No choice is permanent

Dear new developer,

Sometimes when you are thinking about a new job or shifting to a new position in a company, it can feel overwhelming. What if I make the wrong choice? At least, I’ve often felt that way.

Every choice you make has effects. When you choose to study ruby, you can’t also study python (opportunity cost!). When you work at a company, you will learn how that company works, but not about how other companies work.

I sometimes have FOMO (fear of missing out) when I commit to one path. “What would have happened if I had gone down another path?” I wonder.

That’s OK. I think it’s human. But you still have to make a choice.

I remember talking to a friend once about making decisions. She said that she likes to make a decision as late as possible. I think this is a good practice. Gather the data you need and can get without asymetric effort (that is, the larger the issue is, the more effort you should put in–I should invest more effort into learning about joining a new company than I should into learning a new project within the same company, for example). Make the decision as late as you can, because you’ll learn more as time goes on.

However.

It’s also important to realize that few decisions are permanent, especially as a new developer in your career. You’ll have flexibility in terms of geography, type of company, type of job, size of company, business domain. Some shifts may be easier because of your history and the aforementioned effects (shifting from being a web developer to being a backend engineer), some may be harder (changing from a web developer into an embedded systems engineer), some may be well nigh impossible (changing from a web developer into a compiler developer), but some change will be available to you.

What this means to me is that decisions which seem crucial, critical, life-changing, are, but that if you make an incorrect decision you can change. And that, for me, takes some of the pressure off.

Sincerely,

Dan

PS, as Kendall pointed out, there are some decisions that are essentially permanent. But most career decisions aren’t.