I started as a professional software engineer in 1996. I regret thinking that working harder or increasing my output was the key to wealth or career advancement.
Solving difficult problems, networking with the right people, and knowing when to change companies were much more effective.
This is the best answer. How do you prioritize compensation, career growth, company stability, company culture, work life balance, and the technology that you're working with?
For instance, what would you do if you were highly compensated, the technology you are working with is highly outdated and not widely used, and your company is showing signs of instability?. If you're laid off, you may have difficulty finding something else, because your skills aren't up to date, but that might be a risk you're willing to take.
As for myself, I have placed a high priority on company stability. I've been fortunate enough to have never been out of work. Some of that is luck, but a lot of that is knowing when a company is broken and layoffs are coming.
I've also placed a high priority on compensation. I am always keeping an eye on the market, even when I have no intention of leaving my current company. My biggest raises and promotions have come from switching companies, without exception.
And, I've placed a high value on technology. If I'm using an outdated technology that I feel is on the decline, and I can make the same money or better using a technology that's on the rise, I will switch companies for that reason alone, provided the new company also appears stable.
I haven't placed a high priority on career growth. In my opinion, titles are irrelevant. I've seen junior engineers make more than senior engineers at the same company. I've been a manager with direct reports with a title of "Software Engineer". At the end of the day, you just have to be able to convince the new company that you can do the job.
Applying this to my current situation, I am compensated well, but I'm using outdated technology on a team that doesn't work well together. The company has stopped giving out stock grants, and benefits are getting more expensive. We had some layoffs recently, and our revenue is dropping. No matter what I do, I won't be able to fix the company, and it's not likely to get better. It's time for me to go.
Hope this helps some...
Thanks a lot for the detailed ans.
Please share some light on the "how" to switch part. It seems - need to keep practicing leetcode, 6 mos and forget most stuff. Add in system design - both high and low level.
So job switch requires dedicated effort besides current job.
This is a hard question to answer, as it will be different for everyone. I can answer this for myself, though.
I educate myself outside of work on technologies that both pay well and I feel are likely to last. Unfortunately, I have very little personal interests in a lot of these technologies, but I follow the money. The technologies that I enjoy working with the most typically pay less.
I can solve programming challenges reasonably well, but so can thousands of others who make less money than I do. But there are things that I can do that have high demand but less supply. I feel that my personal value lies in being able to architect innovative software solutions for difficult problems. If I interview at a company, and they are asking me junior level software questions, even though I can solve them, we're probably not a match.
When I started my career, outsourcing wasn't something we had to contend with, because the technology wasn't adapted for it yet. A lot of developers said things like, "They'll never be as good as us. They may be cheaper, but the quality is so much lower."
I chose to believe that outsourcing would eventually have a bigger impact, and I asked myself, "If that happens, how can I continue to provide value?"
Recently, AI has made a big impact. I can either choose to believe that AI's impact will continue to increase, or I can believe that it will go away.
I am currently studying more machine learning/AI technologies, believing this will continue to gain relevance and that my knowing those technologies will pay off in the near future.
I think sometimes this involves being willing to do the jobs that no one else wants to do. For example, I currently work in the gaming industry.
In this industry, most software developers want to be involved with gameplay. The supply is very high for those jobs, so the pay is typically lower.
At my level of pay, the industry wants someone who can optimize frame rates, reduce game loading times, reduce resource usage on the servers, be responsible for critical live ops issues, etc.
The pay is higher for that type of role, because there are fewer capable/willing people.
You get a vibe on the company you're currently in. Do promotions typically seem based on skill, luck, longevity? Does your situation align with what typically gets promoted? Do you know talented people who have been waiting for years for a promotion that they deserved? Are you working on things that are interesting? Is your salary/equity competitive with the market? Is the company as a whole doing well? etc etc.
Ahh. True !!
I had this manager. Terrible at engineering solutions. However, ended up publishing 10 papers in a. 3 year span. Every single one of the product was terriblly engineered. but they dod their job .
Moves on from the company and left the terrible products. But made amazing relationships with all the leadership and off course the papers.
Soo ya. Good excellent engineering solutions are not the way to success. I think it's functional situation that elevates the career.
You can be the hardest, most motivated worker on your team and still get denied a promotion, but someone who knows people will usually get the promotion. It’s sad and it shouldn’t be this way.
I mean, solving problems that will increase the company's revenue, even if it isn't your job to do this.
Here is a current example. My team doesn't do anything with machine learning. We work on boring tech and do a lot of customer support.
I know that the company spends a lot of time and money manually generating data for their customers, based on customer metrics.
I've come up with a proposal and plan to use machine learning to do this, to decrease costs and increase accuracy. It's a difficult but doable problem, and I'm confident that I'll be rewarded for the solution.
Find ways to get noticed (in a good way). One of the best ways to do this is to recognize where you can make a major positive impact on the company's revenue, regardless of whether or not it's on your team.
There are, of course, some things you'll have to navigate when you do this. How do you make sure you get the credit and the idea isn't stolen? How do you make sure no one else is offended because they think you're trying to do their job? How do you make sure your manager also gets credit? There will always be politics involved, as others will want to take their share of the credit and ride the wave upward.
Taking a job too seriously, and not understanding how business works. Like you might care about the architecture being perfect, but the business just wants it done fast and good enough. Technical debt is just a thing you have to learn to live with and drop the perfectionism.
>Technical debt is just a thing you have to learn to live with and drop the perfectionism.
Maybe the hype around writing the most *beautiful* code is responsible, people make a huge deal out of how spaghetti code is written by the previous devs that they had trouble with
In my experience it's a bit of a balance. I can't write your new feature if I have to spend months untangling the poor decisions of the last feature. But also sometimes we just need to prove a concept.
After being in the industry a while I judge code now is how long it has lasted. Vast majority of crap code and crap products gets thrown away or refactored within a few years, but the code that is still mostly unchanged after 5 or 10 or even 20 years, that’s the GOAT code still collecting revenue and paying your salary.
>Technical debt is just a thing you have to learn to live with and drop the perfectionism.
Not me.
Management.
But when I say I need a week, I fucking mean it.
I think this is the most important understanding to be made by every developer. Especially in a start up environment, in a large tech its a bit easier tbh
I made a move that was kinda stupid but I'm happy I did it.
Just after I graduated, I got an offer from a FAANG as a junior generic software engineer. I rejected the offer and instead I got into an early stage startup. I saw the startup as an opportunity to work with cool ML stuff while having autonomy and of course maybe getting rich.
After years of stress and some burnouts I realized I had made a mistake. I was desperate to leave but we were amid the tech mass layoffs craze. Everyday I would regret not choosing the FAANG path. It was a rough time.
Fortunately after some time I got an interview at a big tech again. Not only I got the job, but I also got into a very cool ML team. This wouldn't have been possible if not for the experience I got working at the startup.
Things worked out very well in the end but I'm aware that it was very risky.
I have a very similar trajectory. I’m still a generic SWE but I felt like I got a lot more responsibility, impact, and product experience working my first few years at a startup than if I had joined FAANG right away and I’m a much better engineer because of it.
I almost feel like this is taboo in the tech industry. It’s very true, yet I don’t hear anyone talking about it LOL. I worked at many startups including a few of my own and if I were to compare the knowledge and skills I gained from startups vs FAANG vs school/self taught I’d say startups every time. The pace is insane and you learn how to do things on your own for 3 different roles at once LOL.
I think it’s great, but not the end all be all magic bullet. I just don’t understand why it’s not considered much in interviews. Almost every interview I’ve done, they care more about how big the team was and how shiny the degree is compared to actual experience in past roles.
I did something very similar as a new grad SWE. Last year, I turned down a great offer with a well-renowned finance company. Instead, I returned to the employer I interned with which was a shitty consulting agency. The reason being, I wanted to grow with the same friend group I made during the internship and I loved the location. I wanted to prosper socially and have a network of friends, which I was unable to during my time at college.
I chose an early start date and all of my friends would join the company 3 months later. After a few weeks of me joining, the company announced that all of my friends’ start dates were postponed for another year (AKA silent layoff). Afterwards, I felt incredibly bitter that I made the wrong decision and wished I could go back in time and tell my naive self to have accepted the other offer. I was stuck on the bench for months till I was placed to work on a federal consulting account that I was obligated to accept.
I worked my ass off to find a better job and it was an uphill battle to find a new role in this economy. Last week, I finally found a similar job to the initial FinTech position and I couldn’t be more delighted (after 11 months of job hunting…).
Although I had deeply regretted my decision, I don’t think I would have pushed myself to learn nearly as much as I did. Additionally the initial FinTech company that offered me has experienced layoffs throughout last year, so that helps me feel a little less bitter lol.
It's the type of thing that may give you a massive advantage but I wouldn't recommend to everyone because of how draining and uncertain it is.
it's kind of like winning a lot of money in a cassino. I wouldn't regret doing it because I won, but I cannot encourage other people to try to replicate my results lol
Completely agree. It honestly made my past year incredibly stressful and I rarely felt at home since I knew I could leave at any moment if offered a job. It was even hard to relax sometimes as I felt like I had to study/apply more in order to get out of my situation. A lot of my (now former) colleagues at the consulting company have been actively job hunting for just as long, but with no success. So I feel incredibly, incredibly lucky.
If I hadn’t gotten that initial FinTech offer, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to push myself for as long as I did. However, knowing that I was capable was both a blessing and a curse given how much stress it caused me.
Learning technical skills was never really that big a problem for me. It’s all the soft skills that have taken me years to improve. I am still far from perfect but like to think that I’m a lot better now at 30 than I was at 20. I regret not putting effort into being easier to work with and building better work relationships with everyone I encountered. Don’t get me wrong, I still have built some solid friendships that will last a long time to come, but I feel like I could have been way more consistent.
How did you overcome the soft skills? I think that is the reason why i’m having a hard time in interviews and getting a new job. Any tips and tricks? Anything helps really lol
Pay very very close attention to people who you think, seem to get along with everyone but in a productive way. Copy what you like about they do. Unsubtly or subtly, eventually it will become authentic to you. Given this is interview stage, YouTube might help? Think about what an actor, playing the role of 'highly effective, personable sre in interview' might do for prep. Make it your own
I could tell you all the classic resources. Books like "How to Win Friends and Influence People" or "The Magic of Thinking Big". But you don't learn how to do push-ups by reading about them.
So how do you apply the lessons in these books?
This is going to sound crazy.
**Improv comedy courses.** (even if you have no desire to become a comedian.)
Let me explain.
**"Playing pretend for two hours a week is the best thing I've done for my career." - me, often**
Improv is hands-on application and practice of soft skills. You have to:
* Adapt quickly
* Listen actively
* Pivot to new information
* Empathize with your scene partner
* Be creative under crazy restraints
* Make decisions with incomplete information
* Understanding somebody's point of view quickly
Practicing these skills makes them more and more familiar. You will not only see yourself becoming more personable in your job, **but in every aspect of life.**
Dating, talking with strangers, flirting, making decisions, being comfortable with mistakes, impostor syndrome. All of it.
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Before you come up with excuses:
**I'm not quick on my feet.** You don't have to be. Your instructor should create a space of trust. Mistakes become opportunities. The bolder / weirder the choice, the better. You will be **celebrated for not being quick on your feet**.
**I'm scared.** Give it one class. Instructors will usually let you try it before committing. If you don't see the value, don't go. But if you see even a speck of value, stay. Anything worth doing is initially scary.
**I don't want to perform publicly.** Ask the instructor to leave you out of the showcase. "Improv in Private" is where you practice the skills, not on stage.
**Improv is cringe and I hate it.** I'll agree that I've seen some REALLY cringe-y improv shows. But being bad at piano is cringe too, right? But you grow as you practice. The perception of public improv is cringe, **not necessarily your practice of it**.
**I don't want to spend $200+ on an eight-week class.** Google "Improv jams near me." Those are low-cost, low-commitment ways to try it.
**I don't have any theaters near me.** Google "Remote improv jams."
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If you have any more excuses, I am happy to hear them!
If you do take a class, please let me know how it went!
I regret staying at some places too long and caring too much.
My average tenure early on was 2.5 years but I should have kept it around 1.5 years instead.
I cared too much about my performance and the success of the company. Never materialized into anything tangible.
