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As we enter 2026, we’re looking again on the high items of recommendation we shared within the Profession Alert e-newsletter final 12 months. Whether or not you’re in search of a brand new job or looking for methods to excel in your present position, learn on for the three hottest suggestions that would assist advance your profession.
Throughout a decade working at hypergrowth tech corporations like Meta and Pinterest, I continually struggled with procrastination. I’d be assigned an vital mission, however I merely couldn’t get myself to start out it. The supply of my distraction assorted—I’d continually verify my electronic mail, learn random documentation, and even scroll via my social feeds. However the consequence was the identical: I felt a deep sense of dread that I used to be not making progress on the issues that mattered.
On the finish of the day, time is the one useful resource that issues. With each minute, you’re making a call about easy methods to spend your life. Many of the methods individuals spend their time are ineffective. Particularly within the tech world, our duties and instruments are continually altering, so we should have the ability to adapt. What separates the very best engineers from the remainder of the pack is that they create methods that enable them to be persistently productive.
Right here’s the core concept that modified my perspective on productiveness: Motion results in motivation, not the opposite approach round. You shouldn’t verify your electronic mail or scroll Instagram when you watch for motivation to “hit you.” As a substitute, simply begin doing one thing, something, that makes progress towards your objective, and also you’ll discover that motivation will observe.…
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Certainly one of my shut associates is a hiring supervisor at Google. She not too long ago posted about an open place on her group and was instantly overwhelmed with functions. We’re speaking about 1000’s of candidates inside days.
What stunned me most, nonetheless, was the horrendous high quality of the common submission. Most candidates have been clearly unqualified or had concocted completely pretend profiles. The usage of generative AI to mechanically fill out (and, in some instances, even submit) functions is dangerous to everybody; employers are unable to filter via the noise, and bonafide candidates have a more durable time getting observed—a lot much less advancing to an interview.
So how can job seekers stand out among the many deluge of candidates? When there are a whole lot or 1000’s of candidates, one of the best ways to differentiate your self is by leveraging your community.
With AI, anybody with a pc can trivially apply to 1000’s of jobs. Alternatively, persons are restricted by Dunbar’s quantity—the concept that people can preserve secure social relationships with solely about 150 individuals. Being a kind of 150 individuals is more durable, but it surely additionally carries extra weight than a soulless job utility.
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Cursor, the AI-native code editor, recently reported that it writes almost a billion traces of code every day. That’s one billion traces of production-grade code accepted by customers each single day. If we generously assume {that a} sturdy engineer writes a thousand traces of code in a day, Cursor is doing the equal work of 1,000,000 builders. (For context, whereas working at Pinterest and Meta, I’d sometimes write lower than 100 traces of code per day.)
There are solely about 25 million software developers worldwide! Naively, it seems that Cursor is making a significant proportion of coders out of date.
This begs the query: Is it even value studying to code anymore?
The reply is a convincing “sure.” The above fear-based evaluation of Cursor misses a number of vital factors.…
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—Rahul
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