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Discussion on: 5 Things I Wish I Could Tell My Past Self

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Bill Miller

Always remember:

  • A day without learning is a day wasted... even if what you learned was that person X is a pain in the butt until their 3rd coffee.
  • Not all males are women haters, many of them are borderline autistic extreme introverts that are incapable of interacting with anyone that isn't the same geekiness as them. Watch out for pidgeon-holing. (Also there are a large pile of A-holes that don't want to work with a woman, be smarter than they are!)
  • Beware of extremely deep segmented knowledge. You'd be surprised how many people can't talk intelligently about anything outside of their expertise and it makes them look like morons (Definition of Phd: Someone that knows everything about almost nothing). Learn bits of everything, it will make you much more valuable to a team and an organization and you'd be surprised how often you opinion about unrelated things will be requested (related to 'think outside the box').
  • Always be able to talk something down. I mean that being able to explain something to someone that has no clue (with appropriate metafores) can be invaluable. You'd be surprised how useful this is when dealing with people that don't speak your native language (e.g. ESL). Keeping the vocabulary small can be invaluable... I've also found that people that insist on speaking as if they've memorized a thesaurus typically have limited knowledge or are just attempting to show off.