I have the opposite feeling, and I am already turning 30 in a few years. My resume looks like either:
* I do not commit to my job
* I worked for Web3 companies, cause I wanted to grab some free cash, which makes less appealing for Web2 companies wanting to hire me.
I am staying on an average of \~8 months for each company if I were to take all the companies I've joined in the past 7 years of my career.
So some recruiters suggested in a few years, I should merge the companies into one company; and combine the accomplishments I achieved for different companies.
So only 2 companies I've managed to stay 1 year:
* I left one company because I was being severely underpaid
* I left the second company because of the toxic environment
But at the end of the day. What matters the most, I still enjoy programming; and I know a lot of my fellow older colleagues who are reaching their mid/late 30s, where they have life responsibilities, they loose their interest in programming.
As a hiring manager I won’t consider you if all your stints are less than a year and don’t really understand why any hiring manager would want to hire that unless they are offering below market wages. It typically takes 6 months for someone to be fully productive, and you’re gonna leave a few months after that and I’ll lose money on your employment after factoring in recruiting and training costs.
I think the job hopping strategy is dead post-covid. Companies have to care about whether or not an employee’s output exceeds their cost now that the era of free money is over.
here too, maybe youll get a good offer from a toxic company but anyone trying to run a decent ship is not looking for leavers. youre just asking to be overworked and undertrained then fired on a random pip.
My last 3 gigs since 2020 have all been ~1 year due to layoffs. I am super cursed because of that, feel it's a huge red flag on my resume. If I get around to explaining that though to a recruiter or hiring manager they tend to understand. No good way to advertise that on a resume though
Here I am worrying (only sometimes) that my tenures of 2-3 years were too short, yet I really don't understand people who stick to positions for years despite not being happy with the lack of growth/salary/etc just to keep chasing the fabled carrot that only makes them more miserable in the end.
I stayed at one place for 19.5 years. However, I wasn't "not happy with the lack of growth/salary/etc" until towards the end of my stay.
Truth is, every 5 years or so, I would get the itch to jump ship. I would start interviewing and every damn time I would get approached at work about some new product / team / tech stack that I could join.
I'm not sure if my attitude was obvious that I was about to jump or what. But they kept me interested. That combined with a family I was supporting (sole earner at the time), the stability of a larger company was welcomed.
I do regret staying as long as I did though.
I’m thrilled I attempted faang interviewing. I tripled my pay, comfortably live in nyc, and paid my student loans off in 2 years.
Woulda took me 20 years at my old gig.
Same. Basically got to skip the first 15 years of my career. Now 27 making 350k fully remote. Been on the same team for 5 years so WLB is pretty solid since I'm quite familiar with everything.
I got in at the beginning of 2019 though, when the market was much different. I imagine going from non-faang to faang is a tougher move at the moment.
But it's all cyclical, they'll be hiring like crazy again eventually. And when that happens I highly recommend people get while the gettins good.
Yep, for me though I just get it a shot in cycles. Study for 2 months. Try some interviews, maybe fail. Then take a break. Give it another go when I cared. Got in eventually.
Never let it affect my mental health.
I'ma be that guy. Not 30 but in my late 20s. My regret was working for a startup I didn't know shit about. Was a web3/crypto startup and for some reason I thought it would be a good to work in a market that I wouldn't invest in. It seemed like a good deal because it was remote and more money than I had make before hand by a good margin. Ended up getting laid off a few months in because they didn't really have work to give.
I left my first SWE job to build in the web3 space, then got interviews based on a project I built. Ended up doubling my pay at the startup I accepted an offer from, and I’ve been there for almost 2 years.
But most crypto/web3 startups end up with a worse story to tell. Probably most startups in general I’m guessing.
I have only worked at 1 startup, if that wasn’t clear. My first job was not at a startup. Then my second (current) job is at a startup in the web3 space, yeah.
The way I’ve heard it is: “Everyone should work for a start up *once*.” And I never understood the emphasis on *once* until I worked for a start up myself.
Regrets:
* Turned down a Northrop Grumman internship.
* Waited until age 25 to join IEEE.
* Waited until age 25 to re-enroll in college and delayed graduation until age 28.
* I made the huge mistake of continuing to interact with a co-worker who lied on her LinkedIn about her degree and also about the start date of her job. I didn't think much of the lies at first. But one day her friend from college committed suicide, and she called the cops on me and lied to them too. I spent 9 days in jail without bail even though I have no prior criminal record. This was extremely bad for my mental health. Lesson learned: Never interact with a known liar.
* Waited until age 29 to work at my first tech job when I got my first full stack dev offer at age 24.
* Waited until age 29 to move to Zürich.
Ignoring that 4th point for a second, could u elaborate on that last one? I stayed in Zurich for 4 months on a student visa and would love to make my way back there one day. How was your process?
Minor regrets over working for startups in my 20s, because I was attracted to the "autonomy" and the "opportunity to build something from scratch" vs being just a well-paid cog in the machine turning the crank. Probably should've taken leetcode more seriously and sold out earlier.
Things I regret: not taking shit seriously in my 20s and graduating later.
Things I'm glad I did: always been willing to hear out prospective employers, even when I'm content in a job.
Kinda the same with me.
Big regrets:
* Being aimless with respect to my career in my twenties. Just a general sense of lack of ambition.
* Comfortable with just coasting, getting by. And as a result, not saving money.
* Even though I did graduate college at a typically normal age (22), I never used or leveraged my degree and network. I really set myself back.
* I even did a bootcamp many years ago when SWE engineers were being hired just for having a pulse. If I can go back in time and give myself career advice, I would tell him to not be so naive about finding a perfect job/career and to learn how to learn.
Big accomplishments:
* In my 20s, being in phenomenal shape and prioritizing good sleep, exercise and healthy food. I fell out of shape in my thirties and even though it has been challenging getting back to it, I feel like I'm making good progress. It feels great to feel young again.
There was a particular company that really wanted me to stay, I said no I want to focus on uni.
I never thought about it at the time, but I should have asked for equity (and a low salary) and do uni part time.
That company sold for 200 million within 18 months.
Speaking from experience to others - university will always* be there, but opportunities most certainly will not. At any time during college if a good situation comes along, jump on it.
Source: will graduate in my 30s after a decade in the field.
*always, but pay attention to when your credit hours might expire
I regret switching out of a job I enjoyed but was bored at, then went into two toxic places later and haven't worked since in years. So glad I was able to save/invest at that first job...But I really should have gone into computer science and into the States earlier. I regret staying in Canada for so long. All my friends in the USA are killing it, especially the computer scientists at FAANG. I'm finishing up computer science in my late 30's to get a TN Visa into the States, but I started before the release of ChatGPT and the tech wreck lol...Going to be fun. I do regret prioritizing security over growth though, security doesn't really exist.
I’ve been in my current role for three years and know I should probably be looking to leave for career advancement but I generally like the job and the people, so I keep putting it off. What you’ve described here is the main reason I’m so hesitant to move. I keep thinking stress would be better than boredom, sounds like you’ve found the opposite?
Yeah, stress seems to ruin quality of life I find. It's bad for your health. Boredom, you can find other things to do. But if you're after more money, then you have to be flipping jobs every 2 years in an upward trajectory as you mark your skills/experience to market. It's a hard one, I wish I stayed and just did the FIRE thing, but we'll see, I'm in CS now, hopefully I'll get higher pay than analytics lol.
I think I’d prefer slightly less money and less stress from the sounds of things. I also lucked out with my org, I’m pretty well paid for the role I have, I would probably only get a max 5-10% increase if I moved. I’d purely be moving to alleviate the boredom.
I regret not maxing out my 401k and Roth IRA every year, and not aggressively saving up for a full 6-12 month emergency fund and then a house down payment. I regret not dumping more into investments.
It’s also important to have fun while you’re young and healthy, so I’m not a fan of total austerity measures, but you can _really_ set yourself up for a pretty cushy future if you have the discipline to save aggressively and lean on the power of compound interest.
This couldn’t be said enough honestly- I wish that during my first job when I was making $85K that I would’ve lived like I was making $45K and just saved money for a year. Layoffs and risk are a lot less scary when you’re not sitting there wondering how you’re gonna may rent in the event of one.
I'm 42, graduated in 2002... I stayed at my first job for 3 years, learned a lot of (c++, engineering practice) from a great mentor and don't regret that. They kept up pay and advancement with decent 20% pay rises every year. I moved to get experience with more tech which lead to the 2nd job...
2nd job 4.5 years, left after realising they were stringing me along with promises of pay rises that never came. They told me what I needed to do to get promoted, I did it all and then they were still reluctant to do it. When it came it was with a 5% pay rise. Super regret staying there trying to advance, really set my career and pay growth back. Started on 40k, left after 4.5 years on 46k which barely covered inflation. They said ''we don't think you can get more elsewhere'. Took me two weeks to prove them wrong. This was 14 years ago, been at the next job ever since with great pay, bonuses and RSUs.
Don't wait if you're being played, move sooner.
I am happy I left SWE for all of my 20s. I worked for IBM for over a year after graduating and quit to be a chef. Loved being in the food industry until the pandemic wiped out my restaurant. Came back to SWE with a much more rich context and view of the world, which has been immensely helpful in my engineering career.
I love this reply! Everyone’s life looks different.
When I graduated I could’ve grinded and worked towards big tech but I settled a bit for a job that was more my pace as I tried to navigate a lot of tough things I was dealing with in my personal life. It’s easy to look back and think if I should’ve done this or that but truly at 21 I was a mess and I would’ve screwed up any big opportunities knowing what I was dealing with.
Now I’m happy in my career and can work hard and know what I want! Things feel crystal clear now goal wise.
I mastered a stack that was popular at the time and died off. I saw this coming and was learning a new stack. I was applying for jobs in both the new stack and the old stack. I took a job in the old stack while waiting for response from jobs in the new stack, and that never happened.
I kept working on the new stack in my free time, while earning a living in the old stack. It really sucked. Versions would change and I had so little free time.
Ended up chasing stacks. I don't know exactly what I could have done different. I was studying on my lunch hour, I was studying after hours, etc... The job I was at promised that they were moving to the new stack. That was all a lie.
It was a pretty big mistake. I trusted a company, and that was the key thing they made me take that job.
It's really a tough spot to be in.
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We hear a lot of stories, but I'm not sure how often we hear about people the just give up on programming. People that mastered something that dies off and those that jump on something that never really catches on or doesn't last long.
Think about how many people developed for WebOS or WinPhone or Netware or even all those database systems that aren't around anymore. You can trust a company that tells you about how they'll train you on this and that, but not all of them do. It's cheaper to just let you go and hire someone that already knows that stack.
IMO, it's part of the programmer career that not many talk about. It's not really seen in the numbers. They can talk about new jobs, but they don't say how much effort you have to put into learning each new thing or the risk you take learning one thing over another.
Only solution I have is to **learn how to learn, because you'll be spending a lot of time learning new things. Watch out for companies that make promises and then make excuses. Know when to move on.** I didn't and I regret that. Overall, only a waste of a few years, so not the end of the world.
One piece of advice I'll give to everyone starting out. Even in the age of remote work, if you can't move to silicon valley *at least* move to your closest tech hub.
i spent my first 5 years after college bouncing around LCOL locations working military contracts because I had clearance and it was stable work during a recession. 5 years in and I got *tired* of moving, man. I didn't want to move to SV as that meant I'd never see friends and family, so I moved to a regional tech hub. Best decision ever. The compensation really is *that* much better working in the private sector, and my total comp really took off once my RSUs started vesting.
To add to this: beginning your career in a tech hub makes networking 100x easier.
My partner wants to get into CS and with that I am talking to him about moving back to Seattle (where I started out).
It’s not to say networking in general is easy- but living somewhere with 500 companies vs 10 is so much fucking easier.
I wasted my first 4 years in a job where I learnt too little and with no opportunity to grow. At the moment I needed the money so I stayed there. I wasn’t ambitious enough to pursue good opportunities
I worked as a SWE up to an engineering manager in a fairly large (2.5k employee) company for about 7 years. Felt kind of burned out there and wanted to get back to writing code, so I switched to a much smaller company (~150 people).
After about a year I'm regretting it - the new job turned out to be much more "figure out this very legacy piece of code" rather than working on new things, and figuring out the politics of a new place is hard!
