What Do You Wish You’d Known When Your Career Started?


As with learning things about university in hindsight, it sometimes takes years (maybe even decades) to get wise about our work. If you were going to give career advice to a novice in your field, what would it be?

Photo by almagami / Shutterstock.

Patrick McKenzie recently wrote this awesome post (he calls it a README.txt for your career) on what he learned after 10 years “and a lot of suffering” as an engineer. Though meant for programmers, there’s great universal advice in there, such as positioning yourself in terms of how you contribute to your company’s bottom line rather than your job title, why if you want to succeed you have to drop the modesty, and how the best jobs happen through networking. It’s a worthwhile read for any stage of your career.

However, we’re asking you, Lifehackers: what are the things you’ve learned since you started working that could help those new to your field or creating a career in general?

Don’t Call Yourself a Programmer, and Other Career Advice [Kalzumeus]


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