u/elizabethfraser123

There are some things about career growth within the organization which might not seem to be of great importance on the first sight but eventually, prove to be crucial. While most advice on the internet focuses too much on theoretical aspects or vague statements, the actual list of things that helped me grow within the company is rather small.

The first point is completely obvious and may be regarded as a common sense because there is no use in trying to get a promotion if the boss is not satisfied with the current quality of your work. Nevertheless, even if you are performing your daily tasks adequately, it is important to move further and start delivering results that align more with the priorities of the upper management.

In addition, you should consider taking on some extra tasks in order to explore the capabilities of other areas of the business, ask your superiors for advice more often, and make sure that they are aware of your plans in the professional sphere. After you have done all of the necessary steps, it is time to wait for the results to speak for themselves.

Recently, computer science has been presented as an easy way to get huge profits, and an influx of people whose only interest in the field was their potential earnings occurred. Computer science used to be populated by people who enjoyed learning and creating things with technology and who were deeply interested in its development and principles.

As a result, the computer science job market now has an absurd amount of competition, which makes one wonder where all these people with a genuine interest, a serious foundation in CS theory, and actual projects to present came from

It is disheartening to see CS become so commercialized and competitive that one's passion for it no longer is the main factor in finding a job. It is easy to get caught up in the frenzy of trying to optimize your resume and to out-perform others in terms of buzz-word usage rather than simply enjoying the work you used to love.

I am interested to understand the small changes you started doing at work, which led to the increase in the trust of your manager towards you.

Was it constant sharing about problems at work, fulfilling the promises, documenting my work, being a proactive and reliable person whom the manager could always count upon or something else?

You need not give elaborate details. It may not have been a big thing; it could have been a small part of my work routine, which added up.

Could you please share a similar incident where I displayed behavior and changed my approach in such a manner that it led to increased trust in me?

Also, is there a specific opportunity or responsibility that was offered because of my behavior?

Sometimes I'm in the middle of a problem solving process during my coding, when I realize I have no idea what syntax to use for something incredibly simple.

Maybe I can explain what exactly I want my code to do, but I have no idea what the syntax for a certain sort of argument is, or a particular in built function, or even mixing up two syntaxes for different data structures every now and then

It's weird, since I can spend hours on end understanding an idea, but then get stuck on something simple that I know would take me all of 5 seconds to check if I looked at the documentation for the language or library I'm using.

I understand that there's a plethora of programming languages, libraries and frameworks that one would need to learn for their career, and I know it's impossible to memorize every single thing, but sometimes I wonder, do other people feel the same way, or am I just exceptionally bad at memorizing syntax?

Do you often look up trivial syntax that you already know how to use?

How much do you actually memorize when learning something new and how much do you just know where to look and go check it when you need it?

One thing I’ve noticed is that career mistakes often look very different on hindsight.

You may think that you made many “mistakes” along the way but some might have been right in a specific context.

Some people stagnate due to being comfortable in the same place whereas others chase the money while failing to invest enough in the skills.

Some people never ask for a raise or network because it never occurred to them to do so or they believed the rewards would show up just because they did hard work.

On the flip side, I’ve often seen people burn out trying to climb up as high as they could as quickly as they could – but then realize they haven’t invested in their personal life, hobbies, or health.

I think most of us can agree that there is more than one career mistake and most of them are not cut out on the same stone tablet.

But if you could go back and talk to your 22-year-old-older-self right now, what would you say?

What would you tell your 22-year old self that you have come to realize in your current career state?

One thing I often see is that people who study algorithms in school rarely think about them in real applications.

At school, you analyze algorithmic complexity, study ideal data structures, and try to implement the simplest possible design in practice. Then you profile an actual application and see that locality of reference, memory layout, and other factors which have nothing to do with theoretical computer science can be way more important than anything you learned.

I remember doing something as simple as changing the order of my data structures to make them fit in a single cache line and getting massive speedups for no other reason than that this particular pattern of memory access was much more efficient. Something that looked the same from a theoretical point of view performed drastically different on the actual silicon.

