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Career advice I wish I’d been given when I was young

• slg 7y ago
  The Google Alerts thing is one of the more unique suggestions and one I haven't heard before. What kind of Google Alert would both be relevant to your career and be rare enough that it only triggers a result roughly once every 15 years (assuming the numbers from the post are accurate)?
  • andersonnnunes 7y ago
    Wild guess: the name of people you consider important plus the location in which you live/work? Just in case they ever pass by close to you, so you can try to catch up to them and have a conversation.
• jedberg 7y ago
  > Avoid spending time to earn or save money. This could be dangerous advice. Sure, if you value your time at $20/hr, maybe saving a few bucks now doesn't make sense. But no one is paying you $20/hr for the time your spending doing that. Unless your other option is to work more at an hourly job instead of bargain hunting, that time is worth $0/hr (plus whatever you value your sanity at). But more importantly, when you save it gives you the change to purchase greater opportunity in the future, which make have a greater than $20/hr value down the road.
  • thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
    Yup. By spending money, every 20$ you spend, uses up 1 hour of your life. If you want more time back, you need to save money.
    • ghda 7y ago
      Plus you spend post-tax money but you gotta earn pre-tax money. A penny saved is nearly two pennies earned, depending on your tax bracket.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  • ACow_Adonis 7y ago
    The real lesson should be one from economics, combine time and money based upon their current relative marginal value. When you have heaps of time, thats the exact moment when you should be using it to set yourself up for future earning and saving of money. When you work long hours and make enough money, use that money to buy back some time. And if you "work long hours, make few money", my condolences, but that also gives you an important insight into the value of doing the former if or when you can...(under the assumption that the work isn't effectively future investment)
    • tonyedgecombe 7y ago
      The further up the scale you go the more tenuous the link between hours worked and income becomes. Sure, if you are a part time worker paid by the hour or on minimum wage then increasing your hours will work. For most people here I would expect adding an extra hour to their week will have little impact. They would be better tightening their spending if they want to improve their financial position.
  • therealdrag0 7y ago
    Might have been better worded about recognizing tradeoffs. But you might be missing the point a little bit. The point is NOT to try to maximize money, but to maximize time. He's very forthright that he's paying more for time; and not being payed hourly for his time. For example, health is important, but if you're hell-bent on the cheapest living/commute option you might not have time to exercise regularly or spend time with loved-ones etc. Personally, I just went from 20m commute to 2h daily commute; so I'm strongly considering moving closer to work which will be more expensive. > when you save The decision should definitely not be made at the expense of healthy saving, but that varies from person to person. E.g., I am currently saving ~40% of my income, so I have plenty of cushion to buy more time.
• GCA10 7y ago
  I like this list a lot more than Sam Altman's How to be Successful. Sam does have some excellent pointers about everything from compounding your impact to having an exploring mindset. But his list feels as if it's written mostly from the perspective of a racehorse breeder who wants to win the next Kentucky Derby with one of his beasts. (Doesn't really matter which one. Also doesn't hugely matter if some of the others collapse during the quest.) The 80,000-hour author is much more in step with advice that can help people at almost every decile of achievement.
  • hkmurakami 7y ago
    Sama's post as you say is only within three purview of a very narrow industry and career niche. For those who are knee deep in it, it resonates strongly. But not everyone is in said industry And applying perfectly good advice for one industry isn't necessarily appropriate for others. That's something that I dislike about a lot of advice posts out there -- that there are few disclaimers about for whom it is written for.
  • loeg 7y ago
    Some recommendations in this one are highly specific (e.g., keeping security clearance as an option) and probably applies to the author's choice of field (something politics in DC) but not (?)most fields. I certainly don't want to work for anyone who requires me to have a security clearance. Everything I've heard about programming in a security clearance environment is a nightmare. Also, I'm not sure how you get to 30 in software without having a full resume (1-pager, only relevant experience). You don't need 10 10% side projects and you definitely don't need to take unpaid internships.
• tony_cannistra 7y ago
  > "Find easy ways you can come across better." Listen, I know that we live in a world in which many things other than objective merit matter when it comes to success/relationships/upward mobility. I realize there's psychology involved, perhaps even evolutionary psychology (i.e., hard to change). But I hate this advice. It reeks of elitism, with a nose high in the air. "Want success? Look good and smile." What about: "Find easy ways to be open and accepting of what others have to say, despite your instinct not to listen." Might be overthinking this one, but this line of thinking is frustrating.
