Ask HN: At what age should you stop considering career advice from others?
Presumably when you are old enough, you would know your strengths and weaknesses better than anyone else — and so you would be the best person to give yourself career advice.
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
Smart ppl learn from their mistakes, wise ppl learn from the mistakes of others.
Entertain every thought that comes your way, accept only the ones that make sense to you & take responsibility for your actions.
Treat with extreme caution advice from somebody less successful than you and especially those who have an agenda, e.g. bloggers whose success metric is the volume of blogs published and not their personal tangible achievements. If there is a direct or even indirect profit to them from giving advice ... reject immediately.
— Catherine Aird
“ … Si sa che la gente dà buoni consigli sentendosi come Gesù nel tempio, si sa che la gente dà buoni consigli se non può più dare cattivo esempio…”
There’s a good chance Catherine beat him to it though. I am kidding ofc, I don’t quote was stolen from either.
Google says the song was written in 196. It is a brilliant song, pure poetry.
Sure, I you want to follow a well trodden “career path” then follow advice until the day you retire. I can see how that makes sense in academia, or medicine.
If not, my advice is to stop taking advice from day 1, which may include this message :-)
Careers are so 1990.
Almost everyone has an agenda. One subconscious agenda is “I spent years following this path. You should also go through all the steps, so I can feel that my path was justified”. Most people’s advice is from a sample size of 1, or maybe 20 from close family and friends. It’s small, it’s historical, and it’s no basis upon which to make your own life decisions. Much like relationship advice.
As another poster said - curate advice very carefully.
Finally I would say at a certain point you learn about your career as much by helping others more junior navigate their own. As you give them advice you realize things about your own experience that are profound for yourself that you wouldn’t have analyzed as deeply without the prompting.
And, others know parts of the world out there better than I do. What's it like to work at company X? I don't know; others do. What are current trends in interviewing? I haven't interviewed in over a decade; others have. What's it like trying to get hired when you're over 60? Well, last time I tried, I wasn't over 60. And so on.
And so is true of all the people you may take advice from.
So the best is to take as many advice as you can, and decide if you want to follow them or not.
If 100 people you know and/or find smart and have experience tell you that the move you are considering is a bad idea, it’s probably best to follow that advice. It may be that all of them are wrong, and you can still ignore them if you want, but you know at least you will be aware that most people think it’s a bad idea…
You never stop learning, nor will you ever know everything.
The older you get, the more ingrained in your biases you become. I'd say you should take advice MORE as you get older.
as others mentioned, the why someone is offering advice is critically important. Is it because something about your situation is jarring to them, given some knowledge they have that you lack? if so, pay close attention to the advice and where it is coming from. Is it from a misunderstanding of your situation, a generic platitude, or just some content to fill up time and space? probably best to consider it very lightly or ignore it completely.
One chapter later, also paraphrased: "The fool listens to most of it".
Or as someone here said, "Advice is free, until you take it".
Curate advice very carefully. Listen to it all, but don't act on most of it.