u/rebelpenguingrrr wrote (the comment Michael replied to):
Hi Michael, I’m curious about the wall you are talking about. I’m surprised to hear that after several years of working at a job people hit a wall that has to do with not having gotten the college degree. At that point wouldn’t your work experience have given you what you need to
u/michaelnovati replied ·
I don't have all the answers but just my opinion... but this is my advice for a perfect world:
1. Find the right first job... many people don't have a choice in this market and I see posts about people taking support roles as a foot in the door, but that first role (or two) are really important to meet certain criteria: a) a tech company, b) a stable and large/established one, c) an entry level role (preferring under levelled vs over levelled) d) entry level + stable tech company = consistent support and mentorship. At Meta for example, a manager's performance is based on getting their people promoted through a very calibrated process... so if you don't genuinely grow and you put in the work, your manager failed.
2. Play the game a bit. Don't worry so much about exploring and learning new skills. Do what you need to do to be promoted on paper. Again, if you chose the right company, doing all the things you need to do to be promoted SHOULD BE things that impact the company positively and help you learn. It can be so overwhelming and you have so little experience that trusting this process is the best way to learn. Have weekly 1-1s with you manager and every week. ask for feedback on things you can improve, and ask which of the areas for the next level that you are weakest on and how they can help you address those gaps. If you chose a company not meeting #1 though then I highly advise not doing this!!! You might be dealing with politics, broken promises, and constantly changing direction and not really understanding why.
3. Go all in on your strengths. Instead of being well rounded, be T shaped and if you aren't T shaped be I shaped first haha and be amazing at just one thing and oblivious to everything else. Top tech companies are kind of like sports teams where there are different roles and people are exceptionally good at certain areas and roles and if you are starting out and you stand out in one of these areas then that can help you get noticed and given more challenging and interesting problems in those areas. For example, One thing I often recommend when you first start out on the team is try to do some extra work cleaning up old frameworks and legacy code and migrating them to whatever the latest standard is and that's a really good way to help out the team and also get a really strong sense for how the code works. And if you are really good at this you become THE cleanup person on the team.
Now if you can't find 1 and you just have to take any job, there's only so much you can do in this framework, can it depends.exactly on where you ended up.
If the company is small and growing and just a little chaotic, I would still focus on impact over personal skills and interests. Always ask leaders how you can have more impact and do those things if you like it or not.
If the company is just not a tech company and no one seems able to help advise you how to have more impact and grow then I would actually advise side projects, mentoring people, and building up a resume that will get you those #1 interviews in 2 to 3 years and in the meantime do your best to be promoted within what ever system they have so you have a more attractive resume.