
Career Advice for Engineers and Designers - sinak
http://www.breakoutcareers.com/
======
davidamarquis
I clicked one of the links [http://calacanis.com/2015/07/04/the-most-
important-piece-of-...](http://calacanis.com/2015/07/04/the-most-important-
piece-of-advice-for-folks-starting-their-careers/)

The 6th piece of wisdom this particular thought leader has for us is "NEVER
GET INVOLVED IN POLITICS & NEVER BE NEGATIVE."

Which is followed immediately by this:

"The people who are killed, the deer, tend to huddle around the kitchen or go
on cigarette breaks and bitch and complain about everyone and everything at
the company. The tigers are too busy killing it to be bothered with such
things... Deer: “Bitch bitch, moan moan, blame blame, cry cry. Tiger:
“Hmmm…that’s an interesting take on things. I gotta get shit done, good luck
with that.”

Apparently turning himself into a killer tiger who just fucking kills all the
time has left him without a sense of irony.

~~~
juliangregorian
Yeah, the other pieces of advice -- work super hard (for your employer), don't
ask for money... doesn't sound very tigerly to me.

~~~
wcummings
>Never leave work before she does, respond to her emails quickly and without
excuses. Here are things to say to her when she gives you amazing
responsibilities that will make her love and trust you more.

>Don’t bust your ass and sharpen your skills for your boss alone, do it for
yourself and your boss. Taking on all the problems at a startup is not being
taken advantage of — it’s taking advantage of.

>Don’t worry about your salary, just get enough money to live in a closet
close to work.

Is this guy serious? Is this satire?

From the sidebar:

>If you're a winner please email winners@calacanis.com

The more I read the more I hate this person.

~~~
jasonmcalacanis
100%

------
suttree
For actual careers advice from real people, not the looking-back-from-my-yacht
type, try [https://www.somewhere.com](https://www.somewhere.com).

Yes, I'm the founder, but this is what we do best - asking questions about
work and getting responses from people who are right there, right now, e.g.

[https://www.somewhere.com/provocations/latest](https://www.somewhere.com/provocations/latest)

~~~
dferlemann
It looks pretty and all. How is it different from LinkedIn? I'm always weary
getting myself on another "social network" thing instead in the end getting my
data sold - or worse - stolen. (actually I'm not sure which is worse...)

~~~
suttree
I could talk a lot about how we're different from LinkedIn, and how looking
pretty as a website is a hindrance at times, but we're less about what you've
done and more about how you do it.

For a lot of people things like job titles and descriptions are out of sync
with what we do, and we don't really have any good tools to show or share our
work. Developers have Github, designers have dribbble, but for everyone else
there's not a good tool out there.

But, I hear you on the YASN problem, and we're not solely a social product as
a result of that.

------
dkarapetyan
Very startup centric. Maybe should say that in the title.

~~~
jen729w
Very, very. It worries me sometimes - and I know we're on HN and that's the
audience here, but still - that people see "a startup" as the one and only
way. This will inevitably lead to pain and heartache for many.

I've worked contract jobs through my 20 year career and have done very, very
nicely out of it. (I started in the UK and am now in AU - our rates are
healthy and consistent.)

Now, with my 20 years' experience, am I thinking of branching out and doing my
own thing? Sure. Would I have recommended that to my 18 year old self? Hell
no.

~~~
aesthetics1
How do you get into something like that, if you don't mind me asking? What's
your specialty, and where were you in your career path 20 years ago that set
you up for it?

~~~
mostlystatic
In my experience (in the UK) you start by submitting your CV to loads of
recruiters saying you are looking for contract roles. If they think they can
make money from you they'll give you a call and ask for your rate etc.

I'm not the OP, but I just do plain front-end development. Contract length can
vary, sometimes it's one week in a digital agency, sometimes it's a few months
in a large company. You can also find contracts that are 12months, and they
can be extended after that.

I was freelancing when I started out, so I had some income but was also
available for full-time contract work during the day.

~~~
100timesthis
>I was freelancing when I started out, so I had some income but was also
available for full-time contract work during the day.

and companies were cool with it? I'm trying to do the same (data scientist)
but I only get offers for perm or full-time contracts.

~~~
mostlystatic
I was lucky to get a 3-day a week contract, but still had to do my freelance
work in the evening/weekend for a bit.

------
JamesBarney
Is it just me or does anyone else think that any advice that relies on a 19
year old's ability to pick successful tech startups is rubbish?

~~~
cjbarber
I'm interpreting your comment to mean that because an engineer won't be able
to pick a successful company anyway, it is useless that they follow any career
advice.

If that's a correct interpretation, then no, absolutely not. Most engineers
(you see this if you sift through linkedin) make far less optimal (I believe)
choices than they would by simply picking a Series A/B company backed by a
tier one firm like Sequoia/A16Z/Greylock/Benchmark.

And surprisingly, people take very little time to think about what they want,
what they care about, what they believe the world needs, what they enjoy, and
so on. Doesn't seem like a good idea given they'll/you'll spend 50%+ of your
waking hours at work.

~~~
soham
In life, it's often about picking from what's available to you at the time of
making the choice, instead of what's optimal. Especially true of young people.

