What do you call technical debt, but for your career?

> How do you overcome it?

What an interesting way to frame it.

Debt is not something to "overcome". Debt is generally a tool to trade time for value. If you're accruing career debt, it should hopefully pay dividends. This is what people call "career capital".

Hard work does not automatically generate career capital. You have to be hard-working and/or smart and/or charismatic and/or lucky.

The only honest way to make money is to convince others to give you money. My personal advice is to (1) learn what people want and (2) hone your ability to create useful goods and services.

[1] https://taylor.town/make-money

I highly recommend reading So Good They Can't Ignore You for more perspectives on building career capital.

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Good-They-Cant-Ignore-You/dp/03494158...

Also consider reading How to Win Friends and Influence People for guidance on how to create charisma.

[3] https://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/0...

The "Technical debt" in my career was going to a small university no one has heard of for my CS degree, then trying to get my start in a very competitive city with a much larger university feeding into a lot of the Junior positions, where the housing was expensive and the salaries were low.

I mostly fixed it by moving to a much different city, applying to jobs outside my comfort zone there, landing a good position at a recognizable company name, and building from there.

I changed jobs 3 times in 5 years and doubled my salary.

My ongoing "technical debt" is that I am extremely abrasive towards authority, so I don't get along with executive types. I also tend to think they aren't as valuable as their salaries would suggest. It's something I will have to get over or it will place a permanent ceiling over how much I can grow in my career.

A decent example from my own career (if we're going with the "debt as short-term gain, long-term loss" metaphor): I spent 3 years at a DoD consulting firm for my second job.

The pros:

- Boost in pay ($40k -> $85k a year)

- Boost in my credibility and resume (I had no STEM degree)

- More professional development resources (I was able to do a master's while working and got to witness a lot of engineering in-the-large)

The cons (at least in my mind, since I can't be sure what I would have done elsewhere):

- A lot of the stuff I did there is unmarketable. No one is writing new code in Perl. And static analysis, while technically very interesting, is not a ginormous market.

- I feel "behind" in the world of cloud computing since I didn't do much of it while I was there. Most of my next steps look like places that demand a lot of skill building big systems in the cloud. I'm doing it a lot right now but I feel like my team and I are learning a lot of lessons the hard way.

- If I had succeeded in moonshotting my way into a top tier tech company earlier, I would have earned enough capital to take advantage of a couple critical periods (cheaper housing, various opportunities in the stock market, etc)

I guess a couple of examples of this could be:

Having experience in some tech stack or industry that is no longer relevant but makes up a large part of your CV.

Having some role (eg support or QA) on your CV that unfairly makes it seem like you are not as technical as other people.

Being stuck in the same role for a long time with no progression - limiting then seniority of roles you can apply for.

Being in an industry and getting pigeon holed - eg crypto, finance, insurance. Hard to get into a different industry as people will perceive you to be a certain type of developer.

Not sure what it would be called - I guess “career limiting choices”.

There was a time I avoided the cloud, certifications, meetings, having to be a team player.

Then I was told it's possible to have fun, the purpose of certifications, make good money, and do those things while at the same time enjoying them.

Now I absolutely love running meetings, working on a team, as an individual contributor, and haven't touched physical hardware in 4 years.

Nothing really changed except putting in the work and changing my attitude. Since that time I have doubled my pay, work under the conditions that I enjoy.

Like paying debt, you have to work twice as hard to get half the result. Ultimately, eventually, there is a net positive.

I don't call my career technical debt anything, but I do call myself a piece of shit because of it. I don't overcome any of it. I just slog on.

After I've seen the same things happen over and over, I've learned to recognize the patterns and stop giving a shit about most of it.

I've been in my current job long enough that I have a good idea what matters and what will be completely lost and forgotten in the black hole of bureaucracy in a week.

Most of it doesn't matter, so I just go through the motions and go home less frustrated. I've optimized what I can and eliminated the rest.

No, it's not fulfilling. It pays the bills.

"valuable experience"

Sometimes, junior developers look down on me because I don't know the keywords of the newest hyped-up framework from memory. You could call it technical debt that I keep using mostly old and boring technology.

Or you could call it "mind-blowing cost savings by reducing technical risks" and let management send you a bonus payment ;) Despite what the React docs suggest, an SPA is usually not the best architecture.

How to always maximise your career choices:

1. Every year do a bit of research and figure out what the most sought after technologies are in job ads from companies you would potentially like to work for.

2. Pick one or more technology from the list and learn it well enough to pass a job interview by implementing small but realistic examples of biz applications using it.

That’s it.

I've heard this called "10 years of work doing the same year 10 times", but I don't know a catchy word or phrase. Maybe the Germans among us have a word?

> How do you overcome it?

How do you overcome technical debt in a project?

* identify it

* prioritize the issues; you can't tackle them all at once

* work on one issue at a time over time

I'd say generally a refusal to "unlearn":

* "wisdom" you've acquired from a lot of n=1 experiences that aren't actually generalizable

* Technical skills that you hold onto dearly instead of growing, that once were more valuable than they are today.

Not being amazing at maths compared to my peers. I'm still pretty good (bahcelors in physics and doing a Doctorate in AI) but wish that my maths was better..