
Early-Career Setbacks Can Set You Up for Success - Kaibeezy
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/smarter-living/career-advice-overcome-setback.html
======
cryptica
That seems pretty obvious because anyone who succeeds on the first try just
got lucky.

Reality is very complex and it takes years of failure to understand the full
complexity of anything. Sometimes you just try something and it just happens
to work the first time; this doesn't mean that you know what you're doing.

If you succeed too early, it can give you false confidence about your
abilities and this makes you unwilling to accept advice from 'unsuccessful'
people who have a very thorough understanding of what's going on.

People who've endured constant failure throughout their careers and who never
gave up are often way more talented than successful people who've only
experienced a few failures.

Failure is relentless. It's the default outcome for essentially every action,
no matter how well it was planned beforehand. There is almost always something
completely unexpected which pops out of nowhere and ruins everything.

Small things which pop out of nowhere to ruin everything are extremely common.
When you have a lot of capital, you don't even notice those, but if don't have
capital and you've failed many times before, you learn to operate at a
different level; the essence of your strategy is not about looking at numbers
and making broad, obvious projections, instead, your strategy is centered
around anticipating and mitigating all possible small unexpected things that
can go wrong.

~~~
robocat
> When you have a lot of capital

just causes a different set of failure modes (cocaine burnout, celeb wannabe,
reality shock, etcetera).

> Failure is relentless

Very true.

------
jl2718
Irresponsible sanguine BS. Path dependence is huge. Family problems, leaving
school, bad boss, bad partner, spiteful interviewer, health/injury problems:
these things can knock you out of the “high-achiever” game very quickly.
Comebacks are rare and you can’t go back to being “high-potential”. This game
has less to do with ability than mass psychology, like stock trading or
politics. Hardships are a nice flair to your success story, but only if they
come before stepping into the competitive part of the pipeline, or after you
already made it out. The middle is brutal and unforgiving.

The other option is to get out of that game, stop living in the cult of
personality, and focus your life on exchanging money for direct value to the
customer ( i.e. indiehacker). This seems much harder than peddling a resume in
exchange for salary or investment or a professorship or whatever.

~~~
majormajor
So what would the "responsible" message be, in your book? "If you get unlucky
and have bad boss, family problem, health problem, etc, too bad, sucks to be
you!"?

Cause trust me, people who have bad stuff happen to them _already know it
sucks._

~~~
jl2718
This is a good point. I don't know. I suppose there are two options: 1) stick
with it 2) do something else. I have heard of cognitive biases in both
directions, and I don't know which is generally stronger* in most people.
Probably the best advice is to seek better advice from someone that knows what
it takes to win.

*You could probably study this with outcomes of job switching and divorces. I'm not sure how though...

~~~
tracer4201
Do something else is great advice.

My manager was a great people manager and would generally rank high in terms
of emotional intelligence (imo), but getting into details and weeds was not
his strength.

When the problem we are trying to solve requires a decision maker to remove
abstractions and deal head on with complexity, he would do the opposite. He
would avoid the tough conversations - Every. Single. Time.

My boss saw his reports (me specifically in this case) as the abstraction. It
removed complexity from his plate and made his job easier, but honestly, his
poor decision making set me up to fail. I did my best, but when it was clear
that I need management support and I won’t receive it, I had no other choice.

I left. :)

------
thiago_fm
I don't agree with this article and this culture of making failure a beautiful
thing. A Failure is a failure.

When people fail, a lot of things go bad. Many of them get depressive, they go
through a lot.

It's like saying that having abusive parents make you a strong person.
Completely bullshit.

I doubt this has any positive effect on "setting somebody up" for success. It
is much easier to be successful if you don't mess it up. For most of the
world, people aren't even allowed to fail once.

~~~
majos
There's a spectrum between "I failed -- awesome!" and "I failed -- I will stop
trying". I think articles like this are trying to push us away from the second
end of the spectrum, not necessarily push us to the first.

~~~
Tobani
There's also an art to realizing you've failed (or are going to fail), and
making the best outcome possible from it. Many things don't work out the way
you expect them to first time. Things may initially be "failures," but maybe
ultimately be some form of "success."

------
m0zg
Early career setbacks are also likely to set you up for much lower lifetime
earnings. Like it or not, how much more you will earn in your next job depends
on how much you were making in your previous one. So does how much more you
will earn after you get promoted (which happens more often early on). In
negotiation this is called "anchoring". So it _really_, _really_ pays, quite
literally, to find, get, and hold the highest paying job available right out
of school.