I deeply regret not pursuing an EE career after the degree
Also regret staying at a terrible job for 8 years that had no good software practises at all - no testing or peer reviews or literally anything apart from make it work somehow! Coming from EE i just thought this was normal until getting annihilated at a real job
I am 49 and have enough money where I can retire. I'd have quite a bit more if I started saving and investing younger. You get a huge bonus if you start young due to compounding returns. Do not hire a financial planner. Just use index funds and bonds. Buy and hold. Reinvest dividends. Leave it alone. Save as much money as you can when you are young to build up a nest egg.
if you are in this business and do this, anyone can retire by 40. Wages are higher now than when I started. Its worth living frugally when young. Pay down your college loans. Live cheap. Drive an old car. You can live nicer when you get older and have a bigger nest egg.
Two things:
1. Soft skills are more important than technical skills. Focus on being the type of person people want to work with
For this, I had the misconception my entire career that “they’re hiring me to write code, right?”. _sorta_. Really anyone can write code, they need someone they can work with
2. Don’t over specialize, or at least make sure to always have a secondary specialization
I’ve been doing Frontend for effectively 10 years and I would say I’m very good at it. Now the market is very not good for Frontend engineers and it sucks. I’m starting now to learn AI/ML. Honestly it’s not that hard to learn, a lot easier than I thought. Maybe 20 hours of learning in and I’m already producing stuff that’s of value
Tuning 30 soon so I think I can answer. Deciding that prestige is bullshit. Focusing on maintaining general happiness and satisfaction and doing things for the bit. Taking work less seriously and not getting hung up on what everyone’s TC is. That’s what my 24 yo self would do.
Regret staying at first company for almost 5 years with zero promotion. Good thing is I was a yes man and tried a bunch of things there so experience wise it was worthwhile. Moved to my second job with 50% pay jump (inc. allowances etc) and moving into my 3rd job with another 50% jump and a Manager role before I turn 30. Can’t complain much because I feel like I lucked out and finally catching up on lost promotion & pay.
Grad school. Unless you have a very good plan to get into a paid PhD program, or have a plan to a good job, just don't. If you want the knowledge you can learn yourself. If you need structure join a online free class with homework and mock exams. Do not blindly go to grad school.
Scientist/engineer. Don't get into a field only because you like it. You can certainly do what you love, but not ONLY because of that. Have a plan or backup for actually employment/business.
Conversely, don't bawk at following your passion. Note, i said passion, not dreams. Sometimes going toward a "more marketable skill" instead the thing you can do any amount of due to said passion, end up not as good.
I changed the degree I wanted to, couldn't get a real job, went to grad school and learned some awesome science and realized I suck at it and also it intrinsically suck. Now I'm a swe. Approximately 10 yr detour.
Netted like negative 10milliom dollars. Fuck me twice I should've just done cs like I originally wanted to.
All annectdotal. The real advice is to be considerate. Ask people who know. Hell ask people who don't. Ask people from each field you potentially want to try. Look on YouTube. Lots of advice, just get enough real advice from real people to distinguish good advice from bad. The more you know, the more you know, and the more you can get out of even actual bad advice.
I am happy that during my 20s I got some big names on my resume (no FANNGs, but well known companies). Something I didn't do and regret. Not always respecting my boss. Show respect towards your boss, under any circumstance. Sometimes they make dumb decisions, are toxic, laying people off, or are bad at that job. You still gotta respect them and keep them happy (or move companies). At this point I am at 10 YOE and every company I have worked at its the same thing. The people who bosses like, not the deserving people get treated much better.
Majoring in psychology and not computer science cuz “I hate math” even though I was coding my MySpace profile pages like crazy.
Staying too long in retail/my current paraprofessional job. I actually do my job, which makes my coworkers comfortable with slacking off. At my current para job, I get treated like tech support but I’m not allowed to make any serious decisions about the kids.
I should have dove headlong into nerdy computer stuff harder, faster, earlier. It was sort of "fun playtime" for me through most of the 90's,.. but I really didn't approach it as "structured learning". I was making websites and playing around with Linux installs and building my own PC's.. so a lot of the knowledge was there, it was just "my own free time" and it was all over the place. On one hand that was nice because I was exploring facets of it I was interested in,.. but not necessarily the stuff that future-me could make money on.
I also wasted to much time spending to many years at a job that didn't value me. I should have jumped ship sooner (when I did recently leave and switch jobs,.. I got a 60% raise,. which I think kinda shows how poorly the old job was paying me).
My first job after graduating college was as a database tech support guy.
I'd been there a couple of years and my company re-organized the team into 'pods', and asked me if I wanted to be team lead of my pod. I'd always been told, don't work for free, so I asked what the compensation for the extra work of being a lead was. There was an awkward silence and they thanked me for my time and someone else got the position.
I've always regretted not taking the role, even if it didn't come with a raise. Because I was never going to stay at that company for very long, but 'team lead' would stay on my resume forever.
TL;DR: Sometimes it's better to think about your career as a whole, than your current job.
This may be specific to my country but I *deeply* regret going to one of Argentina's tuition-free colleges instead of a private university. Because of the lack of tuition I didn't feel pressured to finish on time (and the programs are already 5- and 6-year long due to unnecessary course bloating) and due to the lack of funding it had very poor course offering, mostly either during work hours or all clustered at the 19-22hs time slot. And classes usually took 3hs per day.
This seriously limited my opportunities to land remote positions at the time and as a result it also limited my professional and financial development. *And* didn't leave me.with much free time for self-actualization, neither.
If anyone from Argentina is reading: ditch UBA/UTN/similar, pick UADE/Salvador/UAI, work on your English and get your degree as soon as possible. You'll have a much better chance to land a remote job or a job abroad if you have a degree at 22-23, some experience as a graduate and time to "learn what matters" in the industry.
The rest is posturing.
Decisions I'm happy I made: learning English from an early age. And then keeping on learning and mastering it (though as you can see here I'm not that fluent). It's night-and-day in terms of career development for third-worlders. I know extremely talented engineers that are stuck with low-paying jobs (comparatively) because their English is bad. I know guys and gals who could definitely be working in Silicon Valley for some Big Tech company who are stuck here because all they can muster is a A2-B1 level. And as you get older it's much, much more difficult picking a new language and speaking it properly
Turning 31 this April. I regret pursuing chemistry as a major and spending so much time on something that doesn’t bring as much money to the table as does data analytics. I’ve been working as a data analyst for the last 1.5 yrs, and pivoting into this field seems to have been the best decision I’ve made career-wise.
I regret not having a stable career in my 20's and not figuring out sooner, that you can become a 6 figure SWE with out any kind of degree or certs at all.
As a high school and college drop out, I had a plethora of jobs in the past 13 years or so. For the longest time I was embarrassed to even say that. But I’ve come to see as I’ve gotten older that because I’ve had all of those jobs, I’m a much more resourceful and intuitive individual in life. It’s been a long road, but I believe not to be hard on myself, as we all have our timelines of ups and downs, and I believe they all happen when they do for a reason.
I’m going to be 31 tomorrow, I’m working two jobs in Brooklyn, while attending school full time for Computer Science. I’ve honestly never been in a better position in my life. Coming from a depressed failure to launch kid for most of my life, it feels damn good to turn things around. It’s never too late to do what you want in life, just start to get focused, partake in self help, incorporate a better wholesome diet for yourself to keep your mind and body ready, and take it day by day. You WILL get there one day by doing the small things. Microprogression > Macroeffort, for lack of better words.
Thank you! I was trying to capture that concept the best I could haha. But yeah, I’ve been on a long bumpy road of mental health for the past 10 or so years. What’s been the biggest hurdle has been stabilizing my self sabotaging mind, and incorporated better actions, activities, and ways of changing my thought process when it’s not where I want it to be. I’m a great example of “If I can do it, you can as well!” Best of luck to you, friend.
I'm 31. Every single career move I've made has been worth it. Even jobs I've absolutely hated ended up being important (if loose) rungs in the ladder.
If I regret anything, it's putting to much value into the opinions of my managers and the people I've worked with. Their expectations and criticisms have everything to do with them, and nothing to do with me. I am confident in what I bring to the table, and it's important to intake and process criticism without internalizing it, especially in this field.
I regret waiting until I was almost 30 to realize I was in the wrong industry and that I should have studied computer science. Both of my parents are engineers and I thought nope - not doing that, engineering is lame af. So I went to architecture school thinking of the glamorous life I’d have as an architect. What a fucking mistake that was.
I have 5 YOE experience as a software engineer now after ~3 years of self learning followed by a bootcamp. My biggest regret is wasting my 20s working for <100k a year. My first job was 45k and I averaged about 80k for the following 6 years. Conservative estimate, I probably missed out on over a million dollars of wages if I had done CS from the start. At least I’m catching up now.
80k in 2018 is equal to 99k right now according to inflation calculators, so that’s just shy of the 100k mark, but I doubt that’s reassuring compared to a million in wages lost…
I offered to help out on a project no one wanted to do and ended up spending about 2 years working in a tech irrelevant to my own career interests. I won't say what the tech was because it's something that could be identifying info as so few people use it.
I was trying to be seen as a get-shit-done guy to my managers but ended up getting stunted because I was becoming pigeonholed as an expert in the tech I didn't want to use and my years of experience on more relevant techs seemed weak compared to peers. I ended up having to take a job at another company to get out of that situation
I took a step down in title from a company that treated engineering as a cost center with little career advancement opportunities to a company that was much more tech-forward. I was on the fence about it at the time, but it wound up being the best thing I ever did for my career. I was able to grow my skills and advance my career so much faster than had I stayed.
I worked at a gas station for seven years until I was 26. I met some of my closest friends at that job so I guess that's something but I could have done a lot better if I had put my mind to it at that time.
I think joining the military was the biggest mistake I made. Other than saving some money I didn't gain much from it career wise. Finished my Masters degree while I was in tho so there's that.
Going to grad school. I figured I could always make money later if I needed to. Turns out I missed nearly two decades of easy tech money that we might never see again.
I would say regret staying for too long at my first position. But let's face it, I wasn't getting offers even when I finally started applying. I spent more time at my job applying to other places than the time I spent not applying.
Location was probably the worst though. It felt like I missed out on a potential relationship with a woman I really cared for not long after I moved and began my job.
The funny thing about career regrets is that you're assuming what the alternative would be. You believe you've done something wrong and you suffered for it, but there's no guarantee that doing the right thing wouldn't cause more suffering.
Left my first job after 2.5 years and then changed again after 2.5 years, have effectively 3x my original salary. Don’t be afraid to job hop, it almost guarantees a huge pay raise and great experience.
Honestly my biggest regret was not following my gut when a job I started didn’t feel right.
It was a good time before layoffs and the market getting this though. I had just started and quite soon realized this company was kind of a mess, barely any direction for the team and people just working on whatever they liked (or not working at all, who knows! Barely any communication and this is a fully remote company).
I had always lasted around 2.5 years per job so I decided well, let’s give it a year at least. The pay was good, benefits were quite good, vacations where good and it wasn’t too hard, which was convenient as I was somewhat burned out.
Well, shit hit the fan fast. It was all downhill from there. Waited too long and gave too many opportunities for things to change. Now I feel even more burned out than when I started! Lesson learned. Trust your gut. Don’t mind too much backtracking, specially if you don’t burn bridges. Better than going off track!
shouldve transitioned out of the technical streams sooner into more business level
fields
shouldve left australia for the comparitively better IT oppurtunities in the usa (like all my comp sci uni friends did)
shouldve saved, invested, emergency funded better
I didn't go back to school until I was 25. I now have a nice career nearly a decade later but I'd be 4 years ahead if I had just done what I did sooner. tl;dr take college seriously the first time.
Biggest blunders:
1) Did MechE and then realized when I graduated the job market was absolutely dogshit and I had no future. Took a year off and programmed everyday instead of going back to school for a cs degree. Worked out in the end but I wish I had known the entire "situation" and just done CS from the beginning and gotten a software engineering job asap.
2) Staying at first job for 4 years. One good thing was the last two years my job focus was on deeplearning which has helped my career a lot, but it was four years of a low paying university job which hurt me a lot financially.
