Beginner's edge

Opportunities are rewarded to those who have demonstrated success, so as soon as you can, develop your edge in something. However small that something is, it will lead you to bigger and bigger things. Without an edge, you risk becoming mediocre.

Experts are people who have spent months and years practicing the craft. They have accumulated a vast amount of knowledge, skills, network, and industry insight. All of those help them be more productive and valuable.

Becoming valuable is a worthwhile goal. But there comes a point experts have become so valuable that certain activities have become unaffordable. Like a runner going down the hill with such inertia can't afford to stop for a flower on the side. In those flowers lie your chances to find your gems.

Beginners are free, free to try out new methods, free to forge a new path, free to do things experts can't afford to do. If you can leverage your beginner's freedom well, you now have an incredible advantage over people 2 years, 3 years, 5 years ahead.

During my first few days as a software developer intern, I was tasked with debugging a weird issue and fixing a few styling details. Seasoned developers were busy with other tasks, and they also didn't find fixing weird issue and styling details worth the time. They would rather jump to the next big thing.

Being a new person on the team, I was eager to contribute anything asap, so I dived right into the small unimportant tasks. At the time I was obsessed with quality and perfection, I took the time to trace to the bottom of the issue, resolve hidden logic errors (which were mostly typos and copy-paste without changing all the variable names), and line up every corners of HTML components. After my work, the software runs reliably and doesn't look like it was from the last decade.

The more I worked on those, the more I got better at them. And quickly, I became the go-to person in the team for fixing bugs others can't find, and lining up things that people can't line up. Later in my career, I learn to dial down perfectionism to balance with delivery and deadline and multiple projects, but at first, it helped me stand out and develop my 'niche' within the team.

You might ask, isn't every software engineer starting out fixing bugs and misc issues, what's so transformative about this story? You are right, it is not transformative. I was given a task to fix bugs, and I fixed the bugs. However, I did those small tasks so well, I helped people fix their issues that they can't fix themselves. People start to trust and get me involved in their projects, and that's where the transformation happened.

Develop your small edge. You will be recognized and given bigger challenges, that's where you can develop your bigger edge.