Your Career Is a Team Game

The World Cup Just Finished

With the World Cup recently finishing, I've been thinking a lot about how football is really a team game.

You can have the best player in the world on your team, but that player still needs someone to pass to. They still need other people to defend, create chances, and put them in the right position to score.

One player can completely change a game, of course. But I don't think one player can win everything alone.

This made me realize that my career is probably the same.

We talk about careers as if they are very individual. It is your resume, your projects, your skills, and eventually your job.

But if you were to ask me, a lot of the progress I've made has also come from the people around me.

My Network Is My Team

When I say that my network is my team, I don't mean collecting as many LinkedIn connections as possible.

I'm talking more about my friends, classmates, orgmates, and the random people I meet at tech events.

These are usually the people who send me an internship opening, tell me about a new tool, invite me to an event, or explain something that I probably would not have discovered by myself.

Sometimes one conversation gives me more direction than hours of scrolling online.

I think this is because building a career is also an information game.

There is already so much information available now. There are tutorials, roadmaps, courses, job postings, and people sharing their experiences everywhere.

In that sense, information has become a commodity.

The difficult part is knowing which information matters and what you should actually do with it.

Your friends and the people you meet are probably the freest source of that information. They can tell you what they are currently learning, what companies are looking for, and what opportunities are available.

Not everyone gets how valuable this can be.

The People Around You Change Your Standards

Another thing I've realized is that the people around you influence you very subtly.

Nobody directly tells you to become more ambitious. You just start seeing what everyone else is doing.

When one of your friends ships a project, you start thinking that you should probably finish yours too. When your classmate gets an internship, applying for one starts to feel more possible. When the people around you join hackathons, study LeetCode, or do research, those things slowly start to feel normal.

I experienced this a lot in school.

Seeing my classmates work on different things motivates me, but it also scares me sometimes. I start wondering whether I am doing enough or if I am focusing on the right things.

This is probably not always healthy. Comparing yourself too much can make you feel like you are constantly behind.

At the same time, however, I think being around people who take their goals seriously also pushes you to take yours seriously.

You slowly set your standards around the standards of the people beside you.

So if that is going to happen anyway, you might as well make sure that standard is damn high.

Why Getting Into the Big Four Is So Hyped

I think this is also part of why getting into one of the Big Four universities in the Philippines is so hyped.

The education matters, and the name of the school probably helps open doors.

But I don't think the education is the only reason.

A big part of the value is the quality of the peers that you get.

You get placed around people who join organizations, build projects, compete, do research, and look for opportunities. Even if you do not start out doing those things, you eventually get exposed to them because the people around you are doing them.

You learn from your classes, but you also learn a lot from what your peers are trying outside the classroom.

One person discovers an opportunity and sends it to the group chat. Someone learns a new skill and helps their friends with it. Another person accomplishes something difficult, and that changes what everyone else thinks is possible.

The information starts moving between people, and the standard of the whole group starts becoming higher.

Perhaps that peer environment is one of the biggest things that people are really competing to get into.

Finding the Right Team

Of course, I don't think you need to study at a certain university to find good peers.

You can meet them in orgs, internships, hackathons, online communities, open-source projects, and tech events. Some of the most useful things I've learned have come from simply talking to people outside of class.

What matters more is being intentional about the people you surround yourself with.

Find people who share what they know. Find people who make you want to improve. Equally as important, try to be that kind of person for them too.

I'm still figuring out what direction I want to take in my own career. There are still a lot of moving goalposts, especially in computer science.

But I think one thing is becoming clear to me.

I might not always know the right play, but having the right team makes it much easier to move forward.

Now for the more important question: Who’s your GOAT: Messi or Yamal?