How much you make is a powerful signaling mechanism that (if you have a
modicum of skill to back it up) utterly dominates everything else, and has a
compounding effect over the rest of your career. You will be able to afford to
not care about money as much 10-20 years in when you're all set, but initially
it's very important that you get the highest paying job you can.

~~~
oarabbus_
>Early career setbacks are also likely to set you up for much lower lifetime
earnings. Like it or not, how much more you will earn in your next job depends
on how much you were making in your previous one. So does how much more you
will earn after you get promoted (which happens more often early on). In
negotiation this is called "anchoring". So it _really_, _really_ pays, quite
literally, to find, get, and hold the highest paying job available right out
of school.

I graduated in 2012 with a biomedical engineering degree, and the vast
majority of my collegiate graduating class made more than me right out of
school, including the non-engineers; I worked as a server/busboy and also as a
cashier for about 6 months while constantly applying for jobs. In case you're
wondering, I did have internship experience most summers in college, nothing
stellar, but it was on there. I will say that 2012/2013 was an absolutely
awful time to be a non-CS fresh grad in the job market. I hadn't imagined
working as a server after completing an engineering degree, and the difficulty
I faced in getting industry roles led me to immediately apply for a MS
program.

My first "relevant"/industry job was a contract role at a medical device
company that paid $22/hr in an extremely high COL area (SF Bay Area). I was
likely in the bottom 15th percentile of earnings at this point. 3 years later,
I'd worked my way up to ~70k annualized salary. All while doing the MS program
part time.

Today, sure there are plenty of people whose earnings far exceed mine, but I'd
be surprised if I wasn't at least in the 80th-90th percentile of both salary
and lifetime earnings of my graduating cohort.

Now, obviously you won't hear any objection from me against finding, getting,
and holding the highest paying job out of school. But I certainly question if
it's really as important as people claim it is. And I will say I don't know if
I'd be earning as much as I do today, and I'm not sure I'd have a MS degree,
had I landed a better, higher paying role out of college.

~~~
m0zg
Frankly I can't imagine why someone would stay in Bay Area if they can't land
at least a $80-100/hr job. How do you pay $3K/mo rent on $22/hr? How do you
buy that $5 gallon gas or pay twice as much for utilities?

MS is a waste of time IMO, and I say so as a MS myself (my alma mater only
offers 6-year MS degrees, so I couldn't bail; if I could, I would). I got zero
benefit out of my master's, and I'd be further along in my career (as well as
monetarily) if I studied 2 years less. In fact, I'd say I got zero benefit
from my degree period, other than to serve as a confirmation to the potential
employer that I can survive at the toughest tech school in the country. That's
worth something, but I wish I could be done with this hazing ritual in a year
or two. Everything I use day to day I had to learn myself, school was barely
involved.

70K is where things _start_ in the software industry nowadays, for the bottom
of the barrel candidate who's still able to code somewhat competently.
Talented grads pull $100K+ right out of the gate pretty easily. FAANG will
drop $120-150K on you like it's nothing, and if you don't suck it goes way up
from there. Quite obviously, these numbers are US-only. Few people in Europe
make this much even at the more senior levels, let alone as a fresh grad.

~~~
oarabbus_
Strange post.

First, you realize the vast majority of workers in the Bay are not software
engineers? And even less people make $80-100/hr?

Second, when you make $22/hr, you aren't staying in a studio for $3k a month.
You're in a house sharing a bathroom with a few others roommates for
<$1000/mo.

Third, you may have missed the part where I indicated while I currently work
in tech, I studied biomedical engineering and worked in the medical device
industry. BME salaries do not start at a floor of $70k like software.

As for why? Had I not done all the grinding early in my career I wouldn't have
ended up at a "top tier" tech company today. THAT is why one stays in the Bay
Area. I agree with your point that everything useful you must to learn
yourself for the most part, rather than being taught it in school, but I
disagree with the rest of your sentiments.

~~~
m0zg
Why is it "strange"? I'm referring to software industry in particular, with
its expectations around career progression, income, standard of living, etc.
It's like I was talking about lawyers in SV, and you'd responded with "do you
realize the majority of people who are in SV are janitors".

This is borne by my own experience, and is not guaranteed to apply to other
industries. Most have much lower earning potential, and for them SV is truly
unlivable, so I don't get what they're looking for there either.

~~~
oarabbus_
That's a poor and inaccurate analogy; neither the original link nor my comment
was specifically about the software industry. In fact, my comment was
specifically _not_ about it. You responded to my comment, not the other way
around, and are going off into some tangent about your personal livelihood,
which is hardly relevant to the article as a whole.

There's an unfortunately-not-uncommon "software engineer superiority complex"
and general myopia and my spidey sense is going off right now.

Anyhow, I'm not sure how much more to spell it out. My early career setbacks
and determination to stay in the Bay Area led me to my current situation in a
competitive tech company in a career I enjoy. Had I followed your worldview
I'd probably have left for some miserable place in the middle of nowhere and
be far less successful than I am today.

------
non-entity
Encouraging, but I'll remain cautious about this. Regardless of early career
stumbles I'll be successful by the average person's idea, but I doubt I'll be
considered successful by my own ideals or by that of many people here, for
example.

------
oarabbus_
Lots of disagreement against this article.

I graduated in 2012 with a biomedical engineering degree, and the vast
majority of my collegiate graduating class made more than me right out of
school, including the non-engineers; I worked as a server/busboy and also as a
cashier for about 6 months while constantly applying for jobs. In case you're
wondering, I did have internship experience most summers in college, nothing
stellar, but it was on there. I will say that 2012/2013 was an absolutely
awful time to be a non-CS fresh grad in the job market. I hadn't imagined
working as a server after completing an engineering degree, and the difficulty
I faced in getting industry roles led me to immediately apply for a MS
program.

My first "relevant"/industry job was a contract role at a medical device
company that paid $22/hr in an extremely high COL area (SF Bay Area). I was
likely in the bottom 15th percentile of earnings at this point. 3 years later,
I'd worked my way up to ~70k annualized salary. All while doing the MS program
part time.

Today I'm at a Letter Corp in tech, and while sure there are plenty of people
whose earnings far exceed mine, I'd be surprised if I wasn't at least in the
80th-90th percentile of both salary and lifetime earnings of my graduating
cohort.

Now, obviously you won't hear any objection from me against finding, getting,
and holding the highest paying job out of school. But I certainly question if
it's really as important as people claim it is. And I will say I don't know if
I'd be earning as much as I do today, and I'm not sure I'd have a MS degree,
had I landed a better, higher paying role out of college.

