Career Progression and Providing Value
When people ask me what it takes to get recognised at work and progress in their careers, I generally suggest two directions they can pursue.
Bytes that get stuck in your teeth.
David A. Patterson:
I started my career at Hughes Aircraft in 1972 while working on my Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). After designing airborne computers for four years, I graduated and then taught and did systems research at UC Berkeley for the next 40. Since 2016, I’ve helped Google with hardware that accelerates artificial intelligence (AI).
Donella Meadows (via James Clear):
There is too much bad news to justify complacency. There is too much good news to justify despair.
Life wisdom from The Marginalian.
Jim Grey:
Relationships matter if you want to advance. It took me until about ten years ago to start to understand how building relationships across any company I work for is critical if I want to move up, and even remain employed when times are tough. I’ve found that being relentlessly helpful to others, even in things that aren’t strictly your responsibility, keeps you as someone everybody wants on the team. And when you push for a promotion, you have a base of people across the company who think you’re awesome. It greases the skids.
When people ask me what it takes to get recognised at work and progress in their careers, I generally suggest two directions they can pursue.
Dynomight:
Time seems to speed up as you get older. And you wonder—is it biological, or is it because life had more novelty when you were a child? Travel partly answers this question—with more novelty, time slows way down again.
Adaptive Audio on iOS 17 feels like an improvement over Transparency mode.
One thing that was driving me nuts however, was that whenever I’d put my AirPods Pro in, the volume would get dropped super low.
David Cain:
One financial lesson they should teach in school is that most of the things we buy have to be paid for twice.
I pretty much highlighted the lot.
Richard Hamming giving advice to researchers in 1995, plenty of which serves as general career advice.
Here’s a selection:
Chris Rackliff:
Speaking of lifting others up, your core group of friends can make or break your life. And your participation can make or break theirs as well.
Matt Linderman:
Instead of working with a thing you love, think about how to work in a way you love.
Embrace the power of compounding.
For the security conscious and paranoid.