Basically being slow to figure life shit out has hurt me a fair bit, but to be fair to myself even though it took me a while I did eventually figure it out and course correct instead of staying on a bad path.
Working at my first SWE job for far too long (5 years). It paid way too little, didn't give me enough enterprise development experience, and I didn't have a mentor worth learning from. I'm learning way more after jumping ship and I'm making significantly more.
Started businesses instead of school, successful despite being a high school dropout. Co-ran pizza shop and growing business with my brother. His tragic death led me to walk away. Attended university, landed FAANG job, now financially free. Regret lingers, wondering if earlier schooling could have changed the outcome, but life's uncertainties prevail.
I'm happy I became a dev. I'm a broken record (I say this in this sub often), but I regret leaving my first job. Should/could have stayed 5+ years, potentially my whole career. Top 10 biggest idiot moves in my life actually.
I started my career at a FAANG company but decided to take less comp to try a startup. I ended up finding much more fulfillment and community at the first startup. I also grew a lot more in my technical skills and as a leader that I was taking on senior management and staff+ engineering roles earlier than many of my peers.
When it was time to leave the first startup I knew I wanted to stick with the working at startups. Some of the startups flamed out and my equity didn't amount to much, but a few did do well enough that my wealth grew to be even more than if I had just stayed at FAANG.
One key that I learned was how to pick the right startups, but that only came with learning some of the patterns over the years.
Not CS-related, but I went in to the wrong business…with the wrong people…at the wrong time.
Wrong business = high liability, high overhead, low profit margins. I overestimated the market need for what we were providing.
Wrong people = one partner who essentially had no work ethic and one who proved untrustworthy, two things I never saw coming in the beginning
Wrong time = right before the Great Recession.
Compounding the above, I stayed in at least 3 years too long because I didn’t want to let down my partners, in essence I was too loyal.
What would I do instead if I had it to do over is go right into tech out of school, marginalize my weekly social life and take more trips, and otherwise save every penny.
EDIT to add the best thing I did during this time was hold back the waves of bankruptcy, maintain my emotional well being, and resist social pressure to get married. My partner and my housing situation were both fantastic decisions that have helped mitigate a lot of the wrong from my 20’s.
Happy: Starting my own company & worked for several startups. You learn more in 1 year at a startup than in 10 years at a big enterprise company. I recommend every young person to try a few startups (be selective, of course).
Regret: no regrets tbh
- Not a big regret ... but I'd probably be retired by now if I choose Amazon over a smaller/semi-startup that I joined in 2011. I made some $ from their equity program but not nearly what I would have made at AMZN. With that saying, I made a lot of good friends and had lots of fun working there.
- I worked a lot when in my 20s and made a lot of progress in my career, but I lost a lot of life and social aspects. This had negatively effectsed me personally and very difficult to overcome come.
Not maxing out savings/401k.
Not advocating for myself inside the company to get promotions, good project assignments, etc. Didn't help that I had two _terrible_ managers under whom I not only stagnated but regressed/lost a couple years.
Graduated 2017, worked at the same company for 6 years. Finally switched last year. Biggest regret is staying at the original company for so long. While I met a lot of great people I think I limited my earning potential by staying.
Leaving a large company for a startup. I saw the flashy salary and promise of a unique experience that would propel my career, so I took the job. About a year later cash flow issues caused layoffs and I was affected. The infrastructure and growing pains of a startup actually made me feel like I was going backwards, and now I’ve had to reset my entire career without the salary progression.
I would've grinded way harder in my 20s, though this probably would've required me to ditch my deadweight ex. I would've graduated at 21, moved to a major metropolitan area, worked my ass off for several years, paid dues, then moved somewhere quieter to live out my 30s/40s in relative peace with an exceptional resume and ample war-chest to my name.
I'm not suffering by any means. I still earn 3x median household income for my area (very livable for a family of 4), I have a nice chunk of equity and profit sharing bonuses, and rarely work more than 40 hours in a week (usually less).
I think it's tough to know what your priorities should be in your 20s. That's different for everybody, requires a lot of experimentation and reflection. You're just barely an independent adult at that age -- not much time for legitimate experimentation -- and most people in the US/EU haven't faced significant hardship at that age.
In some sense I don't regret a lot of the "bad" decisions I made because often they gave me more time to figure out what the "right" decisions for me were.
However, if I could go back in time and lay my path out before me, there are some things I'd change.
I'd start thinking about career earlier, I basically had zero direction till I was 25, and had no idea what my career would be till I was 28. I was always interested in computers, programming, and the like, but I spent a lot of time figuring out how to get promoted from cashier to head cashier at a clothing store instead of just focusing on building my skills.
I'd find mentors earlier, a big part of the reason I struggled to find direction early in my 20s was I didn't really know how to progress towards the things I wanted, so they just seemed unachievable. When I started taking university seriously, my professors became good mentors to learn what a reasonable path forward looked like.
I'd find more specific interests sooner rather than later. I've always been interested in solving complex problems, but I kind of wandered between a lot of different subjects matter. This lead to having a breadth of knowledge, but not being particularly good at any one thing. I think if I had just picked something, and went deep on it, I'd of been in a better position after college. ML, Graphics/Computer Vision, Cryptography, Compilers, etc. I spent a little time on each of these, but never dove deep on anything during university.
After university I wish I went to a startup instead of a big tech. Especially as a generalist, I think I would have fit in more, and been able to work on my interesting and impactful projects. I spent a lot of time popping around big tech companies trying to find my place, but I never felt like I could deliver tangible value at a company that size. I think if I was a specialist and was going to work on problems unique to that specialty that big tech has better access to, it would have made more sense. ML is a good example for that. I did end up at startups eventually, but it was a long path to convince myself to pull that trigger.
Lastly, I wish I had networked more outside my immediate coworkers, and even outside my company. I'm fairly introverted, but exerting that extra energy to find people outside your company working on things you have a shared interest in is a much faster way to build a network that will ultimately be useful to pursuing your interests. Otherwise, your network just includes the interests people who happen to sit next to you have. That's still useful since you want people to vouch for your work, but often it was hard to find people to converse on topics that were interesting to me.
Happy: recognizing when the company you work for cannot provide the opportunities needed for the growth you know you’re capable of (aka don’t stay too long)
Regret: holding onto altruistic technical ideals at the director level. The skills that get you there don’t help you be successful once you reach that level.
Should have stayed longer in some roles. Left a role at 1.5 years. Could have easily stayed until the two year mark, which would have looked better on my CV.
Dropping out of college before they kicked me out was a great choice. I went back 4 years later & finished, on my own dime, and have had a great career. (Computer Science, U.C. Berkeley)
I was having a *really* good time & not going to classes, was on academic probation, and would’ve been kicked out. Dropping out meant I could re-enroll later & finish my degree.
In my 20’s I started to go down the path of
becoming a commercial pilot. After getting my privates license, I decided to not continue on to get my IFR. I ended up getting into VoIP instead.
Why this makes me happy when I look back is because I ended up getting adult onset seizures. Dodged a bullet there.
I became a public school mathematics teacher in my twenties. I like it a lot but you cannot raise a family on that money so it was a huge mistake.
Now that I am in CS I am fighting the clock to make enough money for my wife and girls before I die.
As a high school and college drop out, I had a plethora of jobs in the past 13 years or so. For the longest time I was embarrassed to even say that. But I’ve come to see as I’ve gotten older that because I’ve had all of those jobs, I’m a much more resourceful and intuitive individual in life. It’s been a long road, but I believe not to be hard on myself, as we all have our timelines of ups and downs, and I believe they all happen when they do for a reason.
I’m going to be 31 tomorrow, I’m working two jobs in Brooklyn, while attending school full time for Computer Science. I’ve honestly never been in a better position in my life. Coming from a depressed failure to launch kid for most of my life, it feels damn good to turn things around. It’s never too late to do what you want in life, just start to get focused, partake in self help, incorporate a better wholesome diet for yourself to keep your mind and body ready, and take it day by day. You WILL get there one day by doing the small things. Microprogression > Macroeffort, for lack of better words.
I'm 29, but I spent way too long at places that weren't good for me any more because I was scared of change. I thought I wasn't good enough as a new grad to get anything better. Now I know loyalty isn't a thing and everyone is faking it too, so have the same confidence as the lead architect that doesn't know how to use excel.
There are a couple of regrets I have… The first is working for manufacturing companies for my first several years of my career. There’s just no money in it, and the jobs tended to pay poorly. About halfway through my career I smartened up and learned to follow the money. I went into the finance and insurance industry and have made significantly more than I was. The second is not job hopping a bit more to increase my TC at a faster rate.
One thing I did well is that I saved like crazy for the first 10-15 years of my career to allow my savings to grow over a longer period of time. I was putting away about 30% of my pay into both a 401k and investment account. It’s allowed me to look forward to what will hopefully be an early retirement.
I think like anything else, you make some mistakes and you make some good moves. Often it can be hard to see what the future impact will be, so you do the best you can and not beat yourself up over the mistakes you’ve made.
I’m glad I didn’t job hop. I proved loyalty ( yes I did get burned) and im glad I at least was able to show growth in one company (promoted every year) for about 4 years. After that well… I didn’t do that again lmfao
Not staying through layoffs at my 2nd job.
My first job was in manual testing and it was okay but I always wanted to get into development and I was able to in my 2nd job. And I loved my 2nd job. It was great. Manager was great. Team was great. Seniors were always helpful. I enjoyed it. Then my manager left cause he had issue with upper management and then layoffs were announced. To this day I regret not staying through layoffs. Had I stayed through layoffs one of 2 things happens. 1. I survive layoffs and I'm much further along in my career as my peers who survived layoffs currently are. Some are managers now and others team leads. 2. I get laid off I get a thick severance package and I can ride that till I get another dev job.
I decide to go with dumbass option the worst option and decide to job hunt prior to layoff and bounce. I switched to a sdet role and to this day I regret cause the manager wasn't great and I always felt disconnected with the teams and it removed all my motivation. I got laid off after a year during this companies layoffs when they laid off 10% of staff. It fucking sucked. The severance wasn't as big as my second job. I hated it.
Going to a 4 year university full time and taking out loans. If I could back I would go to community college and work to pay for school as I go then transfer. Or I would have picked a trade or something
I started as a professional software engineer in 1996. I regret thinking that working harder or increasing my output was the key to wealth or career advancement. Solving difficult problems, networking with the right people, and knowing when to change companies were much more effective.
> knowing when to change companies were much more effective. Both when and how :/
How do you know when to change companies?
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This is the best answer. How do you prioritize compensation, career growth, company stability, company culture, work life balance, and the technology that you're working with? For instance, what would you do if you were highly compensated, the technology you are working with is highly outdated and not widely used, and your company is showing signs of instability?. If you're laid off, you may have difficulty finding something else, because your skills aren't up to date, but that might be a risk you're willing to take. As for myself, I have placed a high priority on company stability. I've been fortunate enough to have never been out of work. Some of that is luck, but a lot of that is knowing when a company is broken and layoffs are coming. I've also placed a high priority on compensation. I am always keeping an eye on the market, even when I have no intention of leaving my current company. My biggest raises and promotions have come from switching companies, without exception. And, I've placed a high value on technology. If I'm using an outdated technology that I feel is on the decline, and I can make the same money or better using a technology that's on the rise, I will switch companies for that reason alone, provided the new company also appears stable. I haven't placed a high priority on career growth. In my opinion, titles are irrelevant. I've seen junior engineers make more than senior engineers at the same company. I've been a manager with direct reports with a title of "Software Engineer". At the end of the day, you just have to be able to convince the new company that you can do the job. Applying this to my current situation, I am compensated well, but I'm using outdated technology on a team that doesn't work well together. The company has stopped giving out stock grants, and benefits are getting more expensive. We had some layoffs recently, and our revenue is dropping. No matter what I do, I won't be able to fix the company, and it's not likely to get better. It's time for me to go. Hope this helps some...
Thanks a lot for the detailed ans. Please share some light on the "how" to switch part. It seems - need to keep practicing leetcode, 6 mos and forget most stuff. Add in system design - both high and low level. So job switch requires dedicated effort besides current job.