~~~
sct202
That's a great story, and I think something a lot of people need to hear
things like your story especially for the jump from school to working. I have
a friend who basically became a nomad and only recently landed his first
professional job, and it seemed like every year he got more anxious and
doubtful about himself.

------
sys_64738
Absolutely. Better to do a startup early and see it fail than make the same
mistake mid-career. It showed me startups are a mug’s game.

~~~
ecf
Yeah it’s best to get the lesson early on that venture-backed startups are 99%
of the time just smoke and mirrors.

------
empath75
This article seems to be drawing a very broad feel-good conclusion from a very
weak foundation.

------
b3kart
Non-paywalled: [http://archive.is/bUZBu](http://archive.is/bUZBu)

------
mcguire
" _Setbacks are an integral part of a scientific career, yet little is known
about their long-term effects. Here we examine junior scientists applying for
National Institutes of Health R01 grants. By focusing on proposals fell just
below and just above the funding threshold, we compare near-miss with narrow-
win applicants, and find that an early-career setback has powerful, opposing
effects. On the one hand, it significantly increases attrition, predicting
more than a 10% chance of disappearing permanently from the NIH system. Yet,
despite an early setback, individuals with near misses systematically
outperform those with narrow wins in the longer run. Moreover, this
performance advantage seems to go beyond a screening mechanism, suggesting
early-career setback appears to cause a performance improvement among those
who persevere. Overall, these findings are consistent with the concept that
“what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger,” which may have broad implications
for identifying, training and nurturing junior scientists._ "

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12189-3](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12189-3)

------
mcguire
[Note: I can't read the article. Sorry.]

Early-career setbacks can also set back your career permanently.

My first job out of college was with Taligent. That did not go well. (Well,
there was OS/2 for a short time before that...) Then I worked on the
WorkplaceOS/IBM's uKernel. That didn't go well either.

Since those first years, I went back to grad school, worked for a university,
and got comfortable for far too long. Then I went back to IBM. (Don't do
that.) Since then, I have worked for various "enterprise" things and other
low-risk, low-reward endeavors. My salary peaked at about $120k.

Be careful when you take advice from people who are successful.

------
ipoopatwork
Well duh. If you're barely getting the grant, you're not going to be in a
place where you can impress people and progress very well.

If you miss the grant by a bit, you'll find somewhere where you're a better
fit.

It's not the setback that helps

~~~
samvher
_We find that the near-miss group naturally received significantly less NIH
funding in the first five years following treatment, averaging $0.29 million
less per person (Fig. 2d, t-test p-value < 0.05, Cohen’s d = 0.28), which is
consistent with prior studies. Yet the funding difference between the two
groups disappeared in the second five-year period (Fig. 2d, t-test p-value >
0.1, Cohen’s d = 0.02)._

From the paper [0]. This does not look like the rejects found similar
opportunities in more suitable places.

[0]
[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12189-3](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-12189-3)

------
yellowapple
Worth noting that the paper is specific to _science_ careers, while the Times
article tries to extrapolate it to careers in general regardless of field.

------
solinent
People who fail are also bigger risk takers, I wonder if this has any effect.
I've failed a couple times already and I always come back stronger. It seems
like it is because I take risks that keep things growing. If I wasn't a risk
taker, I'd probably be where I started, and even though maybe I'd be happier,
I'd be much less successful.

------
Kaibeezy
_failures in the first phases of your career may mean you can come back
stronger than those who never stumbled_

~~~
war1025
Similar to plants that live in too controlled of micro-climates. They don't
develop the correct stress hardening and fall over / wilt at the first sign of
normal weather.

------
tehjoker
Love how we play a game where only about 1 in 5 people tops can "win" or
suffer harshly.

------
gigatexal
Failure can be a powerful teacher.

------
snagglegaggle
_licks finger and holds it up_

Nope, still screwed.

