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When I was a new developer just a couple months out of school, and was very eager to be a part of my company and fit in, an older developer told me “remember th
by aBitPlayer 4y ago
When I was a new developer just a couple months out of school, and was very eager to be a part of my company and fit in, an older developer told me “remember that your interests and your path are your own.”
Over the years, I’ve suffered from “company man” syndrome and look back to his guidance as a reminder that I should own my skills and interests, and bring them to an employer if and for as long as the job suits them. I shouldn’t go with the job wherever it takes me simply because that’s my employer’s wish.
Not always easy advice to take, but extremely important advice to me.
- mojomark 4y agoThank you for contributing this. I'm 22 years into my career, mostly spent in mundane engineering roles compared to the deep research I worked on as a hobby but really wanted to do professionally. After pushing very hard for many years, I finally landed that deep R&D gig and am well compensated. My skills and interested are more hardware oriented in a company that brought me in is much more software and math. I've felt obligated to become much more software and math capable, spending very late nights and weekends studying. It's not a bad thing to expand one's mind, but at the heart, I know I'm really doing it more so to 'fit-in' better and less to communicate with my peers better. I will take this advice and double down on bringing my hardware skills/passions to the table, which as my wife has repeatedly told me the past several months is really why they brought me on. They didn't bring me on to mold me into a clone of researchers they already have.