What I Wish Someone Had Told Me Early in My Engineering Career

Career growth, career-advice, Hiring, mentorship, technical-leadership I started my engineering career as the second hire on a small team at a healthcare software company. Nobody was organizing the work. Nobody was setting priorities. We were just… building stuff and hoping it mattered. Two years out of school, I started doing it myself — not because anyone asked me to, but because someone had to. That decision changed everything. Within a few years, I was CTO, the team had grown to 40+ engineers, and we were acquired. It was a great ride. But I made a lot of mistakes along the way that I’d do differently now. Here’s what I’d tell my younger self — and what I’d tell any developer just getting started. Don’t get trapped in your current stack It’s easy to get comfortable with the tools your employer uses. You get good at them, you become the go-to person, and then five years pass, and you realize you haven’t learned anything new. That’s a problem. Look at job listings — not necessarily…