

The struggles of new graduates - ambition
http://pyre.third-bit.com/blog/archives/1435.html

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LogicHoleFlaw
These points are _exactly_ the struggles I had at my first major development
job. And from talking with others I know that I was not alone in them. My poor
communication skills were a huge blind spot for me, but fortunately I had an
excellent manager and team who worked with me to turn weaknesses into
strengths.

I learned to swallow my pride and ask questions of the people I worked with. I
started to recognize when I was getting stuck on a problem and needed a fresh
perspective. I learned how to write clearly for an audience which doesn't have
all of the domain knowledge I have accumulated. And I learned that sometimes
it's much better to say "hey! I found a bug here!" and move on to more
pressing concerns than to try to fix every problem you come across.

As I look back I'm glad to be able to say that I've grown significantly as a
developer. I won't say that I'm perfect, but I'm definitely accomplishing more
now that I've learned how better to interact with my teammates and
collaborators in a larger business setting.

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ambition
I took the observations in this article as arguments in favour of doing a
startup straight out of school. Having experienced the problems it mentions
first-hand (since I was not so wise as to do a startup straight out of
school), my logic is:

1\. You will be inefficient at a corporate job due to the overhead of
integrating with a team, an organization, and understanding a large codebase.

2\. Startups don't have inefficiencies due to large teams, large
organizations, or large codebases.

3\. You will be more efficient in a startup.

4\. Through greater efficiency, you can create more wealth in a startup than
in a big company.

As a side-effect, when you spend time in a big company, you become better at
dealing with the large organization and the large codebase. Thus, the marginal
value of leaving for a startup decreases, which creates one more lock-in.

