A software engineer shares two mistakes that held him back early in his career: refusing help because he feared looking dumb, and chasing perfect code instead of shipping. He learned collaboration beats going solo and that done beats perfect.
I'll be sharing my top 3 mistakes I made as a junior engineer so that you can avoid them. My first mistake: I was being stubborn and tried to learn and figure out everything on my own. I was too proud a lot of times to ask for help or to learn together with someone. I believe I was afraid of coming out like I'm not smart enough. What I found out later is that it's important to not compete with others but instead collaborate. The second mistake: I was trying to perfect my solutions. Perfectionism has been a big productivity killer for me. We as engineers are making so many micro decisions on a daily basis. Instead of progressing and delivering value to the business, I was endlessly analyzing and trying to reach perfection. I'm curious to hear about your advice for junior engineers. Make sure to share them in the comments. To learn more, you can subscribe to my newsletter. It's called Engineering Leadership. There are more than 100,000 people already reading it, and I publish 2 new articles every week.
How I Grew My Newsletter Engineering Leadership to 165k Subscribers in 3 Years
