What's Often Overrated When Choosing Your Next Job

Here are the attributes we've generally seen software engineers prioritize too much when weighing career opportunities:

• Product space - This usually manifests as pursuing a tech trend (like VR or NFTs). Of course, if you're legitimately passionate about the space, go for it, but seriously ask yourself if you would be in this space if it wasn't regularly talked about.
• Technical space - Similar to product space, you can follow trends here. Choose a stack that you're legitimately passionate about, which also has the support network you need (very important for junior engineers). The risk with cutting-edge technology is that it often doesn't have a lot of mature teaching resources behind it (it's cutting edge for a reason).
• Level/title - Promotion is a decent and concrete career goal earlier on, but don't go to bad companies to maximize your title. At the end of the day, your level and title are just strings next to your name.
• Compensation - Money is genuinely important in almost all cases, but what a lot of people don't realize is that very high pay often comes with a catch (usually work-life balance). Try treating this as a lagging indicator - If you're genuinely growing fast as a software engineer, you will eventually land an opportunity that is top-of-market (as you deserve).

This clip was taken from the following masterclass: [Masterclass] How To Choose A Good Company And Team As A Software Engineer

Related resources:

• "How should I think about levels when it comes to evaluating jobs and in my career overall?"
• "I feel like senior engineers tend to focus on a specific area. How can I pick a specialization that's still relevant in 5-10 years?"