That taught me that Big O and theoretical complexity are only useful as reference points; you can't ignore practical details because the theoretical analysis only considers memory-idealized von Neumann architecture with infinite RAM. In practice, RAM is much slower than registers, and how you use it matters. Branch prediction penalties, data locality, register allocation, and many other aspects of real-world computing are not modeled in any theoretical CS constructs. So I think this experience made me more rounded in my understanding of algorithms: I see the importance of theoretical models while not being limited by them, understand why some practical solutions penalize complexity, and am aware of why theory-only approaches might fail in practice.

So I'm curious if other people had a similar experience. Do you think this kind of learning contributes to the ability to design efficient software in practice? Were there specific revelations about data structures/algorithms that came only from profiling actual code performance?

I am not saying this in the sense of the world is going to end, but sometimes it makes one wonder what exactly are we doing all this for.

You spend years studying and gaining experience, and suddenly realize that all that hard work is not going to be rewarded by a steady, well paying job. People get laid off and overworked, understaffed companies force you to do more with less, and your boss thinks nothing about throwing you under the bus just to make a few extra bucks.

It makes one wonder what exactly is it all for.

It makes people bitter about having to work in the first place.

Not everyone expects work to be their passion in life, but most of us would expect some kind of fair trade for our time and effort.

If I am going to dedicate a large part of my life to my occupation, I want to feel like I am really getting something out of it. I want to be able to go home knowing I made a difference at my job. I want to be able to enjoy my work and not be completely burned out by it. I want to be able to live my life outside of my job too. I want to have the time and energy to enjoy it because I know that investing time into my career is a worthwhile endeavor. I want to be able to look at my life and reflect on the things I have done, not just the years I have existed.

That seems to be the biggest issue with it all, doesn't it?

People are just so caught up in the chase that by the time they've reached the top, they realize it wasn't even worth it.

Yes, you may have a nice house and a cool car paid for by your prestigious salary, but the amount of time and energy it cost you wasn't worth the reward in my opinion.

I wanted to ask the people that have been working for ten, twenty, thirty, even forty years now, how has it changed for you? Has it really become less about the prestige and more about just getting by, or is there still something more to it?

Have your expectations on the concept of an ideal career changed as you have aged?

Is it less and less about climbing the corporate ladder, and more and more about just getting the stability you need to be able to enjoy the rest of your life outside of work?

I know many people are skeptical about coding bootcamps nowadays, given the state of the industry, but I'm curious about people who went through one and actually made a successful transition.

If you have done a bootcamp (around 2024/2025) and it has contributed to you landing a tech-related job, what was your experience? What are the details of your particular situation that helped you succeed that others going through the same program may not have?

What type of bootcamp did you attend? What was your experience prior to the bootcamp? Did you have zero experience and knew nothing about tech? Did you switch from another industry? Or were you already in the industry but wanted to move elsewhere?

And finally, what did you attribute your success to? Was it the bootcamp itself, your prior experience, connections you had made, etc. Did building a portfolio outside of the bootcamp help? Did you apply to hundreds of companies before getting an offer? Did the bootcamp help you at all or was it mostly up to me to get a job after graduating?

I'm mostly interested in people who went into cyber security, cloud, data, and AI fields, but I'm open to any success stories. I'm not looking for people to sell me their bootcamp of choice and tell me how they got a six-figure income right after graduating - I'm more interested in what helped some of you actually get a job.

One thing I have noticed about effective coworkers is that they are rarely the ones trying to prove that they are the most skilled or competent around the office.

Most often,

these kinds of individuals display similar traits.

They question before solving, stay level headed in crises, explain complex ideas in simple terms, and admit their own mistakes rather than trying to find someone else to blame.

The last commonality these effective coworkers exhibit is that they make those around them better.

A really strong employee does not just complete their part of a task, they lead and guide by example and enable others to learn, understand, and perform their tasks to the best of their ability.

