Beware tech career advice from old heads

If you’re new to tech – say, less than 5 years in the field – you should take career advice from people who’ve been in the industry more than 10-15 years with enormous skepticism.

This includes me, and my advice! I try to keep my advice relevant by spending lots of time talking with and listening to people newer to the industry, and applying their lessons-learned rather than my own. But, yeah, you should probably take my advice with skepticism, too.

The options available to people with established careers, the way we move through and experience the industry, and even the culture around day-to-day working conditions, are dramatically different from what newcomers experience. The result is that the way people with established careers navigate major moves – job searches, salary negotiations, promotions, performance reviews – are incredibly different from the way newcomers navigate these events. These differences are so dramatic that tech-as-experienced-by-newcomers might as well be a totally different industry from tech-as-experienced-by-old-heads.

If you’re new to tech, taking advice on what works for someone with a 20-year career is likely to be about as effective as taking career advice from a stockbroker or firefighter or nurse. There’ll be a few things that generalize, but most advice won’t.

Further, even advice people with long careers on what worked for them when they were getting started is unlikely to be advice that works today. The tech industry of 15 or 20 years ago was, again, dramatically different from tech today. I used to joke that if you knew which was was up on a keyboard, you could get a job in tech. That joke makes no sense today: breaking into the field is now very difficult, and getting harder every year.

So even when people with long careers try to give newcomers advice, while it may be well-intentioned, it’s likely to be useless. If you’re new to tech, ignoring advice from old heads is probably a good idea. And if you’re a fellow old head who’d like to help people new to the industry, do it by paying close attention to what works for them and pass on that advice.

Not to mention how this dynamic intersects with race, gender, and class…