Is "Be the best in the world" good advice to give someone at the start of their career?
Next month, I'll have someone join by team for whom Google will be their first job out of college. In preparation, I was pulling together some documents and tutorials and started to type out a preamble for the document. I realized its been a while since I've had someone who was starting their career on my team, and realized I'd never actually given any advice with that in mind in particular. In fact most of my advice was generally around how to succeed in the role tactically and how to enjoy the job and Google. I paused from writing my dos and don'ts to think about higher-level principles, but I realized the piece of advice that resonated most with me was something I'd read in Sam Altman's blog post a few months ago. "Aim to be the best in the world at what you're doing" This is great advice for anyone at any stage in their career, but I think is particularly valuable and clarifying to someone starting out. It makes you think about ...