Discussion Professional advices?

[aneurysm]

Do you have any professional advices/secrets to give that you learned all throughout your career?

Mine are:

• When you encounter a problem, always realize that it's extremely likely that others have the same problem. This is the key to solving it.

• Never be selfish. Always be genuinely humble and put the interest of the company you work at above your own personal interests.

• Don't try to be the best, or better than others. Try to help others be better (it's a constant effort).

• Be focused and always finish what you start.

• Don't let yourself be caught in over abundance of data. Be highly selective and decisive. Quality over quantity.

• Always be mindful of time and be organized.

• Always check the news and seek to have a sophisticated understanding of it.

I'm only 23 and a recent graduate. I'm relatively inexperienced
@Makko

 

[Callie Arcale]

I commend you on setting such high goals for yourself and I admire your work ethic. I think any company would be lucky to have you as an employee :-)

But I can't say I subscribe to some of the things on your list. Perhaps it's that I'm twice your age, or perhaps it's that I come from a different culture, but I find it hard to agree with this one in particular:

Never be selfish. Always be genuinely humble and put the interest of the company you work at above your own personal interests.

If your work is making you sick, if you have a boss who is treating you badly, if you are underappreciated and underpaid, you should most definitely put your personal interests above. No company or job is worth more than your well being. Put yourself first! No one at work will build you a monument - or even remember you - when you're gone. You're just another brick in the wall.

 

[DocNo]

your advices are really good and i always try to work by these standards.

but being a bit older and working for over 20 years as a freelancer for a lot of different companies i made a lot of experiences which makes this sometimes a bit hard.

1. finding people in a company who are not selfish and trying to set the interests of their company above their own personal interests is more the exception than the normal thing. this ranges from people trying to hide their incompetence or errors they made to being pretty openly a complete asshole treating others with lower rank in the hierarchy like shit and only kissing the right asses to have a job where the person nearly has nothing to work and just gets the money.
2. when it gets tense in projects and some stuff doesn't work according to plan, the people quickly let fall their nice faces and start the blame game to secure their own asses even when the know they screwed up.
3. helping others is good but there are always people who shamelessly use this and present themselves bigger than they are to take advantage.

over the years i more and more focused on the people i want to work with and less on the amount of money i can earn. so some jobs were maybe not that lucrative but it was much more relaxed and professional. but i guess in some jobs this is a luxury not everybody has and i think i got lucky here.

so my advice to you. choose the people you work with wisely. it takes some time to get a feeling for it and also sometimes you have to work with somebody in stressful situations to see what kind of person it is.

and it's also important that others know what you have contributed to a project cause if it is not clear there will be for sure somebody who takes all the credit for it.

and one final note.
don't always try to follow the news. on the long term it's a source for depression ^^

 

[Sensei]

This is something I've learned the hard way: no job is worth breaking yourself over. If you're very ambitious, it's easy to burn out and get a depression. In my case, it triggered bipolar disorder.

This is something I've learned out of necessity: perfect output is neither desireable nor possible. Perfectionism tends to engender inefficiency. Sometimes you need to take shortcuts and there's no shame in that.