These coworkers are confident enough in their own skills to not require constant oversight, but also smart enough to ask for help and guidance when they need it.

I think this is one of the most important traits for an effective, reliable employee in any industry because while technical skill sets and knowledge relevant to a task may vary depending on the job, a person's resourcefulness, presence of mind, communication ability, and positive impact on those around them is universal.

What is something you have seen in an employee that made you think to yourself, "this person really knows what they're doing?"

One of the hardest things about learning to code is that knowing how something works and being able to build it yourself are very different things. You might be able to watch someone walk through a project and think, 'Oh, that all makes sense', and be able to walk though it along with them. But then, when you've opened a blank project file and have to type that same project from scratch, you suddenly have no idea what to do.

This is where a lot of actually learning to code happens. You can either decide how to build something and work through the issues, or you can just sit and watch someone else do it.

Working through the errors and problems that came up because of your own decisions is a lot slower and more frustrating than sitting and watching someone else's tutorial, but sometimes the best way to learn is to be frustrated.

Tutorials can help you build something neat, and you'll definitely learn some things watching someone else code, but I feel like they can leave you with a false sense of accomplishment. You get to make something really cool without really fighting through any of the annoying little hiccups that come with actually building something.

That's why I think tutorials are great, especially when you're first starting out, but that doesn't mean you should spend all your time watching them. At some point, you have to put down the tutorial and make some decisions of your own

You don't have to build something huge or complicated, but sometimes a project you struggle through on your own can teach you a lot more than another ten hours of someone elses code. The hard parts are often where you learn the most.

i've noticed a lot of people ask what jobs pay six figures, but i think the more interesting question is how people got there. when you actually read their stories, it's rarely as simple as picking the "right" career. a lot of them switched industries, learned new skills, took a chance on a different role, moved cities, started networking, or just stayed consistent long enough to become really good at what they do.

i'm honestly more interested in the journey than the salary itself. if you're making significantly more today than you did a few years ago, what changed? was there one decision, skill, certification, or opportunity that made the biggest difference? i feel like those stories are a lot more useful than just seeing a number on a paycheck.

following along with a tutorial can teach you a new tool, a framework, or a concept. but the real test starts when you close the video. You open a blank editor. There's no folder structure. No step-by-step instructions. No one telling you what to build next. that's the moment you realize programming isn't about remembering code.

It's about making decisions. What should I build first? How should I organize this? Why isn't this working? What am I missing? those questions are uncomfortable, but I think they're where most of the learning actually happens.

i've started treating tutorials as introductions, not destinations. if I finish one, I try to build the same project again without looking at the video, or I change a feature and figure out the rest myself.

That's usually where I learn the most.

early on, I thought every misunderstanding had to be corrected immediately. If someone remembered something differently, I'd want to prove my version. If a discussion was going nowhere, I'd keep arguing because I wanted to be "right."

Now I think differently. Sometimes it's worth speaking up. Sometimes it's worth asking for clarification. and sometimes the smartest move is simply saying, "Let's document it," or "Can we put that in writing?" so everyone has the same reference going forward.

i've realized that protecting yourself at work isn't always about winning an argument. it's often about communicating clearly, keeping records when something is important, and choosing which conversations are actually worth your energy. Being professional doesn't mean agreeing with everything.

It also doesn't mean turning every disagreement into a confrontation.

Finding that balance is probably one of the harder workplace skills to learn.

When you're learning, it's easy to think the goal is just getting your code to work. If it runs, you move on. but then you open an open-source project or a well-written pull request and realize there are dozens of ways to solve the same problem. You start noticing things you never paid attention to before.

how they name variables. How they organize files. When they split a function into smaller pieces. How they write comments (or why they don't). How they make code easier for the next person to understand.

i don't think that's copying. It's the same way writers read books, musicians study songs, or designers look at great portfolios. You're developing your taste. And once your standards change, your own code usually follows.

Writing code teaches you how to solve problems. Reading great code teaches you how to solve them well.