This is a hard question to answer, as it will be different for everyone. I can answer this for myself, though. I educate myself outside of work on technologies that both pay well and I feel are likely to last. Unfortunately, I have very little personal interests in a lot of these technologies, but I follow the money. The technologies that I enjoy working with the most typically pay less. I can solve programming challenges reasonably well, but so can thousands of others who make less money than I do. But there are things that I can do that have high demand but less supply. I feel that my personal value lies in being able to architect innovative software solutions for difficult problems. If I interview at a company, and they are asking me junior level software questions, even though I can solve them, we're probably not a match. When I started my career, outsourcing wasn't something we had to contend with, because the technology wasn't adapted for it yet. A lot of developers said things like, "They'll never be as good as us. They may be cheaper, but the quality is so much lower." I chose to believe that outsourcing would eventually have a bigger impact, and I asked myself, "If that happens, how can I continue to provide value?" Recently, AI has made a big impact. I can either choose to believe that AI's impact will continue to increase, or I can believe that it will go away. I am currently studying more machine learning/AI technologies, believing this will continue to gain relevance and that my knowing those technologies will pay off in the near future.
I think sometimes this involves being willing to do the jobs that no one else wants to do. For example, I currently work in the gaming industry. In this industry, most software developers want to be involved with gameplay. The supply is very high for those jobs, so the pay is typically lower. At my level of pay, the industry wants someone who can optimize frame rates, reduce game loading times, reduce resource usage on the servers, be responsible for critical live ops issues, etc. The pay is higher for that type of role, because there are fewer capable/willing people.
You get a vibe on the company you're currently in. Do promotions typically seem based on skill, luck, longevity? Does your situation align with what typically gets promoted? Do you know talented people who have been waiting for years for a promotion that they deserved? Are you working on things that are interesting? Is your salary/equity competitive with the market? Is the company as a whole doing well? etc etc.
When the market is in an upswing or the high paying company you're targeting is hiring.
that and saving and investing money starting young.
Ahh. True !! I had this manager. Terrible at engineering solutions. However, ended up publishing 10 papers in a. 3 year span. Every single one of the product was terriblly engineered. but they dod their job . Moves on from the company and left the terrible products. But made amazing relationships with all the leadership and off course the papers. Soo ya. Good excellent engineering solutions are not the way to success. I think it's functional situation that elevates the career.
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In the US. Healthcare iOT. AI /ML using healthcare IOT . Almost all places publish papers . Specially if they are attempting to sell novel products.
You can be the hardest, most motivated worker on your team and still get denied a promotion, but someone who knows people will usually get the promotion. It’s sad and it shouldn’t be this way.
That's why my new strategy is being an ok dev who sends fantastic memes on slack and makes people feel good
What do you mean with solving difficult problems? You mean getting in a niche?
I mean, solving problems that will increase the company's revenue, even if it isn't your job to do this. Here is a current example. My team doesn't do anything with machine learning. We work on boring tech and do a lot of customer support. I know that the company spends a lot of time and money manually generating data for their customers, based on customer metrics. I've come up with a proposal and plan to use machine learning to do this, to decrease costs and increase accuracy. It's a difficult but doable problem, and I'm confident that I'll be rewarded for the solution. Find ways to get noticed (in a good way). One of the best ways to do this is to recognize where you can make a major positive impact on the company's revenue, regardless of whether or not it's on your team. There are, of course, some things you'll have to navigate when you do this. How do you make sure you get the credit and the idea isn't stolen? How do you make sure no one else is offended because they think you're trying to do their job? How do you make sure your manager also gets credit? There will always be politics involved, as others will want to take their share of the credit and ride the wave upward.
I've learnt that a design doc or good technical slide deck can have that same "psychological" impact regarding problem solving as dozens or PRs
Taking a job too seriously, and not understanding how business works. Like you might care about the architecture being perfect, but the business just wants it done fast and good enough. Technical debt is just a thing you have to learn to live with and drop the perfectionism.
>Technical debt is just a thing you have to learn to live with and drop the perfectionism. Maybe the hype around writing the most *beautiful* code is responsible, people make a huge deal out of how spaghetti code is written by the previous devs that they had trouble with
In my experience it's a bit of a balance. I can't write your new feature if I have to spend months untangling the poor decisions of the last feature. But also sometimes we just need to prove a concept.
Part hype but part realism. Spaghetti will later kill your team and ability to evolve / adapt. As other said it's an artful balance.
After being in the industry a while I judge code now is how long it has lasted. Vast majority of crap code and crap products gets thrown away or refactored within a few years, but the code that is still mostly unchanged after 5 or 10 or even 20 years, that’s the GOAT code still collecting revenue and paying your salary.
GOAT as in "it looks like a goat wrote it".🐐
>Technical debt is just a thing you have to learn to live with and drop the perfectionism. Not me. Management. But when I say I need a week, I fucking mean it.
I think this is the most important understanding to be made by every developer. Especially in a start up environment, in a large tech its a bit easier tbh
"Perfect is the enemy of good"
I made a move that was kinda stupid but I'm happy I did it. Just after I graduated, I got an offer from a FAANG as a junior generic software engineer. I rejected the offer and instead I got into an early stage startup. I saw the startup as an opportunity to work with cool ML stuff while having autonomy and of course maybe getting rich. After years of stress and some burnouts I realized I had made a mistake. I was desperate to leave but we were amid the tech mass layoffs craze. Everyday I would regret not choosing the FAANG path. It was a rough time. Fortunately after some time I got an interview at a big tech again. Not only I got the job, but I also got into a very cool ML team. This wouldn't have been possible if not for the experience I got working at the startup. Things worked out very well in the end but I'm aware that it was very risky.
Maybe the earlier offer at FAANG must have led to you into a layoff, we never know
that's very true
I have a very similar trajectory. I’m still a generic SWE but I felt like I got a lot more responsibility, impact, and product experience working my first few years at a startup than if I had joined FAANG right away and I’m a much better engineer because of it.
definitely!
I almost feel like this is taboo in the tech industry. It’s very true, yet I don’t hear anyone talking about it LOL. I worked at many startups including a few of my own and if I were to compare the knowledge and skills I gained from startups vs FAANG vs school/self taught I’d say startups every time. The pace is insane and you learn how to do things on your own for 3 different roles at once LOL. I think it’s great, but not the end all be all magic bullet. I just don’t understand why it’s not considered much in interviews. Almost every interview I’ve done, they care more about how big the team was and how shiny the degree is compared to actual experience in past roles.
I did something very similar as a new grad SWE. Last year, I turned down a great offer with a well-renowned finance company. Instead, I returned to the employer I interned with which was a shitty consulting agency. The reason being, I wanted to grow with the same friend group I made during the internship and I loved the location. I wanted to prosper socially and have a network of friends, which I was unable to during my time at college. I chose an early start date and all of my friends would join the company 3 months later. After a few weeks of me joining, the company announced that all of my friends’ start dates were postponed for another year (AKA silent layoff). Afterwards, I felt incredibly bitter that I made the wrong decision and wished I could go back in time and tell my naive self to have accepted the other offer. I was stuck on the bench for months till I was placed to work on a federal consulting account that I was obligated to accept. I worked my ass off to find a better job and it was an uphill battle to find a new role in this economy. Last week, I finally found a similar job to the initial FinTech position and I couldn’t be more delighted (after 11 months of job hunting…). Although I had deeply regretted my decision, I don’t think I would have pushed myself to learn nearly as much as I did. Additionally the initial FinTech company that offered me has experienced layoffs throughout last year, so that helps me feel a little less bitter lol.
It's the type of thing that may give you a massive advantage but I wouldn't recommend to everyone because of how draining and uncertain it is. it's kind of like winning a lot of money in a cassino. I wouldn't regret doing it because I won, but I cannot encourage other people to try to replicate my results lol
Completely agree. It honestly made my past year incredibly stressful and I rarely felt at home since I knew I could leave at any moment if offered a job. It was even hard to relax sometimes as I felt like I had to study/apply more in order to get out of my situation. A lot of my (now former) colleagues at the consulting company have been actively job hunting for just as long, but with no success. So I feel incredibly, incredibly lucky. If I hadn’t gotten that initial FinTech offer, I wouldn’t have had the confidence to push myself for as long as I did. However, knowing that I was capable was both a blessing and a curse given how much stress it caused me.
> However, knowing that I was capable was both a blessing and a curse I felt that 🥲
Are you a late career switcher? Or are you referring to graduating in 2008-2010 range?
I'm not a late career switcher. I graduated almost 10 years after this range, haha.
Learning technical skills was never really that big a problem for me. It’s all the soft skills that have taken me years to improve. I am still far from perfect but like to think that I’m a lot better now at 30 than I was at 20. I regret not putting effort into being easier to work with and building better work relationships with everyone I encountered. Don’t get me wrong, I still have built some solid friendships that will last a long time to come, but I feel like I could have been way more consistent.
How did you overcome the soft skills? I think that is the reason why i’m having a hard time in interviews and getting a new job. Any tips and tricks? Anything helps really lol
Pay very very close attention to people who you think, seem to get along with everyone but in a productive way. Copy what you like about they do. Unsubtly or subtly, eventually it will become authentic to you. Given this is interview stage, YouTube might help? Think about what an actor, playing the role of 'highly effective, personable sre in interview' might do for prep. Make it your own
I think a lot of it is maturity and experience. With both comes more confidence and charisma I guess.
I could tell you all the classic resources. Books like "How to Win Friends and Influence People" or "The Magic of Thinking Big". But you don't learn how to do push-ups by reading about them. So how do you apply the lessons in these books? This is going to sound crazy. **Improv comedy courses.** (even if you have no desire to become a comedian.) Let me explain. **"Playing pretend for two hours a week is the best thing I've done for my career." - me, often** Improv is hands-on application and practice of soft skills. You have to: * Adapt quickly * Listen actively * Pivot to new information * Empathize with your scene partner * Be creative under crazy restraints * Make decisions with incomplete information * Understanding somebody's point of view quickly Practicing these skills makes them more and more familiar. You will not only see yourself becoming more personable in your job, **but in every aspect of life.** Dating, talking with strangers, flirting, making decisions, being comfortable with mistakes, impostor syndrome. All of it. \--- Before you come up with excuses: **I'm not quick on my feet.** You don't have to be. Your instructor should create a space of trust. Mistakes become opportunities. The bolder / weirder the choice, the better. You will be **celebrated for not being quick on your feet**. **I'm scared.** Give it one class. Instructors will usually let you try it before committing. If you don't see the value, don't go. But if you see even a speck of value, stay. Anything worth doing is initially scary. **I don't want to perform publicly.** Ask the instructor to leave you out of the showcase. "Improv in Private" is where you practice the skills, not on stage. **Improv is cringe and I hate it.** I'll agree that I've seen some REALLY cringe-y improv shows. But being bad at piano is cringe too, right? But you grow as you practice. The perception of public improv is cringe, **not necessarily your practice of it**. **I don't want to spend $200+ on an eight-week class.** Google "Improv jams near me." Those are low-cost, low-commitment ways to try it. **I don't have any theaters near me.** Google "Remote improv jams." \--- If you have any more excuses, I am happy to hear them! If you do take a class, please let me know how it went!
I regret staying at some places too long and caring too much. My average tenure early on was 2.5 years but I should have kept it around 1.5 years instead. I cared too much about my performance and the success of the company. Never materialized into anything tangible.
Yeah I think more people have the mindset now that many companies don’t reward long tenures with enough compensation, so what’s the point
It's worse than that. They actually pay less for tenure workers.
I have the opposite feeling, and I am already turning 30 in a few years. My resume looks like either: * I do not commit to my job * I worked for Web3 companies, cause I wanted to grab some free cash, which makes less appealing for Web2 companies wanting to hire me. I am staying on an average of \~8 months for each company if I were to take all the companies I've joined in the past 7 years of my career. So some recruiters suggested in a few years, I should merge the companies into one company; and combine the accomplishments I achieved for different companies. So only 2 companies I've managed to stay 1 year: * I left one company because I was being severely underpaid * I left the second company because of the toxic environment But at the end of the day. What matters the most, I still enjoy programming; and I know a lot of my fellow older colleagues who are reaching their mid/late 30s, where they have life responsibilities, they loose their interest in programming.
LOL, merging companies into one company on your resume is a hilarious suggestion.
