Five Don'ts Regarding Career Choices
Don’t work in a company with a bad culture.
Don’t work in any job reluctantly.
Don’t do multiple things in parallel.
Don’t take risks you can’t afford.
Don’t reject anything you haven’t done before.
Let’s understand these one by one:
Don’t work in a company with bad culture
If you find yourself in a company with bad culture, quit immediately. Otherwise, you’ll imbibe the bad culture yourself. For example, if you work in a company where people don’t take initiative and criticize people who do, you’ll think twice before taking initative. This will happen unconsciously, and you won’t observe it until it’s too late. We humans are malleable. We can’t resist our environment. And these bad attitudes you’ll pick up will hold you back in the future.
Working in a company with bad culture will also drain your emotional battery. I was talking to someone who let this happen to him, and I was telling him I wouldn’t hire him for my team, because he’ll drain me and the others of enthusiasm. People don’t want to work with a morale sink. They want to work with a morale generator, someone who inspires others. Energy and excitement are what drive us. We’re not emotionless robots. Once you’ve burnt out, it’s very hard to un-burn out.
Don’t work in any job reluctantly
If you find yourself in a job that you’re not excited about, leave1. Don’t work in a job to pass time. Every week that passes is gone forever. If you use this limited time to learn, you’ll grow in your career, and your next gig will be better than the current one. If not, it won’t.
If you find yourself in a job that you’re not excited about, before leaving, list what you can learn. For example, if you love mobile development but are asked to work on backend, maybe you can give it a year or two to become a great backend engineer, and then leave. So when I say you should work with your heart in it, it doesn’t mean that you have to commit forever. However long you work there, work with the right attitude.
You can even get into a job with an expiration date, like “Consulting is not for me, but I’ll consult for three years to learn technical and people skills, grow in my career and develop a network”. There’s nothing wrong in entering a job with an exit planned, as long as you do it wholeheartedly for the time you’re there.
Don’t do multiple things in parallel
People who do two things do a mediocre job at both. I had a full-time employee who moonlighted and was tired and didn’t keep his commitments to me. I hired someone who was supposed to do something for me but could not because his primary job had high demands unexpectedly. Which is not unexpected at all. He was unresponsive and failed to show up to meetings. If you’re working in a job, and you’re not fulfilled, ask your manager for more responsibility. He’ll be happy. Tell him that some day, years from now, you want to start a startup / become a consultant / whatever, and ask him to plan your work so that the company benefits but you also benefit by developing skills for your next gig.
If you’re doing multiple things in parallel, you won’t have focus. When you feel unfulfilled in your primary job, instead of asking what more you can do in this, you’ll start working on consulting. We humans have only a limited amount of brainpower and focus. We need to put all this wood behind one arrow to make it count.
Don’t do something you can’t risk
Different jobs have different amounts of risk. Consultants can go unpaid for months. Founders can go unpaid for years. Understand the risk of what you’re proposing and ask yourself if you can afford it. If you can’t, don’t get into it. Better something second on your list, which you can afford, than the first, which you can’t. For example, if you want to start a startup, but can’t stomach the risk, consult. You can start a startup some day but until then, consult wholeheartedly to prepare yourself better for that day.
Don’t say no to something you haven’t done before
If you’re offered an option to do something you haven’t done before, like managing people, say yes. Don’t say no because you don’t know if you’ll like it. That’s putting the cart before the horse. You’ll find out if you like it after you do it, not before, just as you’ll find out if you like a dosa after you eat one, not before. So don’t reject opportunities that may work out great for you.
Assuming you have reasonable exceptations, unlike many job-hoppers nowadays.