Curious if anyone has a favorite open-source project, repository, or developer they learned a lot from just by reading their code.

we tend to act like every choice has to be the right choice. The right degree. The right first job. The right career path. as if one wrong turn somehow ruins everything that comes after it. But when I look at people whose careers I admire, very few of them followed a straight line.

They switched industries. They tried roles that didn't work out. they discovered interests they didn't even know they had until they were already working. None of those experiences were wasted. they became part of how those people figured out what they were actually good at and what kind of work they wanted to keep doing.

I wonder if we've made career decisions feel more permanent than they really are. Sometimes the biggest mistake isn't choosing the "wrong" path. It's being so afraid of making the wrong choice that you never make one at all. You can always course-correct.

You can't learn much by standing still.

You finish a tutorial. Everything makes sense while you're watching it. then you open a blank editor and suddenly don't know where to start. i think that's why building your own projects is such a different experience.

Tutorials show you how something works. projects force you to figure out why it works, what to google, how to debug, and how to make decisions when nobody is telling you the next step. That's usually where the real learning happens.

Something that also helped me was using visual tools that show what the code is doing under the hood. seeing variables change and functions execute step by step made concepts click much faster than just reading them.

I still think courses are valuable.

I just don't think they should be the finish line.

at some point, you have to close the video and build something that's your own even if it's messy.

That's usually the moment you find out what you've actually learned.

Most career advice starts with questions like:

What pays well?

What's growing?

What should I learn?

the idea I came across asked a different question: What kind of work makes you lose track of time?

not because every enjoyable activity should become a career, but because it's a clue. If you naturally spend hours writing, designing, coding, teaching, or solving problems without constantly checking the clock, there's probably something worth paying attention to. the second part of the advice was just as interesting. Once you've found that thing, stop chasing motivation and build a routine around it.

Three focused hours every day beats one weekend of burning yourself out. That's probably the part we underestimate. Careers usually aren't built through huge bursts of effort. They're built through boring consistency that compounds over years. i don't think "follow your passion" is always realistic.

but I do think it's worth noticing the work that gives you energy instead of draining it. That seems like a much better place to invest your time than simply following whatever happens to be trending.

i'm starting to think that's the wrong question. AI can already generate code, explain APIs, refactor functions, and even fix bugs surprisingly well. but the more code we generate, the more we have to understand.

Someone still has to decide if the architecture makes sense. Someone still has to review trade-offs. someone still has to catch edge cases, think about security, figure out why production broke at 2 a.m., and decide whether the AI's solution is actually the right one.

in a weird way, AI doesn't just generate code. It generates more responsibility. The barrier to building software is definitely getting lower, and I think that's a good thing. More people can prototype ideas, learn by doing, and ship projects that would've taken weeks before. but lowering the barrier to writing code isn't the same as lowering the bar for good engineering.

Maybe that's the real shift.

Less time fighting boilerplate.

More time making decisions.

I'm curious whether other people are seeing the same thing, or if you've noticed AI changing the way you work in a completely different way.

your resume is full of things you've already done. But when someone interviews you, they're usually trying to answer a different question. "can I picture this person succeeding here?"

That's why two people with similar resumes can have completely different interview outcomes. one person spends the whole interview proving they were good at their last job. The other helps the interviewer imagine what they'll contribute to the next one. That shift changed the way I look at interviews.

they're not just about defending your past.

They're about connecting your past to someone else's future.

i read that in a discussion a while back and it made more sense the longer I thought about it. The first project is mostly about getting something to work. The second project is where you start questioning everything you did the first time. why did I structure it like this? why is this component impossible to reuse? Why did I hardcode everything?

You suddenly notice all the shortcuts you took because now you're the one maintaining them. That's why rebuilding something isn't wasted effort. You're not just repeating yourself, you're comparing the way you used to think with the way you think now. sometimes the biggest sign you're improving isn't that your new project is more complicated.

It's that your old one makes you cringe a little.