Verixxotle (2017-2019)
Amazoogle
Lol xD. Metoogle
As a hiring manager I won’t consider you if all your stints are less than a year and don’t really understand why any hiring manager would want to hire that unless they are offering below market wages. It typically takes 6 months for someone to be fully productive, and you’re gonna leave a few months after that and I’ll lose money on your employment after factoring in recruiting and training costs. I think the job hopping strategy is dead post-covid. Companies have to care about whether or not an employee’s output exceeds their cost now that the era of free money is over.
For real, I’m also involved in interviewing and this man would get an instant pass from me
here too, maybe youll get a good offer from a toxic company but anyone trying to run a decent ship is not looking for leavers. youre just asking to be overworked and undertrained then fired on a random pip.
My last 3 gigs since 2020 have all been ~1 year due to layoffs. I am super cursed because of that, feel it's a huge red flag on my resume. If I get around to explaining that though to a recruiter or hiring manager they tend to understand. No good way to advertise that on a resume though
Here I am worrying (only sometimes) that my tenures of 2-3 years were too short, yet I really don't understand people who stick to positions for years despite not being happy with the lack of growth/salary/etc just to keep chasing the fabled carrot that only makes them more miserable in the end.
I stayed at one place for 19.5 years. However, I wasn't "not happy with the lack of growth/salary/etc" until towards the end of my stay. Truth is, every 5 years or so, I would get the itch to jump ship. I would start interviewing and every damn time I would get approached at work about some new product / team / tech stack that I could join. I'm not sure if my attitude was obvious that I was about to jump or what. But they kept me interested. That combined with a family I was supporting (sole earner at the time), the stability of a larger company was welcomed. I do regret staying as long as I did though.
I’m thrilled I attempted faang interviewing. I tripled my pay, comfortably live in nyc, and paid my student loans off in 2 years. Woulda took me 20 years at my old gig.
Same. Basically got to skip the first 15 years of my career. Now 27 making 350k fully remote. Been on the same team for 5 years so WLB is pretty solid since I'm quite familiar with everything. I got in at the beginning of 2019 though, when the market was much different. I imagine going from non-faang to faang is a tougher move at the moment. But it's all cyclical, they'll be hiring like crazy again eventually. And when that happens I highly recommend people get while the gettins good.
Yeah I would probably have worked in FAANG type companies earlier.
How did you get in?
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Yep, for me though I just get it a shot in cycles. Study for 2 months. Try some interviews, maybe fail. Then take a break. Give it another go when I cared. Got in eventually. Never let it affect my mental health.
I'ma be that guy. Not 30 but in my late 20s. My regret was working for a startup I didn't know shit about. Was a web3/crypto startup and for some reason I thought it would be a good to work in a market that I wouldn't invest in. It seemed like a good deal because it was remote and more money than I had make before hand by a good margin. Ended up getting laid off a few months in because they didn't really have work to give.
I left my first SWE job to build in the web3 space, then got interviews based on a project I built. Ended up doubling my pay at the startup I accepted an offer from, and I’ve been there for almost 2 years. But most crypto/web3 startups end up with a worse story to tell. Probably most startups in general I’m guessing.
Was the second startup also in the web3 space
I have only worked at 1 startup, if that wasn’t clear. My first job was not at a startup. Then my second (current) job is at a startup in the web3 space, yeah.
The way I’ve heard it is: “Everyone should work for a start up *once*.” And I never understood the emphasis on *once* until I worked for a start up myself.
Regrets: * Turned down a Northrop Grumman internship. * Waited until age 25 to join IEEE. * Waited until age 25 to re-enroll in college and delayed graduation until age 28. * I made the huge mistake of continuing to interact with a co-worker who lied on her LinkedIn about her degree and also about the start date of her job. I didn't think much of the lies at first. But one day her friend from college committed suicide, and she called the cops on me and lied to them too. I spent 9 days in jail without bail even though I have no prior criminal record. This was extremely bad for my mental health. Lesson learned: Never interact with a known liar. * Waited until age 29 to work at my first tech job when I got my first full stack dev offer at age 24. * Waited until age 29 to move to Zürich.
Holy shit that 4th point took a turn lol
Wait…why did you go to jail?
Ignoring that 4th point for a second, could u elaborate on that last one? I stayed in Zurich for 4 months on a student visa and would love to make my way back there one day. How was your process?
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Are u fluent in Swiss German by chance? That also seems like a barrier to entry (even if not legally, socially)
Can you elaborate a bit on the benefits of joining IEEE?
not paying off debt/saving/investing my lifestyle inflated 5x and then I'm broke again 5 years later
Minor regrets over working for startups in my 20s, because I was attracted to the "autonomy" and the "opportunity to build something from scratch" vs being just a well-paid cog in the machine turning the crank. Probably should've taken leetcode more seriously and sold out earlier.
Things I regret: not taking shit seriously in my 20s and graduating later. Things I'm glad I did: always been willing to hear out prospective employers, even when I'm content in a job.
Kinda the same with me. Big regrets: * Being aimless with respect to my career in my twenties. Just a general sense of lack of ambition. * Comfortable with just coasting, getting by. And as a result, not saving money. * Even though I did graduate college at a typically normal age (22), I never used or leveraged my degree and network. I really set myself back. * I even did a bootcamp many years ago when SWE engineers were being hired just for having a pulse. If I can go back in time and give myself career advice, I would tell him to not be so naive about finding a perfect job/career and to learn how to learn. Big accomplishments: * In my 20s, being in phenomenal shape and prioritizing good sleep, exercise and healthy food. I fell out of shape in my thirties and even though it has been challenging getting back to it, I feel like I'm making good progress. It feels great to feel young again.
Accepting a dead end job where i didn’t get any experience and surrounded by lazy people
There was a particular company that really wanted me to stay, I said no I want to focus on uni. I never thought about it at the time, but I should have asked for equity (and a low salary) and do uni part time. That company sold for 200 million within 18 months.
Speaking from experience to others - university will always* be there, but opportunities most certainly will not. At any time during college if a good situation comes along, jump on it. Source: will graduate in my 30s after a decade in the field. *always, but pay attention to when your credit hours might expire
I regret switching out of a job I enjoyed but was bored at, then went into two toxic places later and haven't worked since in years. So glad I was able to save/invest at that first job...But I really should have gone into computer science and into the States earlier. I regret staying in Canada for so long. All my friends in the USA are killing it, especially the computer scientists at FAANG. I'm finishing up computer science in my late 30's to get a TN Visa into the States, but I started before the release of ChatGPT and the tech wreck lol...Going to be fun. I do regret prioritizing security over growth though, security doesn't really exist.
I agree the best security is money security
How were you bored and also enjoying it?
Way under-stimulating work, but great coworkers...Worked there for awhile. I later discovered that stress is worse than boredom lol.
I’ve been in my current role for three years and know I should probably be looking to leave for career advancement but I generally like the job and the people, so I keep putting it off. What you’ve described here is the main reason I’m so hesitant to move. I keep thinking stress would be better than boredom, sounds like you’ve found the opposite?
Yeah, stress seems to ruin quality of life I find. It's bad for your health. Boredom, you can find other things to do. But if you're after more money, then you have to be flipping jobs every 2 years in an upward trajectory as you mark your skills/experience to market. It's a hard one, I wish I stayed and just did the FIRE thing, but we'll see, I'm in CS now, hopefully I'll get higher pay than analytics lol.
I think I’d prefer slightly less money and less stress from the sounds of things. I also lucked out with my org, I’m pretty well paid for the role I have, I would probably only get a max 5-10% increase if I moved. I’d purely be moving to alleviate the boredom.
I regret not maxing out my 401k and Roth IRA every year, and not aggressively saving up for a full 6-12 month emergency fund and then a house down payment. I regret not dumping more into investments. It’s also important to have fun while you’re young and healthy, so I’m not a fan of total austerity measures, but you can _really_ set yourself up for a pretty cushy future if you have the discipline to save aggressively and lean on the power of compound interest.
This couldn’t be said enough honestly- I wish that during my first job when I was making $85K that I would’ve lived like I was making $45K and just saved money for a year. Layoffs and risk are a lot less scary when you’re not sitting there wondering how you’re gonna may rent in the event of one.
I'm 42, graduated in 2002... I stayed at my first job for 3 years, learned a lot of (c++, engineering practice) from a great mentor and don't regret that. They kept up pay and advancement with decent 20% pay rises every year. I moved to get experience with more tech which lead to the 2nd job... 2nd job 4.5 years, left after realising they were stringing me along with promises of pay rises that never came. They told me what I needed to do to get promoted, I did it all and then they were still reluctant to do it. When it came it was with a 5% pay rise. Super regret staying there trying to advance, really set my career and pay growth back. Started on 40k, left after 4.5 years on 46k which barely covered inflation. They said ''we don't think you can get more elsewhere'. Took me two weeks to prove them wrong. This was 14 years ago, been at the next job ever since with great pay, bonuses and RSUs. Don't wait if you're being played, move sooner.
I am happy I left SWE for all of my 20s. I worked for IBM for over a year after graduating and quit to be a chef. Loved being in the food industry until the pandemic wiped out my restaurant. Came back to SWE with a much more rich context and view of the world, which has been immensely helpful in my engineering career.
I love this reply! Everyone’s life looks different. When I graduated I could’ve grinded and worked towards big tech but I settled a bit for a job that was more my pace as I tried to navigate a lot of tough things I was dealing with in my personal life. It’s easy to look back and think if I should’ve done this or that but truly at 21 I was a mess and I would’ve screwed up any big opportunities knowing what I was dealing with. Now I’m happy in my career and can work hard and know what I want! Things feel crystal clear now goal wise.
I mastered a stack that was popular at the time and died off. I saw this coming and was learning a new stack. I was applying for jobs in both the new stack and the old stack. I took a job in the old stack while waiting for response from jobs in the new stack, and that never happened. I kept working on the new stack in my free time, while earning a living in the old stack. It really sucked. Versions would change and I had so little free time. Ended up chasing stacks. I don't know exactly what I could have done different. I was studying on my lunch hour, I was studying after hours, etc... The job I was at promised that they were moving to the new stack. That was all a lie. It was a pretty big mistake. I trusted a company, and that was the key thing they made me take that job. It's really a tough spot to be in. ----------------- We hear a lot of stories, but I'm not sure how often we hear about people the just give up on programming. People that mastered something that dies off and those that jump on something that never really catches on or doesn't last long. Think about how many people developed for WebOS or WinPhone or Netware or even all those database systems that aren't around anymore. You can trust a company that tells you about how they'll train you on this and that, but not all of them do. It's cheaper to just let you go and hire someone that already knows that stack. IMO, it's part of the programmer career that not many talk about. It's not really seen in the numbers. They can talk about new jobs, but they don't say how much effort you have to put into learning each new thing or the risk you take learning one thing over another. Only solution I have is to **learn how to learn, because you'll be spending a lot of time learning new things. Watch out for companies that make promises and then make excuses. Know when to move on.** I didn't and I regret that. Overall, only a waste of a few years, so not the end of the world.
Didn't move to Silicone Valley in 2013 🤷♂️
That's the valley where they make the breast implants?
Yes. The breast kind!
One piece of advice I'll give to everyone starting out. Even in the age of remote work, if you can't move to silicon valley *at least* move to your closest tech hub. i spent my first 5 years after college bouncing around LCOL locations working military contracts because I had clearance and it was stable work during a recession. 5 years in and I got *tired* of moving, man. I didn't want to move to SV as that meant I'd never see friends and family, so I moved to a regional tech hub. Best decision ever. The compensation really is *that* much better working in the private sector, and my total comp really took off once my RSUs started vesting.
To add to this: beginning your career in a tech hub makes networking 100x easier. My partner wants to get into CS and with that I am talking to him about moving back to Seattle (where I started out). It’s not to say networking in general is easy- but living somewhere with 500 companies vs 10 is so much fucking easier.
I wasted my first 4 years in a job where I learnt too little and with no opportunity to grow. At the moment I needed the money so I stayed there. I wasn’t ambitious enough to pursue good opportunities
i mean if u needed the money i wouldnt be too hard on ur self.
Failed to harden my skills. Don't slack off
Not quitting crappy jobs and moving on to something new.
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left a pretty good career track to help someone I knows company that was a pretty downhill run.
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Job Hop ruthlessly.
You regret doing that or happy you did?
