Avoid Working Alone
&gt; I suggest that the first job you take be the one with the highest learning potential, not the highest earning potential<p>I don&#x27;t know about the advice to take the job where you learn the most. It&#x27;s great advice for startup founders and company owners who can get naive young new graduates for below market rates. Not so great for the graduates themselves.<p>See, jobs that pay a lot are typically demanding of your intellect. You&#x27;re going to need to learn a lot to do them well. But beyond that, you have limited time on this Earth. If you&#x27;ve decided you&#x27;re going to trade some of it away for money, it seems wise to make sure you&#x27;re getting as much back in exchange as you can, other things being equal.<p>I&#x27;ve known a number of people who did the naive, idealistic thing and worked for a string of startups in their twenties and early thirties. But, inevitably, most of those companies end up failing -- that&#x27;s the most common situation -- or paying out what amounts to a nice bonus after years of high risk, high stress, labor paid below market rates. BTW, that second scenario is the 99% best case scenario.<p>Sure, if you&#x27;re this person, you&#x27;ve had some exciting times. But you didn&#x27;t own those times. Those were the founders. You were just working for the owner. And now you&#x27;ve finally wised up, but you&#x27;re ten to fifteen years behind the ball on saving for retirement or a house.<p>A lot of young people really can&#x27;t understand how big of a problem it can be to just be getting started on this stuff in your late thirties. It seems like you have all the time in the world, but you really don&#x27;t. Fortunately, in software engineering, we&#x27;re paid so well that a frugal person can do a lot of catching up. But if things don&#x27;t go nominally, shit can get rough.<p>Just throwing this out there. I think the &quot;work to learn&quot; advice is idealistic, but I don&#x27;t think it necessarily serves every potential recipient. Or even most of them. If you don&#x27;t have family money to fall back on, consider putting on your life vest by putting in a few years getting paid as much as you can, <i>then</i> consider whether there&#x27;s something that&#x27;s missing from your career that could be served by taking the high risk, learning-focused job. Or, just jump right into founding companies. But don&#x27;t work for below-market rates and a tenth of a percent for a startup founder who probably has a trust fund.