Career Fundamentals - Avoid Career Traps by Focusing on Primary Paths of Improvement

Nov 25, 2025

Accelerate your career by avoiding common traps like overthinking and minor optimizations. Focus on the 'big engines' that drive meaningful growth instead of getting sidetracked by political games or skill collection fallacies. Understand the importance of mastering a limited set of tools and deepening your domain expertise. Seek discomfort and challenges that enhance your responsibilities, rather than just increasing your speed. By honing your core competencies, you can transform your career trajectory.

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ADVICE

Focus On Major Career Levers

Avoid overfocusing on small optimizations like 5–10% productivity gains and politics.
Prioritize the few big levers that actually move your career forward.

ANECDOTE

Medical Allegory For Career Fixes

Jonathan uses a low-testosterone medical allegory to show people use sideline fixes for main problems.
He compares fiddly optimizations to trying nonprimary treatments instead of TRT, the gold-standard solution.

INSIGHT

Depth Beats Broad Skill Collection

The skill-collection strategy loses value after junior levels.
Depth on a limited toolset and domain knowledge beats broad shallow skill growth.

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If you're looking to accelerate your career growth, this episode gives you what may feel like hard truths about the path forward. So many engineers fall into traps of overthinking, chasing minor optimizations (like 5% or 10% productivity boosts), or playing the games of politics and networking. While these sideline activities aren't necessarily useless, I want to help you focus on the "big engines" and "primary considerations"—the things that will make the monumental difference in your career building strategy.

• I explain why arguments based on nuance—such as trying to convince your manager that your work is valuable despite low throughput, or doing "glue work"—are often based on flawed strategies that cause your career to suffer and not grow easily.

• I use an allegory (discussing the primary path of treatment for low testosterone) to illustrate that many engineers are trying to fix a fundamental, mainline career problem with a sideline, nuanced solution, instead of focusing on the gold standard primary path.

• I debunk the skill collection fallacy: the misconception that broadening your skill set (learning more languages, frameworks, or techniques) provides the same level of career benefit as it did early on.

• Discover the fundamental path to growth: I advise you to set down new languages and skill sets and instead become a craftsman of a limited set of tools, fully understanding the domain, business problems, and how value flows through the organization.

• Learn why the most important factor that substitutes for very few other things is engaging in the deliberate practice of solving a sheer volume of problems encountered and solved over and over.

• I detail how to avoid the comfort zone: while solving problems is vital, you must ensure those problems progress with you by increasing complexity, scope, responsibility, or sheer volume of work, otherwise, your potential for growth will become limited and you will stall out.

• I caution that a lack of challenge (feeling no discomfort ever) can lead to boredom, disengagement, and eventual burnout, because your brain adapts, reducing the flow state you experience. I suggest finding ways to introduce discomfort that pushes you.

• Understand that the primary course of treatment for a failing or stalled career is simple: become incredibly good at your core set of responsibilities, making things like networking, resume writing, and managing relationships easier as a result.

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