  • kbenson 7y ago
    > Might be overthinking this one, but this line of thinking is frustrating. I think maybe you are. I read "Find easy ways you can come across better." as "learn to communicate your intent clearer", as long as your normal mode of communication isn't being an asshole. If you're not an asshole, explaining yourself clearly and effectively without being too verbose is the same as coming across better. Edit: And if someone is an asshole, that can be interpreted as "find a way to be less of an asshole."
  • nxc18 7y ago
    Having recently lost 80+ pounds (~40 to my goal) the transformation in how people perceive you is remarkable and very noticeable. Make no mistake, if you're very overweight, or otherwise visibly not taking care of yourself, you are absolutely losing opportunities. As a fat person, I know anti-fat bias is bulls hit; I also know it's really, really hard to control for. The advice may not apply to you, because past a certain point it does become elitism.
    • cubano 7y ago
      Big time congrats on dropping the weight, and it's great to hear how it seems to be "noticeably" changing the way people perceive you. It's a very difficult thing to do, and ever since my younger son started battling (and winning) his weight issues, I have become much more sensitive to how unfairly some people treat overweight people.
    • 7y ago
• ken 7y ago
  > Avoid stuff that could have irreversible reputational harm or slow down a security clearance. This sounds a little strange to me, coming from "Anonymous". Do they think there is advice here which could cause them irreversible career damage? I suppose it could also simply be the desire to not have half the internet jump down your throat for a typo, as often happens these days.
  • Chlorus 7y ago
    My cynical asshole take is that because most of this advice is so reductive that it's useless, and they were probably embarrassed to attach a name to such a low-value clickbait post - I feel very stupid to have clicked it. For example... > Find the biographies of people whose job you’d like to have and figure out how they got it. You can effectively reverse engineer their career path. If you're famous enough to warrant a biography(and I'm assuming an actual biography, not just a wiki article) then odds are pretty good you came from a very privileged background. Not sure how you can reverse-engineer being born into that.
    • ACow_Adonis 7y ago
      As an analyst who's read through various biographies and the resumes of people in high power positions, you've generally already lost out if you can't list on yours (subtly or not so subtly): "have rich, educated, well connected parents, and use those connections to land your first few jobs or investments". I suppose there's some marginal value in learning that you should talk the talk and walk the walk to better fit into that culture (and that will open up some opportunities for you), but merit is not how 90%+ of the world works...
      • czbond 7y ago
        I quite disagree. It's not the "position" these give you, but the mind set. The mind set is what differentiates highly successful. I know quite a lot of people who are multi-millionares, don't have to work - and came from very middle class positions. I once met a billionaire who said "Anyone can be homeless, or rich beyond their dreams. It's their mindset, actions, and opportunities that they seize to set themselves apart. Do what everyone else does, to end up no better"
• jachee 7y ago
  > Be a pleasant person. This is the cheat-code for getting everything you'll ever need and most of what you want out of life. Frankly, I would have made it number one.
  • azhenley 7y ago
    Being pleasant is one of my personal rules/goals for life. But it is interesting to analyze great leaders who have been jerks. This 30 minute Youtube documentary on the topic is very interesting: "DICKS: Do you need to be one to be a successful leader?" https://youtu.be/gRRvjZ_XNog https://youtu.be/gRRvjZ_XNog
    • jrhurst 7y ago
      In bigger projectd and groups people need structure. If you're goal is provide success and structure for the people involved you can't let other people's lack of structure hurt everyone else. I think the "Kind of a Dick" is more of a cultural shock issue. You can be pleasant, but also blunt and honest about what needs to be done.
  • austincheney 7y ago
    I would not make it number one. Being generally pleasant is absolutely beneficial to yourself and everyone around you, but it is not a replacement for competence. Faking it with pleasantries is toxic, a form of lying with misdirection.
    • badfrog 7y ago
      Are you suggesting that somebody can only be one of pleasant or competent?
      • austincheney 7y ago
        You should always strive for both.
      • alasdair_ 7y ago
• sushisushisushi 7y ago
  Career advice I wish I'd been given when I was young 1. Don't organize your life and career plans around listicles 2. Your life and your career are different things 3. Your career is just a job 4. The goal of a job for 99% of people in the wage-earning workforce is to sell your time now at a higher price than you will buy it back for later, minus the cost of existing 4. You are not your job 5. You can always generate money, but you can't generate time (you can only buy it back with money, and only so much). Spend your time on what will matter to you most when you die 6. You will die There is too much exaltation of work in our culture. Work provides no meaning to most people, and never will.* I'm very happy for those who have the right personality and are lucky enough to have found the right position where they really feel like they are getting a lot of personal satisfaction out of their job. But most people would be better off IMHO if they treated their job like a job and didn't try to turn it into the answer to the meaning of life. *That doesn't mean that doing your job _well_ and taking professional pride in your work can't be highly satisfying. But too often I see people working long hours or wasting their time worrying about work without realizing that it's time they will never get back--at least not before it's too late
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• qntty 7y ago
  Does anyone else find things like this from sites like 80000 hours really alienating? Do people really think like this? I don't know anyone who takes their career so seriously.
