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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 searching for a brand new job or in search of methods to excel in your present position, learn on for the three hottest suggestions that might assist advance your profession.
Throughout a decade working at hypergrowth tech firms like Meta and Pinterest, I continuously struggled with procrastination. I’d be assigned an necessary mission, however I merely couldn’t get myself to begin it. The supply of my distraction different—I’d continuously examine my e-mail, learn random documentation, and even scroll via my social feeds. However the end result 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 make a choice about spend your life. A lot of the methods individuals spend their time are ineffective. Particularly within the tech world, our duties and instruments are continuously altering, so we should be capable to adapt. What separates one of the best engineers from the remainder of the pack is that they create programs that permit them to be constantly 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 examine your e-mail or scroll Instagram when you anticipate motivation to “hit you.” As a substitute, simply begin doing one thing, something, that makes progress towards your purpose, and also you’ll discover that motivation will observe.…
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Certainly one of my shut pals is a hiring supervisor at Google. She not too long ago posted about an open place on her workforce and was instantly overwhelmed with purposes. 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 routinely fill out (and, in some instances, even submit) purposes is dangerous to everybody; employers are unable to filter via the noise, and legit candidates have a more durable time getting seen—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, individuals are restricted by Dunbar’s quantity—the concept that people can keep secure social relationships with solely about 150 individuals. Being a type of 150 individuals is more durable, however it additionally carries extra weight than a soulless job utility.
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Cursor, the AI-native code editor, recently reported that it writes practically a billion strains of code every day. That’s one billion strains of production-grade code accepted by customers each single day. If we generously assume {that a} robust engineer writes a thousand strains of code in a day, Cursor is doing the equal work of one million builders. (For context, whereas working at Pinterest and Meta, I’d usually write lower than 100 strains 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 price studying to code anymore?
The reply is a convincing “sure.” The above fear-based evaluation of Cursor misses a number of necessary factors.…
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—Rahul
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