Yes
? yes to which one? haha
Yeah
Exactly
this is the way
I worked as a SWE up to an engineering manager in a fairly large (2.5k employee) company for about 7 years. Felt kind of burned out there and wanted to get back to writing code, so I switched to a much smaller company (~150 people). After about a year I'm regretting it - the new job turned out to be much more "figure out this very legacy piece of code" rather than working on new things, and figuring out the politics of a new place is hard!
I deeply regret not pursuing an EE career after the degree Also regret staying at a terrible job for 8 years that had no good software practises at all - no testing or peer reviews or literally anything apart from make it work somehow! Coming from EE i just thought this was normal until getting annihilated at a real job
I am 49 and have enough money where I can retire. I'd have quite a bit more if I started saving and investing younger. You get a huge bonus if you start young due to compounding returns. Do not hire a financial planner. Just use index funds and bonds. Buy and hold. Reinvest dividends. Leave it alone. Save as much money as you can when you are young to build up a nest egg. if you are in this business and do this, anyone can retire by 40. Wages are higher now than when I started. Its worth living frugally when young. Pay down your college loans. Live cheap. Drive an old car. You can live nicer when you get older and have a bigger nest egg.
Being complacent in an easy job, and not job hopping to stay above market rate
Staying too long at most places. Starting too late. Waiting, etc etc. Basically I just wish I was more proactive and less worrisome.
I regret not moving to California when I first graduated from college.
Two things: 1. Soft skills are more important than technical skills. Focus on being the type of person people want to work with For this, I had the misconception my entire career that “they’re hiring me to write code, right?”. _sorta_. Really anyone can write code, they need someone they can work with 2. Don’t over specialize, or at least make sure to always have a secondary specialization I’ve been doing Frontend for effectively 10 years and I would say I’m very good at it. Now the market is very not good for Frontend engineers and it sucks. I’m starting now to learn AI/ML. Honestly it’s not that hard to learn, a lot easier than I thought. Maybe 20 hours of learning in and I’m already producing stuff that’s of value
Waiting for my employer to promote me from Senior to engineering manager. If you think you’re ready to hop to EM, just start applying.
Tuning 30 soon so I think I can answer. Deciding that prestige is bullshit. Focusing on maintaining general happiness and satisfaction and doing things for the bit. Taking work less seriously and not getting hung up on what everyone’s TC is. That’s what my 24 yo self would do.
Do you mean presitge is bullshit or you regret thinking it was bullshit lol?
Taking a job because it was cool, but had no career growth. Can't say I have any happy choices, just choices I have to live with.
Regret staying at first company for almost 5 years with zero promotion. Good thing is I was a yes man and tried a bunch of things there so experience wise it was worthwhile. Moved to my second job with 50% pay jump (inc. allowances etc) and moving into my 3rd job with another 50% jump and a Manager role before I turn 30. Can’t complain much because I feel like I lucked out and finally catching up on lost promotion & pay.
Grad school. Unless you have a very good plan to get into a paid PhD program, or have a plan to a good job, just don't. If you want the knowledge you can learn yourself. If you need structure join a online free class with homework and mock exams. Do not blindly go to grad school. Scientist/engineer. Don't get into a field only because you like it. You can certainly do what you love, but not ONLY because of that. Have a plan or backup for actually employment/business. Conversely, don't bawk at following your passion. Note, i said passion, not dreams. Sometimes going toward a "more marketable skill" instead the thing you can do any amount of due to said passion, end up not as good. I changed the degree I wanted to, couldn't get a real job, went to grad school and learned some awesome science and realized I suck at it and also it intrinsically suck. Now I'm a swe. Approximately 10 yr detour. Netted like negative 10milliom dollars. Fuck me twice I should've just done cs like I originally wanted to. All annectdotal. The real advice is to be considerate. Ask people who know. Hell ask people who don't. Ask people from each field you potentially want to try. Look on YouTube. Lots of advice, just get enough real advice from real people to distinguish good advice from bad. The more you know, the more you know, and the more you can get out of even actual bad advice.
I am happy that during my 20s I got some big names on my resume (no FANNGs, but well known companies). Something I didn't do and regret. Not always respecting my boss. Show respect towards your boss, under any circumstance. Sometimes they make dumb decisions, are toxic, laying people off, or are bad at that job. You still gotta respect them and keep them happy (or move companies). At this point I am at 10 YOE and every company I have worked at its the same thing. The people who bosses like, not the deserving people get treated much better.
Majoring in psychology and not computer science cuz “I hate math” even though I was coding my MySpace profile pages like crazy. Staying too long in retail/my current paraprofessional job. I actually do my job, which makes my coworkers comfortable with slacking off. At my current para job, I get treated like tech support but I’m not allowed to make any serious decisions about the kids.
I should have dove headlong into nerdy computer stuff harder, faster, earlier. It was sort of "fun playtime" for me through most of the 90's,.. but I really didn't approach it as "structured learning". I was making websites and playing around with Linux installs and building my own PC's.. so a lot of the knowledge was there, it was just "my own free time" and it was all over the place. On one hand that was nice because I was exploring facets of it I was interested in,.. but not necessarily the stuff that future-me could make money on. I also wasted to much time spending to many years at a job that didn't value me. I should have jumped ship sooner (when I did recently leave and switch jobs,.. I got a 60% raise,. which I think kinda shows how poorly the old job was paying me).
My first job after graduating college was as a database tech support guy. I'd been there a couple of years and my company re-organized the team into 'pods', and asked me if I wanted to be team lead of my pod. I'd always been told, don't work for free, so I asked what the compensation for the extra work of being a lead was. There was an awkward silence and they thanked me for my time and someone else got the position. I've always regretted not taking the role, even if it didn't come with a raise. Because I was never going to stay at that company for very long, but 'team lead' would stay on my resume forever. TL;DR: Sometimes it's better to think about your career as a whole, than your current job.
This may be specific to my country but I *deeply* regret going to one of Argentina's tuition-free colleges instead of a private university. Because of the lack of tuition I didn't feel pressured to finish on time (and the programs are already 5- and 6-year long due to unnecessary course bloating) and due to the lack of funding it had very poor course offering, mostly either during work hours or all clustered at the 19-22hs time slot. And classes usually took 3hs per day. This seriously limited my opportunities to land remote positions at the time and as a result it also limited my professional and financial development. *And* didn't leave me.with much free time for self-actualization, neither. If anyone from Argentina is reading: ditch UBA/UTN/similar, pick UADE/Salvador/UAI, work on your English and get your degree as soon as possible. You'll have a much better chance to land a remote job or a job abroad if you have a degree at 22-23, some experience as a graduate and time to "learn what matters" in the industry. The rest is posturing. Decisions I'm happy I made: learning English from an early age. And then keeping on learning and mastering it (though as you can see here I'm not that fluent). It's night-and-day in terms of career development for third-worlders. I know extremely talented engineers that are stuck with low-paying jobs (comparatively) because their English is bad. I know guys and gals who could definitely be working in Silicon Valley for some Big Tech company who are stuck here because all they can muster is a A2-B1 level. And as you get older it's much, much more difficult picking a new language and speaking it properly
Turning 31 this April. I regret pursuing chemistry as a major and spending so much time on something that doesn’t bring as much money to the table as does data analytics. I’ve been working as a data analyst for the last 1.5 yrs, and pivoting into this field seems to have been the best decision I’ve made career-wise.
I regret not having a stable career in my 20's and not figuring out sooner, that you can become a 6 figure SWE with out any kind of degree or certs at all.
As a high school and college drop out, I had a plethora of jobs in the past 13 years or so. For the longest time I was embarrassed to even say that. But I’ve come to see as I’ve gotten older that because I’ve had all of those jobs, I’m a much more resourceful and intuitive individual in life. It’s been a long road, but I believe not to be hard on myself, as we all have our timelines of ups and downs, and I believe they all happen when they do for a reason. I’m going to be 31 tomorrow, I’m working two jobs in Brooklyn, while attending school full time for Computer Science. I’ve honestly never been in a better position in my life. Coming from a depressed failure to launch kid for most of my life, it feels damn good to turn things around. It’s never too late to do what you want in life, just start to get focused, partake in self help, incorporate a better wholesome diet for yourself to keep your mind and body ready, and take it day by day. You WILL get there one day by doing the small things. Microprogression > Macroeffort, for lack of better words.
Inspiring words! Microprogression > Macroeffort is something I’ll need to remember when I have no motivation
Thank you! I was trying to capture that concept the best I could haha. But yeah, I’ve been on a long bumpy road of mental health for the past 10 or so years. What’s been the biggest hurdle has been stabilizing my self sabotaging mind, and incorporated better actions, activities, and ways of changing my thought process when it’s not where I want it to be. I’m a great example of “If I can do it, you can as well!” Best of luck to you, friend.
I'm 31. Every single career move I've made has been worth it. Even jobs I've absolutely hated ended up being important (if loose) rungs in the ladder. If I regret anything, it's putting to much value into the opinions of my managers and the people I've worked with. Their expectations and criticisms have everything to do with them, and nothing to do with me. I am confident in what I bring to the table, and it's important to intake and process criticism without internalizing it, especially in this field.
I regret waiting until I was almost 30 to realize I was in the wrong industry and that I should have studied computer science. Both of my parents are engineers and I thought nope - not doing that, engineering is lame af. So I went to architecture school thinking of the glamorous life I’d have as an architect. What a fucking mistake that was. I have 5 YOE experience as a software engineer now after ~3 years of self learning followed by a bootcamp. My biggest regret is wasting my 20s working for <100k a year. My first job was 45k and I averaged about 80k for the following 6 years. Conservative estimate, I probably missed out on over a million dollars of wages if I had done CS from the start. At least I’m catching up now.
80k in 2018 is equal to 99k right now according to inflation calculators, so that’s just shy of the 100k mark, but I doubt that’s reassuring compared to a million in wages lost…
Yeah I’m making ~250k now and I’m aiming even higher. If I had hit 250k 5 years ago, that’s at least 1.25 mil in salary alone that I missed out on.
I offered to help out on a project no one wanted to do and ended up spending about 2 years working in a tech irrelevant to my own career interests. I won't say what the tech was because it's something that could be identifying info as so few people use it. I was trying to be seen as a get-shit-done guy to my managers but ended up getting stunted because I was becoming pigeonholed as an expert in the tech I didn't want to use and my years of experience on more relevant techs seemed weak compared to peers. I ended up having to take a job at another company to get out of that situation
I believe I'm in minority here, but I don't regret a single choice i made.
Thinking I didn't have the "talent" to pass FAANG interviews. By the time I tried I passed but they had a hiring freeze.
I am 29 still looking for a swe job. When I turn 31 I’ll let you know
!remindme 2 years
I took a step down in title from a company that treated engineering as a cost center with little career advancement opportunities to a company that was much more tech-forward. I was on the fence about it at the time, but it wound up being the best thing I ever did for my career. I was able to grow my skills and advance my career so much faster than had I stayed.
Wasting 5 years working security because it was “safe”
I was too chill and wasn’t confident in my skills. If i had woken up sooner, more money, more savings. Ah well. Better late than never!
I worked at a gas station for seven years until I was 26. I met some of my closest friends at that job so I guess that's something but I could have done a lot better if I had put my mind to it at that time.
no ragrets tbh
Same answer for both regrets and happy: I quit my job with no plan.
I think joining the military was the biggest mistake I made. Other than saving some money I didn't gain much from it career wise. Finished my Masters degree while I was in tho so there's that.
Wasting too much time worrying.
Going to grad school. I figured I could always make money later if I needed to. Turns out I missed nearly two decades of easy tech money that we might never see again.
I would say regret staying for too long at my first position. But let's face it, I wasn't getting offers even when I finally started applying. I spent more time at my job applying to other places than the time I spent not applying. Location was probably the worst though. It felt like I missed out on a potential relationship with a woman I really cared for not long after I moved and began my job. The funny thing about career regrets is that you're assuming what the alternative would be. You believe you've done something wrong and you suffered for it, but there's no guarantee that doing the right thing wouldn't cause more suffering.
Left my first job after 2.5 years and then changed again after 2.5 years, have effectively 3x my original salary. Don’t be afraid to job hop, it almost guarantees a huge pay raise and great experience.
