Career leverage is everywhere (if you pay attention) — Web Lunch S1.E5

Sunil Pai has been a FAANG engineer, a FinTech engineer, and most recently founded a startup, PartyKit, that was acquired by Cloudflare. In this conversation, we talked about creating high leverage in your career, why we both feel curiosity is a superpower, why Sunil has left jobs when things are going great, and a whole lot more. #success #career #ambition More about Sunil: https://sunilpai.dev/ Presented by Sentry (https://lwj.dev/sentry) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- *WHAT TO EXPECT IN THIS EPISODE* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - *The hidden leverage that most people ignore* There are advantages available to all of us, right under our noses — if we can learn to recognize and take advantage of career leverage. - *Why leaving a job when things are good might actually be a great idea* Most of us will only leave when things get bad. Sunil has a different outlook, and... it's not as wild as it might sound at first blush. - *How to build a (nearly) one-of-a-kind skill set* When it comes to guaranteeing your career growth and safety, building a skill set that few, if any, can duplicate is an enormous advantage. Sunil and Jason share how their journeys through tech helped them grow unique, valuable skills. - *A way to look at ambition that doesn't feel quite so... selfish* When we talk about ambition, it can often come with a connotation of someone who will do anything to advance — even if it comes at others' expense. Sunil shares a take on ambition that's a little more community-minded. - *The completely counterintuitive foundations of success* In thinking about what success is made of, we often hear things like "hard work" and "sacrifice". Sunil's view of what makes success possible is refreshingly different. - *The frustrating reality of cliches, how true they are, and how no one believes them until it's too late* Sunil and Jason share the lessons they learned the hard way, despite being told how to avoid the pain — and how now that they know the lesson, people who haven't learned the hard way ignore them. - *What makes a good career* The professional equivalent of asking "WHAT IS BEST IN LIFE?!" Is a career how we derive meaning, fulfillment, satisfaction? Is it a means to an end? Is it something else? At the bottom of everything, this is the question we all need to answer for ourselves — and everyone's answer is different. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- *WHAT IS WEB LUNCH?* ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Learn the skills that talented, successful, and — most importantly — _happy_ web professionals learned the hard way. Seasoned developers sit down with host Jason Lengstorf for a meal and a deep conversation about careers, resilience, and finding meaning. These experts have: - Built careers that are resilient in the face of an ever-changing software industry - Achieved proper compensation and recognition for their efforts - Found joy and growth in their work — instead of burnout (or sometimes on the other side of it) In each conversation, you'll learn the strategies, mental frameworks, and techniques that got them there. Watch to learn how you can build your own resilient, lucrative, joyful career. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Get early access to new videos, exclusive bonus content and other perks, and join me in building a happier, healthier, friendlier web dev community! https://www.youtube.com/@codetv-dev/join ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Chapters: 0:00 Intro 0:36 Leverage 3:18 When and why to leave a job 6:13 Building a unique skill set 8:30 Ambition gets a bad rap 9:44 The unexpected things that make success possible 12:34 What is a good career? 🎵 Music licensed from Lickd. The biggest mainstream and stock music platform for content creators. Sunday Best by Surfaces, https://lickd.lnk.to/QGlAkiID License ID: 2jyp3l2nNYw If you want to use music from famous artists, try Lickd to get track credits and unlimited stock music: https://app.lickd.co/r/01cb55fdfbcf481bbecdf3fb3d1177d5