Many engineers that come to me for interview training
([http://InterviewKickstart.com](http://InterviewKickstart.com)), have been at
their workplaces for several years, mostly since college. When in college, you
just want a job and a job in a brand name company like Cisco is amazing. It's
usually too late until you realize that you were in a team that nobody cared
about.

Then you try and interview to get into a good startup, only to realize that
interviewing landscaping has shifted. Your only option then, is to go join an
also-ran startup because they paid no attention to the interview process. It's
a vicious cycle.

~~~
VLM
"it's often about picking from what's available ... instead of what's
optimal."

That is true and is good life advice. However poorly it correlates with
reality, a semi-comical mythology has sprung up that startups are only for
young urban white male brogrammer ivy league grads in a handful of cities but
only if they have rockstar abilities. Oddly enough an aspect of the mythology
is there's a shortage of programmers and no one knows why, which is also
pretty funny. Note that every other employee at a startup is fairly average
and thats OK, only the programmers are held to this weird standard.

If normal people want to play baseball, then the a marketplace opens based on
whats available, and most of us play on parks and recs fun leagues, or the Y,
or pickup games at the park. However, the mythology is that The Best Pitcher
In The World gets to select what major league team he plays for, and similar
individuals are the only important people worth discussing.

------
peeyek
Actually, with currently title from HN

> "Career Notes for Engineers and Designers"

My expectation is they excerpt content from real-word engineer like head of
engineering or head of design some of giant tech companies.

But it seems they excerpt content from bunch of VC and i think is good from
entrepeneur perspective.

~~~
DavidHm
And therein lies the problem.

It is in the VC's interest to push more and more people to take risky bets -
this gives them more horses to bet on, while managing the risk through
diversification. For the individual horse (or er, engineer), this still
remains a risky proposition.

Which becomes far less risky if before you launch in the startup world, you
take a couple of years after graduation to work for a well known and reputed
company (say google). That will guarantee a soft landing if your startup
experiment fails, which is very likely.

~~~
BreakoutList
Yes. Though part of the crux of this advice is to choose a company that is
already growing revenue at a solid rate, from a solid base. This is not as
risky as you might think.

Also, generally, if you are a good engineer (as long as you learned things and
improved, if you worked at a company that didn't become a big success), Google
et al will welcome you back with open arms.

~~~
DavidHm
I agree with you. Joining a company that has a clear revenue model (or has
found a decent way to monetize their user base) and is growing by leaps and
bounds seems like an easy bet.

But how many of these companies are out there? Granted, we are a few waves
after the deluge of social startups with gigantic user bases and no idea on
how to monetize them, but what you describe is still a minority of startups.

And the suggestion doesn't seem to be "join a company that is already doing
well", it's "join a startup or create one, instead of going to work for some
corporation".

This is what I think: in engineering (and even more, in business), right after
your graduation there is this window where you have large and famous companies
with deep pockets who are eager to get the cream of the class. If you join
them even for an year or two, you have significantly smoothed the rest of your
working life.

Sure, you can always join them years later, and you don't need them to succeed
- but statistically, the impact of taking advantage of this window cannot be
denied.

------
saurabhsharan
This is a great summary and analysis of the best career advice from lots of
different people. Also from the same person who made the breakout list
(breakoutlist.com), which I've sent to my engineer friends who are looking for
something other than Google/FB. Just sent this one to a few friends as well.

------
PascLeRasc
For something meant for designers, I felt that the site was poorly designed.
The main menu makes it hard to see who each picture is of, and it's hard to
tell at times if we're reading the editor's opinion or the subjects'.

------
throwaway1410
Very programmer centric. I was hoping to read advice that relates to all kinds
of engineers, not just software ones.

~~~
BreakoutList
Great point. Though some of the general concepts still apply, for example, on
identifying who you want to be working with, what you care about, etc.

------
omouse
I like the "after getting hired" quotes; they're all good advice that benefit
you, the only caveat is to make sure you aren't getting taken advantage of.
Don't overwork yourself to enrich someone else; enrich yourself first.

~~~
jasonmcalacanis
What I've learned about getting "taking advantage of," is that if you're
learning and growing you can't be "taken advantage of."

Who cares if your boss is getting some great deal on a $ basis if you're
getting the experience to be the boss?

My advice in this piece is for people who aspire to accomplish great things in
their life--not folks who want a "great life" (defined as balance, vacations,
etc). So, if you're 35 and have a family this isn't the advice for you (that
should be obvious).

------
r3bl
Seems like this page is open source: [https://github.com/breakoutlist/career-
notes](https://github.com/breakoutlist/career-notes)

So maybe we could create pull requests with our suggestions?

------
JohnyLy
Great post! I think those notes are not limited to engineers and designers
tho. They are interesting for marketers, finance professionals... It could be
called" "Career notes for everyone"

------
100k
The rest of the site is a helpful database of tech companies considered to be
"breaking out" which would look good on your resume/teach you a lot/maybe make
you some money.

------
aralipo1900
Programmer is not the same thing as engineer.

~~~
eitally
That may be true, but many, many companies equate them.

~~~
spacecowboy_lon
I worked one Uk Telco t where "engineer" meant Lineman aka the guy in the van
who climbed poles for a living

