
The worst career advice I ever received - mji
https://hackernoon.com/the-worst-career-advice-i-ever-received-54aaf2a50c93
======
tedsanders
My synthesis: To get promoted fastest, join teams & businesses that will grow
fast.

This makes sense to me. It's why we have 30-year-old CEOs of hypergrowth tech
startups, but we don't have 30-year-old CEOs of mature companies.

It also makes sense from a career capital perspective. The skills & knowledge
that are most valuable to learn are those that will be needed by fast-growing
teams & businesses.

Of course, the obvious follow-up question is how do you identify which teams
and businesses will grow fast?

~~~
virgilp
> of course, the obvious follow-up question is how do you identify which teams
> and businesses will grow fast?

I think his point was: when you're certain that the current team isn't, find a
new one. You can't reliably identify what will grow fast, but you can identify
what won't

~~~
jonny_eh
> You can't reliably identify what will grow fast, but you can identify what
> won't

This is a great insight that certainly rings true to me.

~~~
hyperpallium
It this case it was even stronger, identifying not what won't grow fast, but
what was failing.

And the new business being "interesting" improves the odds of growing fast.

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rafiki6
Fundamentally this individual took a risk and it worked out. There was an
equal chance that the new product he was working on could have floundered and
he might not have gotten promoted. Survivorship bias is present here. Same as
saying "I quit my job and started an amazing company and would never look
back". The only useful piece of advice here is "take measured risks in your
career and maybe some of them might pay off".

~~~
underwater
The "risk" he was taking was slight. Given that his goal was to be promoted,
the status quo — remaining a line manager on a struggling team — was a
failure, rather than being neutral.

Importantly, with the benefit of experience he's now in a position to identify
that moving teams was less risky than he'd even assumed. This is not just
survivor bias either — in management you aren't rewarded for keeping a
floundering team afloat. You need to attach yourself to a team that is making
your manager and their managers look good.

~~~
gaius
_You need to attach yourself to a team that is making your manager and their
managers look good._

Right, it’s the same business model as elite universities - find people who
are likely to succeed anyway and take credit for their success. Except in the
case of management, it’s exploitative of the Workers because the manager
hoovers up the lions share of the financial rewards, not just a fuzzy boost to
reputation and prestige.

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jshowa3
Don't quite understand this article. Seems to be looking through rose colored
glasses. There's no indication that this guy would've radically changed his
career by moving to the new position, but because he did, he now writes a
medium post with a overly exaggerated, click-bait title about advice he deemed
the worst ever which could've been the greatest ever if his new position was a
dumpster fire with people he didn't get along with.

~~~
kanox
> There's no indication that this guy would've radically changed his career by
> moving to the new position

Job interviews can offer plenty of indication regarding how different the new
position is.

Article seems to have the same basic idea as
[https://xkcd.com/1768](https://xkcd.com/1768) \- When in doubt it's better to
leave.

~~~
jshowa3
Job interviews often hide the following: 1) What the people are like 2) What
the benefits are 3) What your bosses like 4) What the company culture is like

Pretty much everything meaningful about a job is kept hidden because of the
game of "you shouldn't look like your benefits shopping".

I haven't gone to a single job interview where those were discussed before
hiring at a non-superficial level (I've interviewed about 5-6 times in my
professional career) And you're actively discouraged from asking these
questions when learning about interviewing techniques.

------
mikekchar
On the flipside, back when Ottawa was the "Silicon Valley North" (I assume
it's not called that any more -- that was a long time ago), I've had friends
who took management roles in risky ventures, had the company crash and burn,
and tried to find another management gig only to find that Ottawa was in a bit
of a down turn. Finally they tried to get development roles, but couldn't land
them because they had been in management for too long and nobody trusted their
technical abilities.

It's easy to say in retrospect that a flip of the coin was successful or
unsuccessful. Hard to say in advance. Having said that, I think it's sound
advice to say that if you aren't getting the opportunities you want in you
current situation, it might be a good idea to see if those opportunities exist
elsewhere. Just be careful to weigh the risks and realise that survivor bias
is a thing.

