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What I would recommend to everyone in their 20s is to get a mentor who has been in the workforce for 30-40+ years. You will learn and hear invaluable stories o
by kerng 7y ago
What I would recommend to everyone in their 20s is to get a mentor who has been in the workforce for 30-40+ years.
You will learn and hear invaluable stories on how companies treat employees, how firing works, how being fired is and generally just meaningful information that will put your own present misery into perspective and prepare you for the things to come.
- abc_lisper 7y agoAhh.. But young people are so much smarter/s I guess most of young people learn this the hard way, myself included!
- scarface74 7y agoI’ve been in the workforce over 20 years, and I can barely relate to someone just starting out: - I have no idea what is expected from a junior developer starting out in the workplace. I was self taught before going to college and my first job I was the sole developer writing a decently complicated networked data entry system. What should I expect the typical junior developer to know? I’ve only worked at companies who don’t hire junior developers. - If someone’s dreams and aspirations are to “work for Big N” (the stereotypical r/cscareerquestions poster), what do I know? I’ve never studied leetCode/“Cracking the Code” in my life and don’t plan to. - I’m not sure someone who has been in the industry 30-40 years will be able to relate to someone just starting off. Things are different now. Things are different from when I first started. Technology was just another decent paying, middle class career field when I entered it. Someone in the industry 30-40 years is probably a company man and still believes in company loyalty.
- kerng 7y agoWell, as a start you should share exactly what you are writing here. You dont have to tell young people what they should or should not do - just how things evolved throughout your career and how companies you worked for evolved (mergers, acquisition, crazy reorgs,..) and things like that. Invaluable stories I always appreciate to hear from more experienced people. EDIT: and that you dont care about leetcode probably also says something about how important that stuff is in the grand scheme of things :)
- scarface74 7y agoI’m much better at advising people who have been in the industry for 8+ years who want to stay active, hands on developers about how not to get stuck in “expert beginner” mode (been there done that), how to stay relevant, and how to exercise “soft power” without going into management. But as far as your edit.... ME: I’ll never spend a year of my life grinding at leetCode to work at a FAANG ALSO ME: I’m going to spend three years of my life grinding through all things AWS so I can work as an SA at Amazon (or a partner).
- PorterDuff 7y agoI can't say that I know anyone in the 30-40 year range (including myself) who caries much in the way of company loyalty. Maybe there's some super long term folks still out there buried at IBM, but there sure aren't many. Heck, scarcely anywhere I've ever worked still exists. They either faded away or were merged/bought into oblivion. I hear what you are saying about the leetcode interviews. No thanks. Also, I agree on the decent paying middle class career angle, it was also quite a lot rarer.
- paulcole 7y agoCounterpoint: When I was in my 20s, I was given career advice from an executive at Sears who had been in the workforce for 30-40+ years. He’d never touched a computer (this was in the early 2000s) and he recommended I check the want ads in the Wall Street Journal to find a job.