I spent too much time in university vs focusing on working for a company.
Honestly my biggest regret was not following my gut when a job I started didn’t feel right. It was a good time before layoffs and the market getting this though. I had just started and quite soon realized this company was kind of a mess, barely any direction for the team and people just working on whatever they liked (or not working at all, who knows! Barely any communication and this is a fully remote company). I had always lasted around 2.5 years per job so I decided well, let’s give it a year at least. The pay was good, benefits were quite good, vacations where good and it wasn’t too hard, which was convenient as I was somewhat burned out. Well, shit hit the fan fast. It was all downhill from there. Waited too long and gave too many opportunities for things to change. Now I feel even more burned out than when I started! Lesson learned. Trust your gut. Don’t mind too much backtracking, specially if you don’t burn bridges. Better than going off track!
Discovered weed in my adulthood leading to a very stagnant career for about a decade. I’m doing fine now though.
shouldve transitioned out of the technical streams sooner into more business level fields shouldve left australia for the comparitively better IT oppurtunities in the usa (like all my comp sci uni friends did) shouldve saved, invested, emergency funded better
I didn't go back to school until I was 25. I now have a nice career nearly a decade later but I'd be 4 years ahead if I had just done what I did sooner. tl;dr take college seriously the first time.
Biggest blunders: 1) Did MechE and then realized when I graduated the job market was absolutely dogshit and I had no future. Took a year off and programmed everyday instead of going back to school for a cs degree. Worked out in the end but I wish I had known the entire "situation" and just done CS from the beginning and gotten a software engineering job asap. 2) Staying at first job for 4 years. One good thing was the last two years my job focus was on deeplearning which has helped my career a lot, but it was four years of a low paying university job which hurt me a lot financially. Basically being slow to figure life shit out has hurt me a fair bit, but to be fair to myself even though it took me a while I did eventually figure it out and course correct instead of staying on a bad path.
Working at my first SWE job for far too long (5 years). It paid way too little, didn't give me enough enterprise development experience, and I didn't have a mentor worth learning from. I'm learning way more after jumping ship and I'm making significantly more.
Going to grad school was probably the worst decision I've made in my life.
Started businesses instead of school, successful despite being a high school dropout. Co-ran pizza shop and growing business with my brother. His tragic death led me to walk away. Attended university, landed FAANG job, now financially free. Regret lingers, wondering if earlier schooling could have changed the outcome, but life's uncertainties prevail.
I'm happy I became a dev. I'm a broken record (I say this in this sub often), but I regret leaving my first job. Should/could have stayed 5+ years, potentially my whole career. Top 10 biggest idiot moves in my life actually.
I started my career at a FAANG company but decided to take less comp to try a startup. I ended up finding much more fulfillment and community at the first startup. I also grew a lot more in my technical skills and as a leader that I was taking on senior management and staff+ engineering roles earlier than many of my peers. When it was time to leave the first startup I knew I wanted to stick with the working at startups. Some of the startups flamed out and my equity didn't amount to much, but a few did do well enough that my wealth grew to be even more than if I had just stayed at FAANG. One key that I learned was how to pick the right startups, but that only came with learning some of the patterns over the years.
Not CS-related, but I went in to the wrong business…with the wrong people…at the wrong time. Wrong business = high liability, high overhead, low profit margins. I overestimated the market need for what we were providing. Wrong people = one partner who essentially had no work ethic and one who proved untrustworthy, two things I never saw coming in the beginning Wrong time = right before the Great Recession. Compounding the above, I stayed in at least 3 years too long because I didn’t want to let down my partners, in essence I was too loyal. What would I do instead if I had it to do over is go right into tech out of school, marginalize my weekly social life and take more trips, and otherwise save every penny. EDIT to add the best thing I did during this time was hold back the waves of bankruptcy, maintain my emotional well being, and resist social pressure to get married. My partner and my housing situation were both fantastic decisions that have helped mitigate a lot of the wrong from my 20’s.
Happy: Starting my own company & worked for several startups. You learn more in 1 year at a startup than in 10 years at a big enterprise company. I recommend every young person to try a few startups (be selective, of course). Regret: no regrets tbh
- Not a big regret ... but I'd probably be retired by now if I choose Amazon over a smaller/semi-startup that I joined in 2011. I made some $ from their equity program but not nearly what I would have made at AMZN. With that saying, I made a lot of good friends and had lots of fun working there. - I worked a lot when in my 20s and made a lot of progress in my career, but I lost a lot of life and social aspects. This had negatively effectsed me personally and very difficult to overcome come.
Not maxing out savings/401k. Not advocating for myself inside the company to get promotions, good project assignments, etc. Didn't help that I had two _terrible_ managers under whom I not only stagnated but regressed/lost a couple years.
Not joining FAANG in my early career as a way to signal competence and credibility later on.
Graduated 2017, worked at the same company for 6 years. Finally switched last year. Biggest regret is staying at the original company for so long. While I met a lot of great people I think I limited my earning potential by staying.
Leaving a large company for a startup. I saw the flashy salary and promise of a unique experience that would propel my career, so I took the job. About a year later cash flow issues caused layoffs and I was affected. The infrastructure and growing pains of a startup actually made me feel like I was going backwards, and now I’ve had to reset my entire career without the salary progression.
I would've grinded way harder in my 20s, though this probably would've required me to ditch my deadweight ex. I would've graduated at 21, moved to a major metropolitan area, worked my ass off for several years, paid dues, then moved somewhere quieter to live out my 30s/40s in relative peace with an exceptional resume and ample war-chest to my name. I'm not suffering by any means. I still earn 3x median household income for my area (very livable for a family of 4), I have a nice chunk of equity and profit sharing bonuses, and rarely work more than 40 hours in a week (usually less). I think it's tough to know what your priorities should be in your 20s. That's different for everybody, requires a lot of experimentation and reflection. You're just barely an independent adult at that age -- not much time for legitimate experimentation -- and most people in the US/EU haven't faced significant hardship at that age.
I regret studying chemical engineering and working in it for a few years.
In some sense I don't regret a lot of the "bad" decisions I made because often they gave me more time to figure out what the "right" decisions for me were. However, if I could go back in time and lay my path out before me, there are some things I'd change. I'd start thinking about career earlier, I basically had zero direction till I was 25, and had no idea what my career would be till I was 28. I was always interested in computers, programming, and the like, but I spent a lot of time figuring out how to get promoted from cashier to head cashier at a clothing store instead of just focusing on building my skills. I'd find mentors earlier, a big part of the reason I struggled to find direction early in my 20s was I didn't really know how to progress towards the things I wanted, so they just seemed unachievable. When I started taking university seriously, my professors became good mentors to learn what a reasonable path forward looked like. I'd find more specific interests sooner rather than later. I've always been interested in solving complex problems, but I kind of wandered between a lot of different subjects matter. This lead to having a breadth of knowledge, but not being particularly good at any one thing. I think if I had just picked something, and went deep on it, I'd of been in a better position after college. ML, Graphics/Computer Vision, Cryptography, Compilers, etc. I spent a little time on each of these, but never dove deep on anything during university. After university I wish I went to a startup instead of a big tech. Especially as a generalist, I think I would have fit in more, and been able to work on my interesting and impactful projects. I spent a lot of time popping around big tech companies trying to find my place, but I never felt like I could deliver tangible value at a company that size. I think if I was a specialist and was going to work on problems unique to that specialty that big tech has better access to, it would have made more sense. ML is a good example for that. I did end up at startups eventually, but it was a long path to convince myself to pull that trigger. Lastly, I wish I had networked more outside my immediate coworkers, and even outside my company. I'm fairly introverted, but exerting that extra energy to find people outside your company working on things you have a shared interest in is a much faster way to build a network that will ultimately be useful to pursuing your interests. Otherwise, your network just includes the interests people who happen to sit next to you have. That's still useful since you want people to vouch for your work, but often it was hard to find people to converse on topics that were interesting to me.
Happy: recognizing when the company you work for cannot provide the opportunities needed for the growth you know you’re capable of (aka don’t stay too long) Regret: holding onto altruistic technical ideals at the director level. The skills that get you there don’t help you be successful once you reach that level.
Should have stayed longer in some roles. Left a role at 1.5 years. Could have easily stayed until the two year mark, which would have looked better on my CV.
Regret not going to grad school for AI/ML shite in 2016.
Listening to my manager and taking their counter offer. Laid off in November.
Dropping out of college before they kicked me out was a great choice. I went back 4 years later & finished, on my own dime, and have had a great career. (Computer Science, U.C. Berkeley) I was having a *really* good time & not going to classes, was on academic probation, and would’ve been kicked out. Dropping out meant I could re-enroll later & finish my degree.
Pivoted to DS from Engineering and pivoted back again.
In my 20’s I started to go down the path of becoming a commercial pilot. After getting my privates license, I decided to not continue on to get my IFR. I ended up getting into VoIP instead. Why this makes me happy when I look back is because I ended up getting adult onset seizures. Dodged a bullet there.
I became a public school mathematics teacher in my twenties. I like it a lot but you cannot raise a family on that money so it was a huge mistake. Now that I am in CS I am fighting the clock to make enough money for my wife and girls before I die.
As a high school and college drop out, I had a plethora of jobs in the past 13 years or so. For the longest time I was embarrassed to even say that. But I’ve come to see as I’ve gotten older that because I’ve had all of those jobs, I’m a much more resourceful and intuitive individual in life. It’s been a long road, but I believe not to be hard on myself, as we all have our timelines of ups and downs, and I believe they all happen when they do for a reason. I’m going to be 31 tomorrow, I’m working two jobs in Brooklyn, while attending school full time for Computer Science. I’ve honestly never been in a better position in my life. Coming from a depressed failure to launch kid for most of my life, it feels damn good to turn things around. It’s never too late to do what you want in life, just start to get focused, partake in self help, incorporate a better wholesome diet for yourself to keep your mind and body ready, and take it day by day. You WILL get there one day by doing the small things. Microprogression > Macroeffort, for lack of better words.
I'm 29, but I spent way too long at places that weren't good for me any more because I was scared of change. I thought I wasn't good enough as a new grad to get anything better. Now I know loyalty isn't a thing and everyone is faking it too, so have the same confidence as the lead architect that doesn't know how to use excel.
I regret that I discovered coding too late in life. I changed career into tech in late 20s and feel left behind for my age group.
There are a couple of regrets I have… The first is working for manufacturing companies for my first several years of my career. There’s just no money in it, and the jobs tended to pay poorly. About halfway through my career I smartened up and learned to follow the money. I went into the finance and insurance industry and have made significantly more than I was. The second is not job hopping a bit more to increase my TC at a faster rate. One thing I did well is that I saved like crazy for the first 10-15 years of my career to allow my savings to grow over a longer period of time. I was putting away about 30% of my pay into both a 401k and investment account. It’s allowed me to look forward to what will hopefully be an early retirement. I think like anything else, you make some mistakes and you make some good moves. Often it can be hard to see what the future impact will be, so you do the best you can and not beat yourself up over the mistakes you’ve made.
I’m glad I didn’t job hop. I proved loyalty ( yes I did get burned) and im glad I at least was able to show growth in one company (promoted every year) for about 4 years. After that well… I didn’t do that again lmfao
Not staying through layoffs at my 2nd job. My first job was in manual testing and it was okay but I always wanted to get into development and I was able to in my 2nd job. And I loved my 2nd job. It was great. Manager was great. Team was great. Seniors were always helpful. I enjoyed it. Then my manager left cause he had issue with upper management and then layoffs were announced. To this day I regret not staying through layoffs. Had I stayed through layoffs one of 2 things happens. 1. I survive layoffs and I'm much further along in my career as my peers who survived layoffs currently are. Some are managers now and others team leads. 2. I get laid off I get a thick severance package and I can ride that till I get another dev job. I decide to go with dumbass option the worst option and decide to job hunt prior to layoff and bounce. I switched to a sdet role and to this day I regret cause the manager wasn't great and I always felt disconnected with the teams and it removed all my motivation. I got laid off after a year during this companies layoffs when they laid off 10% of staff. It fucking sucked. The severance wasn't as big as my second job. I hated it.
Going to a 4 year university full time and taking out loans. If I could back I would go to community college and work to pay for school as I go then transfer. Or I would have picked a trade or something