Work where you’re the smartest or where you may be the dumbest?
Always wondered if you should work where you’re the smartest person on the team or if you should keep jumping to a better place where you may be the dumbest person on your team? Chasing TC is not a concern as I’ve realized you lose sleep over chasing a higher TC all the time. Not worth it for me. Some considerations of being the smartest: ✅ You’re always looked up to ✅ You know in and out of the specs, the team and the org ✅ Stable income ✅ You can grow faster than other in title ✅ Great WLB as you can finish a 4 day task in 3-4 hours ✅ Can pursue my hobby or do a second creative job (photography, blogging) ❌ Career growth may stall in the longer run ❌ You’ll not grow or learn new skillsets ❌ You tend to grow a tunnel vision towards everything in your professional life What am I missing here? What are your thoughts/opinions? #tech Tax: 250k
I was the smartest/most experienced on my team in my previous job. It was horrible, because I knew there was a ton I didn’t know the only people around me had no idea what was going on. I’m basically the dumbest person on my team now and I’m so grateful be learning from great people
Uff, that’s exactly my story. Only part is I don’t know if the previous me was real me or the current me is the real one. I guess I miss being a know-it-all.
Don't be the dumbest at the pip factory
Yaar! Why do guys have to make everything about Amazon? There are so many other companies on this planet where you can be the dumbest and still grow.
I get down on myself for being the dumbest but the silver lining is I'm way less dumb than I was when I first joined
It's infuriatingly frustrating to be the smartest because then everyone asks you for everything and you get more piled onto your plate when you might not be learning from those tasks.
👆🏻 Very frustrating when everyone comes to you for every little thing
Doesn’t that also mean you’re indispensable for the team/company? And have a leverage to ask for what you want?
Work where you are the median.
Interesting!
This ^
Depends what you want to optimize for. Work with smart people but if you're the dumbest or most junior member, be careful about WLB, your input being dismissed or projects taken over, etc. Shoot for 2nd quartile intelligence and try to learn practices or techniques from those better than you rather than assume intelligence will increase by osmosis.
I’d personally get depressed if I was the smartest in the team. The feeling of stagnation is not worth the temporary ego stroke of being the smartest on the team
And for some people it lead to self delusion to how much they really know. There’s just so much more upside to being the dumbest in the team than the smartest
Same here. One of the major reasons I jumped ships is because I felt stagnated. But now, I feel like I have to start from scratch and prove myself all over again at this new org!