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Comment by iamflimflam1 | Hacker News Reader

My only advice for people starting out their career is to make sure you are surrounded by really good people.

All the good things that have happened in my career have been because the people around me have been amazingly good.

Find those people, and stick with them - they will take you to places that cannot reach by yourself.

This also means you need to be friends with people and maintain those friendships.

Also, if you ever find yourself feeling like the "smartest in the room" it's time to start worrying. You are not going to learn anything in that situation unless you are a very special kind of person.

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> My only advice for people starting out their career is to make sure you are surrounded by really good people.

I keep hearing this, but I have a hard time actually finding such people. There unfortunately aren't events like hackathons around where I live, so although I'm sure there are cool (in a professional context) people around me, I'm never able to figure out how to find them. I have an amazing set of friends but they're entirely into the arts so coming by tech work I can do through them is rare.

One thing that tech people tend to focus on it tech. As I replied to my own comment, good does not necessarily mean “good at tech”. Really talented people will attract other really talented people. You just need to make sure you are in the same orbit and “networking” with these people.

An amazing artist will bring all sorts of fascinating people into there sphere of influence.

It makes the advice go from practical to superstitious though.

The smartest people around me seem to hang out at obscure/niche programming language meetup events.

You’re gonna get a very different crowd at something like your local Rust/Elixir meetup group vs the .NET User group, as it’s likely a strong signal they like to tinker with new paradigms/programming languages vs just showing up for “networking opportunities”.

I'm not sure how well "like to tinker with new paradigms/programming languages" correlates with "really good", though. Some of the best people i've worked with were quite conservative technically (some weren't keen on this new 'Java' thing), but were masters at finding the right way to approach problems, being conscientious in their work, etc. The correlation coefficient probably isn't negative, but it's not 1 either. 0.3?

Meetups are a crapshoot. When people are involved in the community out of passion it's a great thing. Unfortunately, and this was often the case at meetups I was going to in NY, a lot of folks are there to add organizing and talks to their professional reputation to get some kind of edge at work. These people also tend to find each other easily and coordinate to give each other the best opportunities.

Not to single out any specific community here...and my experience especially in the Elixir community was lots of passionate people.

> There unfortunately aren't events like hackathons around where I live

last time i went was so bad that i decided to never go again :D

> I'm never able to figure out how to find them.

try meetups… they used to be active in my area prior to covid

And to be clear "amazingly good" does not necessarily mean amazingly good at programming. There are other really critical skills.

I agree, I dont give much for GPs advice.

I have worked with some (actually quite a lot of) amazingly clever people that did not give me much more than a frown from time to time. Or if they are a bit more well behaved not even that.

Find good mentors, i.e. nice people who have a good overview but will frequently take the time to discuss things on your level. And pay them back with respect of course.

Find good mentors, i.e. nice people who have a good overview but will frequently take the time to discuss things on your level. And pay them back with respect of course.

I guess for me, those are the people that I would include in the “amazing” bucket.

Or simply give the appearance of being amazingly good.

Plenty of wiggle room to make a great living from optimizing for EQ over tech skill these days.

> Also, if you ever find yourself feeling like the "smartest in the room" it's time to start worrying. You are not going to learn anything in that situation unless you are a very special kind of person.

I typically sit in an empty room, making me the smartest in the room by default. So im curious to know what you mean by "a very special kind of person", maybe itll help me learn better.

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