  • jstewartmobile 7y ago
    I got the die-hard DC public/private/nonprofit bureaucrat vibe from it--which is pretty frightening. Garlic and crucifixes don't work on those.
  • joyeuse6701 7y ago
    One the one hand I agree with you, sometimes a career is just a thing one does to live comfortably. On the other hand, it's 80,000 hours of one's life, and it can be squandered if one does not at least occasionally think about what they're doing with that chunk of time and whether they can improve how they spend it.
  • rytill 7y ago
    That’s crazy that you don’t know anyone like that. It’s a common thing for people to take very seriously.
    • qntty 7y ago
      I guess I'm off-put by something more specific in the article than "taking your career seriously." I know lots of people who take their career seriously in a certain sense. They devote a lot of hours to their career and see it as a source of meaning. However, the center of their focus tends to be "internal" in the sense that, at the end of the day, they are most concerned with the value that their career adds to their own lives. This article seems to have a very different focal point. It's not about making your career more fulfilling for you. It's not about how to have a career that fulfills your own desires of pursuing your curiosity or doing the sort of good that you enjoy doing (like being a doctor or teacher). Rather, the article is written as if from the perspective of an outside person viewing this person's career. It's about having a career that will please other people. Crowdsourcing your decisions will make you choose the things that other people find worthwhile. Taking on many projects will help you build a diverse resume to impress other people. The last point even specifically says not to spend too much time looking for a job that you find pleasant because there might be jobs that can "do more good" in the world that aren't pleasant. The whole emphasis on taking a job that benefits the world without necessarily being pleasant for yourself just seems so robotic to me. At the end of the day, why do you care about being altruistic? Presumably because it's a path towards creating a world where people can enjoy life more. If you accomplish this by living a life that you yourself don't enjoy, it just seems antithetical any motivation for improving the world that I can imagine. I know people who are spending the better part of their youth working hard to become doctors or something similar. They are working very hard and (like the author) thinking about ways of impressing others in pursuit of getting into med school and getting into competitive specialties or whatever. But there are two differences. (1) They know that this sort of impressing others is something they only need to do at the beginning of their career, and (2) they actually like helping others so they will eventually reach a point where their own pleasure and their altruism is aligned. This article seems to be suggesting that we live a life where these things are not aligned, and make no attempt to align them. I understand that there are jobs that aren't fun, and someone has to do them, but I don't expect ambitious people to work hard to find these jobs.
• kreek 7y ago
  > I still read a lot about technology, but at the margin I probably get more value from reading histories of institutional disasters and near-disasters, and the biographies of people who helped avoid some of those disasters. Anyone know of a reading list or a website that collects 'institutional disasters and near-disasters'? e.g. stuff like the recent Accenture/Hertz article, breaking then saving healthcare.gov etc.
  • jpindar 7y ago
    The Risks Digest https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/ https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/
• therobot24 7y ago
  don't care for this list, primarily because it's focus is that a job is a stepping stone to something else, never a career (guess the field is the career here): > Don’t focus too much on long-term plans. Focus on interesting projects and you’ll build a resumé that stands out... > Be a pleasant person. People want colleagues who seem pleasant and happy and good humoured. Washington DC especially operates more on social capital than on merit.. > Avoid stuff that could cause irreversible reputational harm... > Work to solve problems that aren’t popular. Popularity of a problem is evidence that it is hard to solve, competition is high, and your individual contribution is likely to be small. In contrast, neglected problems often have low-hanging solutions that no one has bothered to look for... > Some jobs in government may be easier to get than you imagine. ...Rather than consider a life in government, I suggest trying a 3 to 5 year stint, and see what you’re able to contribute. Why do i see this as a problem? Individually, this is all good advice for the new engineer. But collectively, building your career in a field by using a Gov job or some other employ simply as a stepping stone is incredibly disingenuous. The whole thing stinks of any lack of self-reflection - here jobs are just what you do to gain a better hold of where you can exist in the field. It's very similar to chasing fame in LA, but this time it's DC.
