One Crucial Mistake Engineers Make That Slows Their Career Progression
They prioritize completing tickets over learning.
When new to a company or early in your career, it can be tempting to show how productive you are by crushing tickets one after the other. You shouldn’t do this. You shouldn’t focus on velocity, especially early in your career.
There are always caveats here. Like if you’re under critical deadlines, your manager communicated a sense of urgency and importance, or if you are on a performance improvement plan, then you might not have the luxury of slowing down. Ideally though, the above reasons not to take your time are only temporary.
By default, especially early in your career, you should view each task you get as an opportunity to learn.
Take your time to truly understand before moving on.
When you are working on a new ticket, and a new concept comes up or a specific framework is used, slow down and take a moment to fully understand that piece. Don’t just gloss over it because you have things working. Before moving into the next ticket, think about what you can learn from this one.
Where is there an opportunity to go a little deeper on this task? Even if it’s just for 5-10 minutes. This small act of slowing down to truly understand something will help you grow. Next time this concept comes up or a similar ticket is assigned to you, you will be that much more effective.
By consistently squeezing out a little bit of learning on each task you do, you’re making a habit of growing.
Work on the projects that offer the most learning opportunities.
Most of us are fortunate to have some degree of autonomy at our jobs. You should look to take on the projects that get you out of your comfort zone as often as you can. These are the projects that feel a little (or very) uncomfortable in the beginning because you aren’t sure where to start.
Projects like this can be very intimidating but they always result in a tremendous amount of growth. Each time I was promoted, there were two or three projects like this beforehand that were terrifying in the beginning but looking back months later, it was remarkable how much I grew because of it. If you want to grow, take on the scary project.
A career is a long time.
Over time, the engineers that make a habit of learning rather than getting things done will bubble up to the top of their field. All the small bits of improvement will compound on top of each other. It might not be noticeable at first, which is why people often don’t do it.
Slow down and look for one way to go deeper to learn something new on each task you work on.
Take on the projects that offer more opportunities to learn.
Learning from each task is a long term investment in your career.
Slow down and play the long the game.