Comment by freestockoption | Hacker News Reader

Comment by freestockoption | Hacker News Reader

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freestockoption

I've worked in some big names in tech. What I do notice is that sometimes people go into these companies thinking they've made it and that they will just naturally grow due to being at a big name co.

I've realized that most companies are similar and opportunities don't just fall into your lap. Want a low growth job fixing bugs for 10 years? You can probably get that at Google (or pretty much anywhere). Want a job where you can develop the next big feature in Android? You can probably make that happen, too.

If you want the latter, don't just sit there, fall into a routine, and fix bugs all day thinking that one day a VP will knock on your door asking you to be a Software Architect. Don't become complacent.

> Don't become complacent.

See this advice a lot, are there any tips on this? make more to-do list? set goals?(how to know if goal is too high instead of myself being too lazy? etc)

For myself, I will often ask myself something along the lines of: "In my current trajectory, will I be doing the same thing in a year? And is that what I want and will I be happy with that?" So I try to imagine the different paths I can take in my current trajectory and if none of the paths interest me, then I know it's time to make changes. Try to draw out a 5 year plan on a spreadsheet. Aim high, but be realistic.

My main point is, you don't need to work for a big N company to achieve your goals (unless your goal is to simply work for a big N company). The sooner I realized that, the sooner I was able to start working on my actual goals where the actions are vastly different than those of "getting into big N."

e.g. I want to design software, but not necessarily at Google makes it a lot easier to achieve than saying it must be at Google. :)

Set goals, set them high, make them specific. If you don't achieve them, don't worry, at least you've gone some of the way. You could try out OKRs (Google it) for yourself.

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