  • sanderjd 7y ago
    I largely agree with you - I definitely think more experienced folks should take more pride and ownership in their work - but I'm not sure this is bad advice specifically for a brand new employee. Looking back on my career, my first couple jobs were stepping stones, even though I didn't think of them that way at the time. I took them very seriously and lost sleep over my projects there. But I didn't need to. I wasn't very important or useful to those companies; I was just learning, and making lots of mistakes as I went. I had a lot of stress and self esteem problems about that. Looking back on it from the perspective of my current expectations for brand new employees, my feeling is that I would have been better off to have chilled out and recognized that I was providing cheap imperfect labor while ramping up the ability to fill the quota of useful people in a few years time.
  • spaced-out 7y ago
    Every job is a stepping stone to retirement.
• leetcrew 7y ago
  > I’m also pretty sceptical of ‘earning-to-give’ careers. That’s because it’s very unlikely that you can earn more money than you would have been able to direct in a funding organisation — there’s a lot more competition to become a billionaire than there is to become a leader or grantmaker at a foundation or important government agency. I'm sure this is literally true, but I'm not sure what I think about it. when you're directing large amounts of money at a nonprofit, for the most part you are just allocating money that has already been donated; you are choosing between charitable causes, but perhaps not advancing the "production frontier" that much unless you are really good at spending efficiently or fundraising. but if you accumulate wealth of your own and donating it, you are actually increasing the amount of money that can be spent on problems. might it not be better to add $1 million to the pool than to decide how $10 million gets allocated?
• faitswulff 7y ago
  > Back in my 30s, [about half] of the things on my resumé [...] didn’t pay me any money. Those projects sounded fancy and helped me to get good full-time jobs later on. The rest seemed reasonable, but this is not actually doable for a lot of people who need a regular source of income to live.
  • chrisseaton 7y ago
    Most people spend their first few years of adult life in unpaid education producing things to help them get good full-time jobs later on and most see that as a reasonable thing to do.
    • scroblart 7y ago
      Most people with money.
      • linuxasheviller 7y ago
        Most people with _access to_ money
  • mikekchar 7y ago
    If you are going back in time and wishing to set things up for success, there is usually a lot you can do to remove rather than add to your responsibility burden when you are young. Young people are often rushing to "make it" -- get the car, get the house, get the relationship, get the family, etc, etc. Once you have those things, your options narrow considerably. While working for free is not an option that is available to a lot of people, I think the sentiment is still valid. No matter how many responsibilities you have in life, when you are young it's probably best to try to delay adding more so that you can spend some time exploring options that will be much harder to explore later in life when you are more established.
  • kudokatz 7y ago
    there's also a middle-ground - take lower-paying positions that allow for a great deal of learning and responsibility; it can increase knowledge and employ-ability later.
• neokantian 7y ago
  > Avoid stuff that could cause irreversible reputational harm, or slow down a security clearance ... avoid saying stuff online that you could regret later. Avoid jobs where it matters. A corporate drone cannot say what he wants, neither online, nor elsewhere, because the HR department could be watching. Ever since cashing out from my startup, I care even less about what any culturally-marxist corporate HR department may think about me. > Reflect seriously on what problem to prioritise solving. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about global health and animal welfare. No, don't waste your time on problems that you cannot possibly solve by yourself. Work on stuff in which you can make a difference.
• teh_klev 7y ago
  As a 52 year old Scottish person who's doing ok('ish), and typically in a Scottish fashion has no problem being forthright, I don't have a problem stating that for any normal human being in a professional career....this is mostly a pile of wank. I guess my point is, sure it's nice to reflect on your <30 life, but no-one normal in their late teens and into their 20's needs to apply any of this bollocks. Go enjoy your 20's, you never get them back again, they were the best years of my life and I did very little tech. You're likely never going to be Mark Zuckerberg or the Google twins (god forbid). If you do come up with a cracking idea (like the Stripe brothers) then go yourself, but this list is what is wrong with our industry when it comes to younger folks entering the biz. You don't need these crutches, you either got it or you don't. But I implore folks in their 20's to go get some life experience, and then develop a "life changing" or "disrupting" app. And you know there's nothing wrong with being an expert mort, with a blog and now and again being invited to talk at a session on your favourite tech you got invested in. Happy to answer questions.
  • HNLurker2 7y ago
    >(god forbid) AFAIK they are my ideal. They are the best founders in my opinion
    • teh_klev 7y ago
      Sorry my friend, you couldn't offer me a million dollar a year salary to work for Google and the "others".