~~~
GhostVII
I think the Toronto-Waterloo corridor is more commonly referred to as "Silicon
Valley North" than Ottowa now. Hopefully it doesn't become too similar to
actually silicon valley though it's pretty nice as it is.

------
cortesoft
This post assumes that everyone wants to 'move up' in their career. Maybe, but
what is wrong with not doing that? Is it the worst thing to keep doing what
you like doing, being comfortable and enjoying life?

I know that many people are driven to reach a certain goal in their career,
but that doesn't mean that everyone has to do that. Some people might want to
just go to work, do their thing, and take home their salary. That isn't bad,
it is just different.

~~~
KrishnaAnaril
To move up in your career you should get out of your comfort zone and take
risks. I think this is what the author meant. It is fine if you are content
with your position.

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xt00
The article should be called “advice that didn’t end up being good in my
case”. Power vacuums often are great times for people to find a new spot and a
new opportunity. I’ve seen this happen many times at companies I’ve been at.
For example certain people who previously were not the highest qualified
person to be a manager ended up getting an opportunity to be one—they ended up
doing a really good job and got promoted multiple times after that. So I would
say if you are hoping to get into a position that you may not on paper look
right for, sticking around during a power vacuum is not a bad idea at least
for a while.

------
tsomctl
From a retired NASA engineer that worked on the Apollo program (and I greatly
respected at the time): don't become a computer programmer, it's all going to
India and there won't be any money in it.

~~~
mistrial9
if taken at face value, this is sad. In fact, the entire field is moving in
many directions at once. Some parts of some kinds of programming already did
move to India from the US, but its not at all the whole story.

~~~
Mountain_Skies
Seems like there is a hidden bit of advice about not becoming overly
specialized or at the very least be nimble enough to be able to change your
specialty quickly. Also seems like this will lead to "specialists" with
shallow knowledge on average.

~~~
tsomctl
I see it as a bit of hidden advice of just because someone knows a shit ton
about one thing, doesn't mean they known everything about everything, even if
they sound like they do.

------
madrox
Anyone who’s read Ed Catmull’s experience looking after Toy Story 2 knows this
adage: it’s not about the situation, it’s what you bring to it.

You’ll bring whatever you’re capable of bringing whether you stay in chaos or
move on. It’s less about the environment and more about your attitude...even
more than you may realize at the time.

In my experience, the greatest success in my career has happened when I
stopped trying to figure out how to get ahead and just went about the business
of doing and growing.

------
nmstoker
This is inspiring but it's worth noting (if not being put off by) the survivor
bias at play here.

~~~
xiphias2
Not really, I had a friend at Nokia maintaining old code in a team. He was the
go-to person for many years without getting promoted to even team leader
position.

I told him to learn some new language that's used in the company that can be
used as a leverage to switch companies as well if he isn't getting promoted,
and try to switch. 1 year later he's working on writing new application load
balancers in go, and he's loving it, and getting more money for it, and he can
easily switch to other company if he wants to.

Of course the old team really misses him, but they didn't value him high
enough, so they lost the best person on their team.

~~~
TravHatesMe
I don't consider your anecdote to be a valid argument against his claim that
this is survivor bias. I appreciate you sharing that person's story but the
fact is, there are many variables at play.

