10 ideas that shaped the first 10 years of my career
Lessons from a decade in corporate America.
I recently celebrated my ten-year work anniversary. Over the years I’ve learned a lot, and today I want to reflect on what I’ve learned through the ups, downs, zigs, and zags of a decade in corporate America.
What are the biggest lessons you’ve learned in your career? Share them in the comments below.
1. You’re NOT stuck doing the same job for the rest of your life ⏳
I spent the first 4 years of my career struggling to find my fit. I was doing very specialized RF engineering work called tuning and optimization. I learned a lot and worked with great people, but I felt like a fish out of water. My leaders asked me questions like, “Do you want to become a project manager or a solution architect?” Both sounded awful to me. The moments I felt most excited were when I got to bring people together into teams and to do big-picture thinking, but my career trajectory was taking me in the opposite direction.
I felt stuck and out of options. At one point, I started saving aggressively to quit altogether to live off savings and pursue seminary. Then one day, I was scrolling through our internal job board, when I saw a role doing something called “performance and transformation.” I applied, interviewed, and three months later my life was completely different. It turns out, I wasn’t stuck. You always have options, especially early in your career, and sometimes, one conversation can change everything. You don’t have to follow the path that everyone else is on. Fortune favors the bold.
2. Expertise is a local phenomenon 👓
I was always the dumbest engineer in the room. My colleagues knew our systems and protocols inside and out. I was the least knowledgeable and least experienced. Once I was sent down to Central America as a “telecom expert” to share best practices with one of our customers. I spent most of the trip anxiously flailing about, hoping people wouldn’t see that I was way out of my depth.
After my pivot, most of my new team came from business or supply chain backgrounds. Overnight, I was a telecom expert. I was giving “Telecom 101” seminars. Things that were basic in my old context were novel and valuable insights in my new context. To be seen as an expert, you don’t have to be the universal expert, you just have to know more than the people around you, and be able to explain what you know.
3. The purpose of feedback is to improve performance 📈
Constructive feedback is hard to receive and even harder to give. I’ve always struggled with both. But in year 6, a mentor recommended that I read High Output Management by Andrew Grove. This book changed the way I approached being a leader. Grove says any time you are giving feedback to an employee, the purpose is to improve their performance. Constructive feedback should be specific and helpful. It’s not helpful to dance around issues, and it won’t likely improve performance.
Equally important, positive feedback should be designed to improve performance. One way to do this is to issue a challenge along with your affirmation (hat tip Jocko Willink). For example, instead of saying “Great job”, try something like “Your performance on that last project was great, and if you keep working hard, you’ll be unstoppable.”
4. Don’t be in a hurry 💨
Ask anyone how the last month has been and the most likely answer will be “busy.” I think this stems largely from 3 factors.
As the great American philosopher Jerry Seinfeld said, “[We’re all just] trying to do things to convince ourselves our lives don’t suck.” We have become uncomfortable with boredom, and stillness. We stigmatize doing nothing as laziness. As an experiment, try driving at or under the speed limit next time you’re in the car and see how it makes you feel. I picked up this practice from John Mark Comer’s book The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry when my life was getting quite out of balance.
While there is a time for explosive, fast work, I’ve learned that when I’m constantly in a hurry, I don’t do my best work. The goal is not to be busy, the goal is to be productive, or better yet, generative.
5. You can be the one to write the thing down ✍️
This is really one of my best tricks. A great way to influence the outcome of a situation is to be the one writing the plan down. If you feel strongly about how a project should go, volunteer to take notes, send out the action items, and write the proposal. Even better, come to the meetings with a proposal already written. Many of your ideas will stick, and you will have tremendous leverage to decide all the minutiae that others don’t want to think about. Writing is challenging, most people don’t want to do it.
6. If something is going wrong, it is the job of the leader to fix it 🛠️
I learned this from the book Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink & Leif Babin, former Navy Seal officers. Leadership is important. I once experienced an all-employee meeting with a lot of technical glitches. Microphones cut in and out in the auditorium, the presentation material looked bad on screen, and there were issues with the live streaming. It was painful, and I could tell that some of our executives were not happy.