    • Phlarp 7y ago
      If you really feel this way, go read the comments in the thread about Eric Schmidt leaving the Alphabet board of directors. Larry and Sergey are far from an "ideal" and the blind hero worship is unlikely to serve you. It's fine to recognize their successes, but understand that they made plenty of mistakes.
  • todd3834 7y ago
    I was heavily involved in the startup scene all through my 20s, now in my 30s and still loving it. Turns out you can both be involved in tech and startups in your 20s and have it be the best time in your life. Everyone has different interests in life and we all have our own paths. I agree, enjoy your 20s, but you don't have to avoid tech, startups or hard work in order to accomplish that. Some of my favorite memories from my 20s are in the office late at night with my co-workers/life long friends trying to change the world. I'm still very close with many of those people and it doesn't feel like any of that time was wasted.
• dannykwells 7y ago
  I find this website absurd. Is it really just articles by random people which give high-level advice on how to have a career? Because if so, most likely there is little coherence between any of these pieces, meaning that people will really just listen to whichever article they agree with. Also, lot of this advice in particular, sucks: "Reverse engineer the paths of famous people" - too bad these paths often start very young due to privilege and wealth, and also have huge amounts of luck involved. The two things you can't really control in this world: how rich your parents are, and how lucky you are. "Avoid spending time to earn money" - what, like compound growth isn't a thing? I would much, much rather make $20 now than have to make $100, or $500 when I'm 60. "Work to solve problems that aren't popular" - his/her advice is, work on an un-important problem because no one cares about it, so at least you'll make big contributions. But, ummm, no one will care. This goes common advice, which is to seek leverage in your role - that is, big effects through small contributions. I could go on. This is garbage and just not redeemable.
  • themodelplumber 7y ago
    > Reverse engineer the paths of famous people I agree; I work as a coach and have to say that this path is fraught with peril. The delta from one psychology to the next is significant enough that this activity could easily cause someone to feel exhaustion before they even get started putting the learned path into place. IMO much better advice is to "reverse engineer" your own past and treat that as a guide, asking yourself when you were happiest, most productive, etc. This can far more easily result in "scalable" information.
    • ryandrake 7y ago
      It’s also fraught with Survivorship Bias. Look at successes and try to find a common thing they do or attribute they have, ignoring the failures that also did that thing or had that attribute. It’s basically the plot of every business self help book out there.
      • deehouie 7y ago
        This comment should move to the top. You see the success stories because they have succeeded. You never hear the failures. And they are everywhere.
• d_burfoot 7y ago
  >> 16. Some jobs in government may be easier to get than you imagine. I will add to this my observation from reading Michael Lewis' book The Fifth Risk: if you can tolerate the bureaucracy, it's often possible to get to work on hugely impactful and highly-resourced projects early in your career by going into government. https://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Risk-Michael-Lewis/dp/1324002646 https://www.amazon.com/Fifth-Risk-Michael-Lewis/dp/132400264...
• algorias 7y ago
  Some people seem to be missing the context in which this article was written: 80000 hours is about effective altruism, in the sense of deliberately building a career that does the most good in the world (whether that be charitable work, politics, or "earning to give" as a software engineer / banker / etc). The article itself doesn't explicitly state this unfortunately. So yeah, the advice is very nuts and bolts, and several of the points don't make any sense without that context (e.g. picking the low-hanging fruits). It's assumed that the reader is already highly motivated to have an impactful altruistic career, and that this motivation is a primary source of self-fulfillment. Just pointing this out because there seems to be a bit of confusion in the comments here.
• jingw222 7y ago
  Find the biographies of people whose job you’d like to have, and figure out how they got there. You can effectively reverse engineer their career path. I highly doubt that one.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• Wump 7y ago
  A bit of meta-advice: don’t take advice from people that don’t have any context on you, don’t align with your values and priorities, or may have misaligned incentives.
  • jklm 7y ago
    Aren't you in bucket 1 here? :)
    • seppin 7y ago
      Don't trust anyone, especially me.
