What to focus on career-wise as an inexperienced professional

Question

Hi HN,I'd like to hear your opinions on career development. I don't want to limit this conversation to sofware engineering/IT in general, so feel free to comment no matter your field.To start, I've summed up some of my research for software engineering. Some things are more clear cut, others heavily opinionated:- Learn as much as you can, try to have fun working, have at least x% of your waking day as quality leisure time, and don't burn out.- Just get more experience- Do side project work- Contribute to popular open-source code- Work at a big, well known companyLooking forward to your input!

GianFabien · Accepted Answer

When you are inexperienced, you shouldn't call yourself a "professional". But aside from the semantics, the career progression is simple: Get stuff done, on time, to a high quality and keep learning. Your value to an employer is in proportion to the increase in profits you contribute to or the savings in expenses. Your career capital is the reputation you build up over a period of time in consistently attaining those measurable contributions.For most of your career your primary objective should be to make your boss look like a hero to his boss. In client facing roles it gets even trickier, you need to make the client feel they're number 1 and yet not compromise your company's objectives.