After the meeting, I was part of the debrief. The Head of IT kicked off the meeting and said something to the effect of “Look, I know there were issues with the A/V equipment. I accept full responsibility. It’s not my team’s fault, it’s my fault, and I’ll make sure it gets fixed.”
His response left an impression on me. That was Extreme Ownership. When something went wrong, he didn’t pawn the blame off on his team’s poor execution, or speculate that they didn’t test equipment. He took the fall, protected his team, and took responsibility for fixing it.
7. Learn, earn, or quit ✌️
This is a recent acquisition for me courtesy of Gary Tan. He’s the CEO of Y Combinator and a venture capitalist. In any job, you should either be learning (acquiring valuable skills & experience) or earning (maximizing your income). The best jobs are ones where you earn and can continue to learn. If you find yourself in a place where you are not learning or earning, it’s time to get out of there.
8. Zoom in, zoom out 🔎
Sometimes nothing gets done for a while. Then a bunch of things happen all at once. Sometimes you need to see the big picture, sometimes you need to become hyper-focused on the details. Sometimes you need to leave your team alone, sometimes you need to be in the loop. Knowing when to apply these approaches is the difference between a good leader and a bad leader.
When I first became a manager, I had a hard time transitioning from a “doer” to a leader. I wanted my fingerprints on everything. I felt like if I moved my attention away from the day-to-day work of the team, everything would fall apart. The results were sub-optimal. Our team was doing great work, sure, but I was pulling my hair out, and my team felt micromanaged.
Then one day, my friend, who was now my employee (this transition is worthy of a whole separate blog post) said to me something to the effect of “You know, I got this, you don’t have to be involved. I’ll let you know if I need help.” His gentle correction helped to reset my mindset. I started to let go and empower the team. These days, I have an amazing team. There is more going on than I could possibly stay on top of myself, but I trust my people, and I’ve developed the ability to quickly get caught up and be helpful when needed.
9. Keep up with the news in your industry 📚
in my first couple of years at Ericsson, I picked up the bad habit of being disengaged from the industry. My friends and I never attended all-hands meetings. I couldn’t have named the other business units outside of my immediate purview. To us, our work was the most important thing Ericsson did.
Only when I left those teams did I realize that our department was a fractional part of what Ericsson does. There was a multiverse of product lines, sales teams, R&D, logistics, and strategic moves that I had no idea about. All because of my myopic view.
Reading (or listening) to industry news gives you context, and context is that which is scarce. Now 2-3 times a week, I pull up the industry publications to see what’s going on. I subscribe to press releases to make sure I don’t miss important news, and once a year, I try to slog my way through our 40+ page mobility report that talks about the macro trends in the industry.
10. The right response to good fortune is gratitude, not imposter syndrome 👏
I learned this lesson in year 7. I had just become a director and one of the youngest managers in the company. I had a great team, we were doing great work. It was an amazing peak in my career. During that time, I was also hearing a lot of feedback from our early career professionals that it was hard to move up in the company. “No, it’s not,” I thought to myself initially, “it happened to me.” The more I thought about it, I realized they were right.
When people are successful, sometimes we can recast the past as inevitable, that we were “destined” to get where we are, or that we “earned” what we have. We discount the role that timing, opportunity, and plain old luck play in our stories.
I once ran a survey of early career professionals at my company, I noticed something interesting: there were roughly twice as many people who wanted to be managers as there were actual managerial positions available. Clearly many people, through no fault of their own, simply won’t get the opportunity just based on circumstances.
As for me, I got INCREDIBLY lucky. I sent a cold email to a hiring manager and he happened to read it and give me a shot. I can tell you as a hiring manager now, that almost never happens. Then after two years, my boss intentionally took a lateral move to make room for me to take his place as acting manager. Who does that? Then his boss, my new boss, gave me a shot and hired me into the permanent role when she could have easily found a more experienced manager. That almost never happens.
The truth is there were many more talented, more equipped people that didn’t get the opportunities that I’ve had. Did I work hard and try to make the most of the situations I was in? Mostly, yes. But my success, such that it is, is a product of the guidance, support, and mentorship of many many people not named Jacob, and a lot of factors outside my control. I have to own that, and I also have to steward that. I now have the chance to give other people opportunities and help them along in their careers.
Happy 10 years!