I think that in most cases, career advice is subjective and to brand advice as
black and white, good or bad, is silly. Nobody can predict the future. A
seemingly negative decision could potentially lead to other positive outcomes.
That's why I find little value in this discussion: it's subjective and
difficult to measure.

~~~
xiphias2
Sure, it really depends a lot on the situation. Jumping around is just as bad
as rotting in a place, but I wanted to share my example because it was a clear
cut case when my friend tried everything to fix the local situation first.

------
TheOtherHobbes
A lot of people are saying this is survivor bias, but consider the matrix of
possibilities - stay, situation improves AND opportunity for promotion
appears; stay, situation stagnates or deteriorates; leave, new project
prospers; leave, new project bombs.

They're not all equally likely.

Staying on a lame duck project is a huge gamble. It achieved lame duckness for
all kinds of reasons. To benefit you have to assume that those conditions will
change AND that the changes will create opportunities for advancement OR that
you will be able to force changes and advancement from your current position.

How likely is that?

Getting out and changing is a gamble, but if you're not completely clueless
you have some prospect of assessing the likely success of a new project.

Bottom line: giving yourself more options is not a bad game move. You can
interview without commitment until you're fairly sure you're going to make a
good move, and that's much more likely to work out than staying on a project
that's broken and going nowhere.

------
cyberferret
The article feels like a variation of survivor bias to me. I think his friend
was right and the author got ‘lucky’ to land a role in a successful company.
He could easily have landed in another toxic or stale company.

Alternatively, you could probably find another story about an engineer who
left a similar situation and founded a unicorn company, so in comparison,
would this author have ‘failed’ because he didn’t go down that road?

~~~
cortesoft
Not agreeing or disagreeing, but one note: he didn't go to a different
company, he went to a different division within Microsoft.

~~~
scarface74
In a large enough organization, moving to a different team might as well be
moving to a different company.

------
geebee
The problem with this article is that it could have gone either way. For
instance, I could tell a story about how my company was going through a rough
patch, and how my friend left and tried to recruit me away, but I stuck with
it, and when we returned to growth, I was promoted and had responsibility for
hiring and growing a team. I might throw in a bit there about how I call my
job-hopping friend, who is still floating around in various dev roles after
the hot startup he hopped over to went under, and how the conversation always
makes me feel good about how much better I'm doing, and how I expect him to
come sniffing around for a job any time now...

What would this signify, beyond how this particular decision worked out nicely
for me? I'm not sure, other than that it is important to make good decisions
about whether you stay or leave, and where you go next. Sometimes stay,
sometimes leave, and it often won't be clear at the time which is the better
call.

------
darkerside
This really speaks to me. It can be so hard to give up the challenges you know
and the comfort of the status quo to take on a new opportunity. I'd wager the
recommended solution, "having a picture in mind of what you want to do", makes
it a lot easier to recognize and grab those imperfect opportunities when they
present themselves.

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miguelmota
Few tips for working at any startup:

\- Don't work with assholes (avoid detrimental execs and culture)

\- Has plenty of growth opportunities (able to quickly expand skillset & learn
new roles)

\- Proven product/market fit & steady growth (avoid stagnant startups and
sinking ships)

------
hevi_jos
When a company goes bad, the best people go out first.

This is a force bigger and stronger than you are.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Technical people who are intrinsically motivated (typically the best and most
productive people) often are the sort of people who find working with other
high caliber people to be an important and highly valuable part of their work
experience. When good people leave because the company isn't treating them
well the result is a cascade effect, because every good person leaving makes
the working environment worse. So more good people leave. Then for everyone
left behind there's extra work and a struggle to reacquire lost institutional
knowledge, and everybody finds that executing on projects is more difficult
and results in less success.

Because of the nature of software development (no development cycle is ever
really identical to the previous one) it can be difficult to conclusively or
objectively say that the capabilities of the organization have been reduced,
or that the working environment is poorer, because these things require
subjective judgments. But many people have enough experience to make those
judgments for themselves, to _feel_ the organization getting worse and less
capable, and this can create a kind of pressure for people to find other
options elsewhere even if not everyone understands why on a conscious level.

------
luord
> No opportunity will be perfect [...]

Having trouble with this whole paragraph because it's essentially arguing in
favor of the other extreme, which is just as bad: sucking up whatever you
might not like about your new job and how bad the situation in it might be
because it might help your career.

The solution to "staying stuck because it's comfortable" is not "suffer
through something because it might help you".

One needs to measure the compromises.

------
exabrial
"Follow your dreams", no follow what is practical and use your money to do
what is good and fun because of that.

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AmazonHackers
I'm at some cross roads my self. I couldn't have read this at a better time.
Thanks

