Ten Hard Lessons from Ten Years in Tech

Welcome! This post is targeted at beginners, but I hope most people entering the job market can benefit from some honest lessons learned the hard way. In this post, I hope to pass whatever wisdom I can from my experience in tech in a way that only I can. You may have just graduated into the worst job market we have had in a while and need some encouragement or maybe you have some doubts about your abilities and think all is lost or perhaps you just made a BIG mistake in prod. Either way, the sun will rise tomorrow so I hope that you find the courage to rise with it.

Lesson 1 - You have not made your biggest mistakes yet.

You have not yet learned how to fail *spectacularly* well. If you are a junior, you should have exactly zero opportunity to bring an entire organization down to its knees. You may feel as though your mistakes are career-ending because you don't have enough experience to know what that means yet. You will only get better with practice. That includes mistakes :-) So don't worry, it is out of your hands at this point anyways and you wil learn to make mush smarter (and bigger) disasters...I mean mistakes. Ones that you can recover from more easily without bringing in 5-10 seniors just to help fix. Just learn what you can and move on. Your mistakes will one day be *spectacular*, I promise.

Lesson 2 - You can actually learn anything, given enough time.

If you are able to read, then you can learn anything given enough time. You may feel as though there is a deluge of information coming at you, you may feel as though you should already know something. You may feel all of this while presenting in a room of 20 people. We can all see that you are drawing a blank, but that is actually fine. What is not fine is making up some random stuff to fill in the gap. No one wants that, and you know better than to lie. At some point you will start drawing on experience to fill those gaps, even if you have not seen that situation before. You will connect the dots some day. Please stop lying - only you believe it. Those people are still staring at you, so let them know that you will investigate/research/find out the information. Then do it. Then somehow document what you found and how it may fit into future situations. It may come in handy, or not. I am not an oracle.

Lesson 3 - Document how you find solutions and share with others

You are probably not the first person to discover a solution that your team is working on. The solution does not belong to you, you found it on StackOverflow. Document and offer to share the learnings. Don't be selfish or high and mighty, that persona is difficult to maintain. Documentation is super important and actually done poorly a lot of the time. Adding this skill to your arsenal only opens up opportunity for you so get money, #YOLO, and learn how to document and share early on.

Lesson 4 - Learn how to communicate

Communication is probably in the top five skills you should learn. Learn how to be concise and stop using wishy washy language. Communication is important for promotions and life in general. It is so much more important than you think. You need to ask for what you want in your career, clearly document the impact that you have had over the year for that sweet promotion. No one is a mind reader. For the love of everything that you hold dear, at least learn how to type better than I can.

Lesson 5 - Trust and Verify

You just met these people. Your new team. You have no idea what their capacity for research and problem solving is. You can trust they are probably doing their best, just as you are. But this is a good time to learn how to verify information, because you are both juniors and there is a non-zero possibility that you are both wrong on this. Ask questions, soak up the knowledge from those with experience. Sometimes they will leave you dangling (maybe for your learning experience) so if you still cannot figure this out, the internet is always there. Just verify what you find with someone first.

Lesson 6 - Show Up

There are so many people who, for whatever reason, do not show up to or in their job. Just showing up, no matter how daunting the meeting is, means a lot. Sometimes, you will absolutely be smashed with unanswerable questions, smarty pants folks who just want to test you and watch you squirm, and other unpleasantries. Some people actually do just bail, quit, or catch a case of analysis paralysis. Show up, hand an agenda, and get it done. The only way to get better at terrbile meetings is to practice doing what scares you so just show up.

Lesson 7 - You will never know it all and no one is keeping score

You wont know it all on a particular topic. If you do, congratulations on learning yourself into a pigeon hole. It's fine to become obsessed with something that you are deeply passionate about, just know that you will likely only be using a small percentage of that day to day in most jobs. Try to learn a breadth of topics in your area and pick up a thing or two every year that you know nothing about. You may be surprised to learn how connected everything is or that one area of expertise allows you to pick up another area more easily than you thought.

Lesson 8 - Take care of yourself first

I am not a schedule type of person. I hate having a rigid schedule but the reality is that I am an adult and so are you. Your job and customers are relying on you to be somewhat consistent. Don't forget to plan your day around things that make the day a little brighter: go for a walk, make your favorite breakfast before clocking in, try a new nighttime sleep care routine to help you face the onslaught of crazy coming the next day. You can't work efficiently if you are burned out and you can't work at all if you are dead so pay attention to good nutrition and exercise at least 80% of the time. If you are starting at zero, then go for 10% and work your way up. Consistency > perfection.

Lesson 9 - There is nothing about you that is perfect, stop trying

You know what the great thing about you is? *Uniqueness* Your definition of perfection is entirely different than the person sitting next to you. The beautiful thing is that you need to throw out these definitions and strive for continuous improvement. How can one improve on perfection? They don't. They improve on the mess that they have going on in their personal and professional lives and continue to do better. There is not a place for someone who can not or will not learn. Don't be that person.

Lesson 10 - Move

You may have come to the crippling realization that you do not enjoy what you do and/or where you do it. Welcome to your first career crisis. You *can* always make a change. It may take some time, though. I personally would not YOLO it and quit without a backup plan unless you find yourself in a particularly abusive environment. In all other cases, you can likely keep learning new skills and make a switch to a different position or company. You can have as many careers as you want! I mean maybe don't go from a job where you sit 8 hours a day to, say, being an astronaut...but you get it. There is literally no shame in changing things up. Like the above lesson, no one is keeping score on you. Be free.