mhedgpeth

Hey there, I'm the developer of the app along with my wife, the author of the post. We quit our jobs over a year ago to work on a problem we care about and helping people connect to their goals through people is what we landed on. That being said, we spend most of our time on the tech! And I think your advice is spot on, that a portfolio of projects really is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING. It's where I would tell people to start. But from there, connecting people to others who care about that portfolio, is also important. I think a lot of technical people pay attention to the former, and tend to ignore the latter. Which is me too! So rather than "this is the only true way" I hope it comes across like a potential piece of the puzzle to some people.

Thanks for giving it some thought and for your perspectives, they really help.

From the author of the post: it looks that way at first, but it's honestly about aligning people all around you. The true self promoters don't keep their eye on the ball of universal success.

I think I didn't study the actions of the people enough, a point I was trying to make in the post. If I would have I would have made better decisions.

From the author: yeah the failures I outlined were ... failures for sure! I'm not in the market for a director position at your company, but if I were I'd hope to find a place wanting people to have an honest assessment of what worked and what didn't and how they grew from it. If that's disqualifying I worry that you'll get people who are lying to you.

I'm sorry it came across as an ad, I'm full-time in a bootstrapped company working to try to solve this problem without any VC funding. It was a problem for me and for many people I know so I thought I'd share it in hopes to help people.

Also the grammar part here is interesting, I purposely write without AI because I think that's important, but I'd love your help in making it better - reach out on LinkedIn if you can. Thanks :)

From the author of the post: 100% I knew this advice but didn't follow it. Being patient early on is SO important!

I think the hard thing is as on engineer you're paid to have the "right" answer, but as a manager you're paid not to be right but to bring all the "right answers" together. That's a subtle but important shift.

I'm the author of the post. Yeah you got it right, I think the hiring process got me into that mindset, i.e. "This is a step back from you title-wise but you'll get back there quickly". So the hiring process made all that look too easy and in retrospect got me into the wrong state of mind.

What I should have done, at the point of being hired, is to drop all that, and focus patiently on what I needed to do. And I'm sharing it because not enough people share this side of it, and because I am working on elements that would have made it better. Thanks for reading! :)