Stay Curious
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-layout: post -title: “Stay Curious” -author: Amin -tags: [curiosity, goal, career] —-
Stay Curious
When I got my first full-time job, I started with a lot of enthusiasm, both to learn and to grow. I thought they were the same thing because learning new things would help me make things, and making things would help me grow.
I stayed about six years with my first company and switched roles multiple times. I did learn a lot, both about technical topics and about working in an office. Later, I realized that learning how to work in an office environment would help me grow much more effectively than just learning technical topics.
One of the coolest things that happened to me in that company was getting to know our CTO. He was a very interesting person—a true nerd with a lot of energy and great technical skills. I asked him for advice many times. This post is about one of the best pieces of advice he gave me.
Stay curious
I asked him, “You’ve been in this business for a while; what advice would you give me to grow?” He simply said, “Stay curious.” That really resonated with me. I realized the reason he’s as skilled as he is, is because he loves to experiment with stuff.
Staying curious is not easy for me. When I get into a full-time job, it consumes me completely—all I can be curious about is how to get my immediate work done and impress. But in reality, much of what I did in the past didn’t have a big impact on the business overall. In fact, many times my work was scrapped because it didn’t make a lot of sense to other developers.
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