    • Wump 7y ago
      The irony is not lost on me ;)
• mnm1 7y ago
  > Avoid spending time to earn or save money. I now see time as my most valuable resource, and I’m willing to spend money to save time. I pay for ridesharing so that I can work during transit, I frequently buy meals so that I can save time spent cooking, I pay higher rent to have a shorter commute, and I don’t spend time searching for bargains. This is stupid. If you're an engineer in the Bay area making good but not FAANG money, this can easily lead you to save absolutely nothing and have nothing to show for years of your life. If you live elsewhere, it's a bit easier, but eating out all the time and spending money when you could do the work yourself, including looking for bargains is going to limit the amount of savings you have significantly. Let's face it, time is NOT money. That's fucking absurd. No one works around the clock. It's impossible. Even the people that pretend to are not actually efficient or effective. They're just wasting most of that time. Especially in something like software engineering. Time is not fucking money. That's just a dumb saying. The only time this advice might apply is if you're making millions easily and you don't need to budget. Time is still not money and it won't make your pretend work worth anything, but at that point you can afford it. For 99.999% of people, this is just terrible advice. I say this from experience having spent years working in the bay area as a software engineer and then leaving in debt. And that was years ago when rent/prices weren't so high. Stupid advice.
• jimmcslim 7y ago
  Keep a journal would be the bit of advice I'd give.
• sara1231 7y ago
  World's biggest cat Even you can't believe it's size See her video https://howto105.blogspot.com/2019/04/worlds-biggest-cat.html https://howto105.blogspot.com/2019/04/worlds-biggest-cat.htm... See the video a dog shopping and lots of other acts like humans http://bit.ly/2DCpo9I http://bit.ly/2DCpo9I Even you can't believe there is a hen in world's biggest animals See the video how they looks and what they do https://cutt.ly/1rOU7Q https://cutt.ly/1rOU7Q Fish walking with legs like humans See the video on link below http://bit.ly/2XRGyYD http://bit.ly/2XRGyYD This couple is different Girls are both twins and boys are also twin brothers see how they look in video http://bit.ly/2VwoZQd http://bit.ly/2VwoZQd A cute dog is dancing in video Just watch this video and try to control your laugh http://bit.ly/2ZK1XVs http://bit.ly/2ZK1XVs
• blfr 7y ago
  Find easy ways you can come across better. Surprisingly few hackers wear suits. And it's probably the cheapest universal social hack around.
  • jklm 7y ago
    I'd say this depends on the environment and the audience. My younger self took many years to realize that wearing too many button-down shirts isn't always a good thing.
• codingdave 7y ago
  This advice makes sense... only if you are already fortunate enough that choosing to take unpaid work, buying all your meals out, etc. is a reasonable choice that doesn't impact your personal finances. For the rest of us, though, we need to get there first. The best advice I have for younger people to help them get there is not to optimize your earnings, but instead to minimize your personal burn rate. It is nice to have enough money for nice homes and other things. It is even nicer to know that if your income went away, you can still live on a low-paying job is you absolutely had to. And it is wonderful to be able to take any job you want, with a high salary being a nice-to-have bonus, not a requirement due to choices you made in where and how to live.
• graycat 7y ago
  I'll give an answer: The most important thing in life is family. For family and more, the most important raw material is financial security. In the US, the main path to financial security is to start, own, and run a successful business. In the US, for nearly all the businesses, the most important Buffett moat and, thus, protection, is a geographical barrier to entry -- for the business you are in, it is a big advantage to have no competition more than 100 miles away so that if do well in a radius of 100 miles will likely do well. Next, pick a business where you have lots of customers, not just a few really important ones. This owning a business is important: It can be just super tough even to buy a house when working for someone else. Commonly they just don't have to pay that much. Beware the usual, mainstream media: They are at best smelly bait for the ad hook and otherwise propaganda for special interests. They are NOT serious sources of valuable information. DO exploit compound interest, in an index stock fund, real estate, etc. Unless are already wealthy, avoid restaurants and eat at home. Restaurant food is MUCH more expensive, and the cost really adds up. Eating at home is MUCH cheaper. E.g., I have developed a recipe for a pizza for one meal for one -- ready to eat at anytime within 20 minutes with 10 of those just waiting on the cooking. Cost per pizza $0.40 to $1.00 depending on the toppings. Cost of the flour, $0.09. It's better, cheaper, and faster than frozen, carry-out, or delivery. Do much the same for 6-12 dishes, and call that mostly ENOUGH. The $1 version is better than $10-20 in restaurants. The extra $9-19 really adds up -- put that in a piggy bank and then in an index fund for 30 years and will really have something. I wish I'd known that. These days often can get buy wearing blue jeans. Do that. They were and are made of canvas originally designed as cloth for sails for sailing ships -- DARNED tough. Don't need the