Here's Why You Shouldn't Take Tech Career Advice From Your Friends

During the last Chinese New Year, I got this link in my news feed, an article from Robert Half, a recruitment agency. It caught my eye for the wrong reasons. Something about this article struck me as extremely problematic.

If you’re not sure where you want your career to go, don't be afraid to seek help. Ask friends and family over Chinese New Year for their advice.

Really? I call bullshit.

Surround yourself with friends...
but don't take their advice. Because
their advice sucks.

Friends are good things to have. They hang out with you when company is needed, they usually find the same things funny, and they listen when you need to rant. But friends are not infallible (big surprise, huh?) and when you need advice, sometimes they fall short. I don't mean they run out of advice; advice is primarily opinion-based, and if it's one thing human beings rarely run out of, it's opinions. I'm going to be really blunt here and say this - don't listen to your friends. Especially when it comes to a tech career. Your friends don't know shit. This goes for your parents and your siblings as well.

Now let's just be unambiguously clear about one thing. I'm laboring under the assumption that your friends care, and only want the best for you. They honestly are telling you what they think is the best way to go. They're not jealous of you, or trying to sabotage you. They have only the purest of intentions.

And their advice is still utter bollocks.

I have a lot of friends, and I've lost count of the number of times I've had to dismiss their freely offered opinion as well-meaning, but useless. That's because most of them are non-technical people and not of the career consultant variety. I'm honestly baffled at the number of people who have seen fit to advise me on how to build my career in my own industry without having worked a single day in it. Or people who give me marriage advice when they don't even have someone to hold hands with. Or people who tell me how to manage my money when they're the ones who are constantly in debt.

Advice is easy to give, and exceedingly few people will, when dishing out advice of any sort, pause to consider if they are qualified to dispense that particular brand of wisdom. That's not a blot on their character; merely an unfortunate facet of human nature.

But the advice is free!

Oh, dear. You know what else is free? Farts. Toe fungus. STDs. You don't have to pay a cent for them either, but do you really want those?

Advice is one of those things you should not value just because it's freely given. If it was worth anything professionally, you should have to seek it out, or better still, pay for it.

But my friend is a well-paid developer in a tech company!

Then yes, listen to him. Or her. But you should be listening because this friend is an authority in the career you want, and not because he or she is your friend. In fact, if you're in the habit of listening to people just because they're your friends, stop it. Pronto.

But they've hired techs before!

Oh, wow. I guess that must really mean they know something, huh?

Hey, you know who else has hired techies? Human Resource people, who (surprise, surprise) may not actually know all that much about tech careers specifically. Clueless CEOs of small outfits who don't have the sense to leave hiring to more qualified people. Incidentally, unless you're desperate, I'd steer clear of those companies.

I'm not saying that people who have hired techies don't know shit. They could actually know shit. But if they claim to know shit and don't want to get laughed at, they should also know that "I've hired techs before", on its own, doesn't cut the fucking mustard.

Actually, scratch that last bit. They don't have to know. You do.

What about my ex-classmates from my Computer Science Degree?

That depends. Are they currently making a living in tech? Then go for it. If not, fuck 'em. What could you possibly learn about the tech industry from people who haven't written a single line of code in years? I'm sure their opinions are valuable to someone, somewhere out there. Just not to you.

Why Advice Can Be Bad

The best advice doesn't necessarily come from someone in your field, but it helps.

People who are only in it for the money, will give you advice on how to earn money in the shortest time possible. People who just want to coast along in life, will naturally recommend jobs where you can take it easy. People who equate professional success with fancy titles will point you the way to companies where you can make a name for yourself and climb the ladder.

None of that is intrinsically wrong. People want what they want. But you need to be really honest and ask yourself if this is what you want. Just because what people want for themselves isn't wrong, it doesn't follow that what they want for themselves must be right for you.

Don't follow for the
sake of following.

I'll say this again - advice is opinion-based. And opinions are skewed by perspective. If you're looking for relevant career advice regarding the tech industry, do you think you could obtain it from someone plying his or her trade in, say, healthcare? Law? Journalism? Sales and marketing? Driving a cab? Running a hipster cafe? A career soldier or civil servant?

None of the above, Junior.

The point is that the person giving you the advice should have his career goals aligned to yours. He should want the same things you do, and preferably already accomplished them. Therefore it follows that someone in the industry you want to build your career in, would give you better advice than someone out of it. If you want a tech career, be advised by a tech.

It could still be bad advice, but it would at least be relevant bad advice.

And even then, bear in mind that the advice isn't good just because the one giving it comes from the same industry. There's this guy who used to intern at a start-up I worked for. He wants to be a software architect five years down the road, and the worst thing he could do is listen to me. Why? Because I'm not the kind of guy who wants to be a software architect. I want to code. I don't want to be in the position of overseeing something and then not getting my hands dirty. Any advice I give him would not bring him anywhere close to his goal. It would only bring him close to my goal. And even then, I'm hardly the ideal person to ask - I've made several mistakes during my storied career and will likely make several more by the time this post is read.

But if I'm not convincing enough, maybe this long-dead technopreneur will be.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life." - Steve Jobs

The times I didn't listen...

A couple years ago, I was in the market for a job. A few people, rather amusingly, offered me tips on my job search. Apparently, I needed to:

- refuse to provide details of my last drawn pay (to give me that edge in negotiation)
- provide some plausible bullshit for leaving my last job (because the truth would blunt my edge in negotiation)
- cover up the tattoos on my fingers. (because, even though it was 2017, these things somehow still matter)

Liverpool FC pride, baby.

You know what I did? None of that shit. I was too arrogant to lie, obfuscate or provide evasive answers. I provided excruciatingly detailed salary figures from all my previous places of employment. I stated up front that the last two companies that I worked in, tanked. And I certainly didn't cover up my goddamn fingers.

I not only landed the job, but they offered me more than what I had asked for.

Strategy? Bah humbug. You need substance, not strategy. You need to have a finely honed sense of what matters and what doesn't. Without that, no amount of "strategy" proposed by people who can't tell Java from JavaScript, will help you. Trust your instincts.

In conclusion

Be very stringent as to whom you take advice from.

Whatever advice you take, remember this. This is your career. Own it. It is your responsibility. You don't get to do something stupid and then claim that people gave you bad advice. You chose to follow it!

You're the only one with skin in the game. If you're going to give your career an honest shot, I hope to hell that whoever is advising you has something a lot more substantial than "I'm older than you, so I know better" and "I mean well".

Also remember that everyone has a right to their opinion, informed or otherwise. What they don't have an automatic right to, is to be taken seriously by you. That they have to earn. And if you choose to give their opinion weight simply because they're family or friends... hey, you know what they say - there's a sucker born every minute.

You've been so advised,
T___T