, colleagues are good. I just didn't have patient to enjoy that.

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

#474

Post by victor9000 »

rsynnott wrote: post #135
victor9000 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've been there longer than 3 years, then yes, you're making the mistake.

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?

Well, OP is talking about their first job, so my advice is targeting that specific situation. As a general rule, engineers see a fairly large bump in pay when going from their first to their second job, particularly if they did a poor job of negotiating their first salary. So yes, in terms of career development and realizing your earning potential, you should not stay at your first job for more than a few years.

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

#475

Post by beachy »

emptysongglass wrote: post #360
beachy wrote: post #181

I was at IBM, fixing a critical mainframe that had brought the entire check clearance system for the country down. An angry customer was breathing down my neck, making idiotic suggestions. I was rattled. He wanted me to try swapping out some component. I said no, I was 100% sure that was not the problem. I was laser focused on fixing this problem. Turned out I was wrong. Customer complained to my management and I got…

> As sidenote, this is one of the 25 points of advice in John Perry Barlows "adult principles" which I discovered late in life. It is the only written work I have on my wall, with items 1, 3 and 10 marked with highlight pen by my wife as areas for personal development for me. I want a little more context because if my wife highlighted areas for my personal development that was hanging on our wall, I would feel contro…

Additional context: it was provided to me as suggestions, none of it came as a surprise, and I decided to put on the wall. There was no "forcing" involved. I personally don't have any problem with anyone suggesting areas of improvement for me, and equally would disregard it if it was off base.

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

#476

Post by UweSchmidt »

mikewarot wrote: post #204

I decided to study electrical engineering instead of computer science because I was dead certain there was no money to every be made writing software.... in the 1980s! I chose the wrong school because they accepted me, and my high school counselor thought I had zero chance. I couldn't afford it, and dropped out. I would have gone much farther studying computer science at Purdue Calumet, and could have had it all paid…

You clearly have important and valuable software and engineering skills that our industry's recruiting ability has a hard time activating; I hope that you get healthy soon and, if you chose to, are able to find a job that uses, and rewards these skills appropriately.

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

#477

Post by oblio »

codegeek wrote: post #446
madaxe_again wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

SO many lessons here for a lot of people. 1. Always do backups. REMOTELY. OFFSITE. 2. Check your backups regularly. Make sure you can restore from them if needed. 3. Don't ask Interns to run delete commands casually. Heck, don't run deletes casually at all. 4. See #1. 5. Don't be a dick. This was really bad for the firm but having worked at investment banks myself, people can be dicks especially in high pressure envi…

Never test backups, always test restores.

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

#478

Post by oblio »

PicassoCTs wrote: post #407

I went into programming PLCs for industrial applications. Totally stagnant, backwards industry, were the platform suppliers basically make a living, handing in advances from 20 years ago to the industries suppliers in the walled garden. Its stressful, every machine developed is a unicum, software reuse is widely not used and often not possible, due to the "lowest common denominator" setting up what can work for a tea…

You can definitely switch and other companies don't know as much about your industry as you think.

Just be bold, go interviewing.

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

#479

Post by oblio »

tasuki wrote: post #433
crossroadsguy wrote: post #155

- Not leaving jobs often (even without clear immediate reasons). - Not being aggressive about trying to get better salaries. This was mostly due to the previous point. - Not leaving shitty managers and teams ASAP (“trying” is the biggest mistake in such situations). But when I look real close then the single biggest mistake is: - Having not identified early that Software/CS simply doesn’t interest me. It’s just a ski…

Why are you here?

Why are we all here?

...

It's a news aggreggator, get over yourself.

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

#480

Post by dave_sid »

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…

Brilliantly put
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