expensive, famous, fancy brands. Similarly for shoes -- boating shoes are good because they are still good in rain and light snow. For education, learn enough so that you can learn more as needed and how to filter the good stuff from the 99% which is junk, even in the best academics. What to learn for your business? Mostly have to learn that year by year or even month by month to RESPOND to what the MARKET wants. Master's and Ph.D. degrees (I have both, in the STEM fields, from one of the world's best research universities) can help a little but, except in rare cases, do not replace the learning in response to short term market opportunities. Make friends, associates, acquaintances whenever and however you can, just casual and even superficial can be much better than nothing. Don't waste time, e.g., don't watch TV. Learn about human psychology, e.g., as in common psychological counseling. Hopefully you don't need the counseling, but you DO need to know what it is about the maybe 50% of other people who DO need such counseling. E.g., you need to know about emotions quite generally and also anxieties, obsessions, libido, duplicity, manipulations, deceptions, etc. The best single source I found on human psychology is E. Fromm, The Art of Loving, but alone it is not enough. Learn about organizational behavior. Learn about management and, in particular, borrow some points from the US military. Know how politics works, and, when you need to, play the game. Learn about law -- mostly try to avoid it since there mostly only the lawyers make money. If you have any hope or intention of getting some financial security, then before getting married have a good pre-nup. To s LOT of people, from whatever in their personalities or backgrounds, the meaning of love is not very strong and, even if it is, usually can blow away, Gone with the Wind, at anytime in about three years. Just accept that in that famous Norman Rockwell painting of Thanksgiving, nearly everyone at the table is acting. You have to be the CEO and COB of your own life; a good co-CEO would be TERRIFIC but in practice is asking for a LOT -- without some really good evidence, don't bet much on a good co-CEO relationship lasting. Here are some things that have a good shot at lasting longer than a good co-CEO relationship -- a leather belt, a wooden chair, Casio wrist watch, a bedroom chest of drawers, a good pair of boat shoes, a bottle of red wine from Corton in France, a piano, a violin, a collection of stemmed wine glasses in the kitchen, nearly any new car, a cast iron frying pan, even most Teflon frying pans, a house that initially meets code, a good index fund account. From Fromm, "Men and women deserve equal respect as persons but are not the same." Learn about the difference.
• aj7 7y ago
  “there might be no more cost-effective self-improvement investment than enrolling in Toastmasters and buying a gym membership” Horrible advice. Do not do.
• ThomPete 7y ago
  Here is the thing. You probably got that advice when you were young, but you wouldn't listen to it even if it was being served by someone you respected because you didn't understand it because you hadn't lived through the things that would make you appreciate that kind of advice. A muchh better approach is to go make mistakes and you will learn what you needed to learn to get through life.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• sunstone 7y ago
  One piece of advice almost never given is that some people just should not work for a boss. It's hard to know when you're that person because you can be smart and engaging and still qualify.
  • stonecharioteer 7y ago
    What do you mean? As in some people aren't meant to work under others? Or that you shouldnt work somewhere just because you like your boss?
    • sunstone 7y ago
      I mean some people should not work under others. It's not that they are bad people it's just that they are not talented subordinates.
• doitLP 7y ago
  Whoever the author is, they are probably from a commonwealth country, based on their spelling of “prioritise” and “organisation”.
• skookumchuck 7y ago
  I wish I'd bought more Microsoft/Apple stock.
• Impossible 7y ago
  > Crowdsource your career decisions. I’ve done this for most of the last few decades, polling people I trust, and the advice seems generally good in hindsight. I've been trying this recently and I can't get really good advice. Is the issue that I haven't built up a useful enough network? The advice tends to be in 1 of 3 categories 1) You're smart, you should just start your own thing and make (b/m)illions. 2) Come work with us, we have a role that kind of fits your skillset and pays you less. 3) You already make a lot of money and/or are successful in your career just chill\coast and collect a paycheck.
  • jlokier 7y ago
    All of those sound like someone hasn't really listened to you tell your story and your desires, and taken the time to apply their own deep insights on what is important to you. In other words, listening first, finding out what matters to you (not them) and caring about what you care about. I don't know many people who will do that, but I know a few(†), so I'm inclined to think it's that you haven't built up a useful enough network, or to put it a different way, made enough good and insightful friends. (†) Most of them not in IT. 1 and 3 also have the clue word "just", that says someone is shrugging off the enquiry. Even if you got one of those three responses, it would be a fine in a conversation, if you had the time with them to explain why the initial response is mismatched to your goals, and that idea was developed with further conversation.
  • overcast 7y ago
    Honestly combining 3 and 1 is my current route. Low stress lucrative job, that gives me plenty of time for extracurricular.
  • dangerface 7y ago
    > Crowdsource your career decisions. This is just bad advice, other people will give advice they wish they had been given, it is a mistake to confuse this with advice thats useful to you. At the end of the day your career is too big and unique to you for anyone else to give informed, accurate or useful advice on. With hindsight you can cherry pick the good advice from the bad, the informed from the uninformed, making this advice seem useful. But when actually trying to make a decision you have just flooded yourself with a lot of advice that may be helpful or harmful and you have no idea which. I think the rest of this advice has the same issue. Advice that sounds good given hindsight, not so useful without it.
• kartan 7y ago
  > Don’t focus too much on long-term plans. I always have long-term plans. But, I abandon them as soon as I find a better way to achieve my goals. Goals do not change so often, tho. > Find good thinkers and cold-call the ones you most admire. I will change this to read, read a lot. If you are introverted or realise that this advice does not scale (millions of developers calling the same poor guy) books are your best option. The advice, teachings, etc. that someone will give to you personally probably are also part of their writing. > Crowdsource your career decisions. It is essential to get good friends that will tell you that you are wrong. And you need to listen. > Be a pleasant person. Always. :) > Assign a high value to productivity over your whole lifespan Yes. But, do not worry when you wast time. It happens, it is part of being human. If you regret each time "wasted" your life is going to be just regretted. Acknowledge that you did not do what you planned, adjust realistically. > Don’t over-optimise things that aren’t your top priority. Good enough is that "good enough". > Read a lot and read things that people around you aren’t reading. Yes. Look for the best book on each category and read those. Then go to a shop a read anything that gets your attention (Judge the next book you are going to read by its cover). > Avoid stuff that could cause irreversible reputational harm, or slow down a security clearance. Be a pleasant person. :) > Reflect seriously on what problem to prioritise solving. I do not agree with this one. To try to solve the heat death of the universe is an interesting thought experiment and abstract thinking is a good skill to have. > Work to solve problems that aren’t popular. I will change this one to solve problems that you care about and/or understand. There are billions of people on earth; anything you try to do someone else is already doing or did it in the past. Stop worrying and do what matters to you. > Read more history. Science, history, biology, literature, mathematics, culture, architecture, all books are your friends. > Avoid spending time to earn or save money. If you have the luxury, I saved most of the money I earned when I was young. That has allowed me to be free to make decisions that I would have not without money. Now that I have a good job, I prefer to pay than to spend money. > I’m also pretty sceptical of ‘earning-to-give’ careers. Do whatever motivates you. > Find easy ways you can come across better. Be a pleasant person. :) > Find the biographies of people whose job you’d like to have, and figure out how they got there. Do not. What worked 40 years ago, may not work nowadays. The realisation is that any job is achievable if you follow the correct career path. Being a billionaire is not a job description. > Some jobs in government may be easier to get than you imagine. Any job is achievable if you follow the correct career path. > I think there might be an over-emphasis on ‘personal fit’ in effective altruism. Be realistic but do not abandon too soon.
• lukeylunchbox 7y ago
  Rename the article. How to be boring. A methodical approach to wasting your most precious years
• anotheryou 7y ago
  I'm 30. Am I still young enough? (I guess the answer is: for some things, not for others and never stop making progress) P.S.: Anyone looking for a (senior) IT product manager and working on something slightly altruistic, scientific and interesting? Preferred topics: News, News Aggregation, Knowledge Management, anything from Data over NLP to Deep Learning (ethically though please), generally Scientific Topics.
  • badpun 7y ago
    There’s a queue of probably a million other bored/jaded software people, who would like a job like that.
    • anotheryou 7y ago
      I know, but I better keep trying, right? There is also quite a range between working for a bank and writing the next wikipedia. Anything more than just CRUD and with a business model including real value for the customer is already OK (as opposed to some buggy subscription trap selling dreams that will go bust).
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • andersonnnunes 7y ago
    Interesting. Wish you best of luck.
    • anotheryou 7y ago
      thank you, and I wish the same to you fellow traveler :)
• agsamek 7y ago
  > Work to solve problems that aren’t popular. Popularity of a problem is evidence that it is hard to solve, competition is high, and your individual contribution is likely to be small. I think this is a relevant advice for us - wannabe millionaires. Or at least for me. Do not be a copycat. Look deeper for a good enough problems. Don't focus on what is hot. It may not be an advise to surely become the next billionaire, but millionaire may be fine.