Nearly half of Americans aged 60 and older can't afford their daily needs, the National Council on Aging estimates. Over 3,800 older Americans reached out to Business Insider to share their financial regrets and the lessons they wish they had learned earlier. Six shared advice on saving, investing, and preparing for retirement.
Courtesy of Deel
This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Aaron Goldsmid, a 44-year-old from San Francisco about mistakes he made early in his career. Business Insider verified his previous employment at Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon with documentation. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I had a somewhat atypical journey into tech. My parents were Broadway performers, and I was the first person in my family to go to college.
I became interested in computer science in high school and broke into tech straight after studying computer science at Columbia.
Through the college recruiting process, I got a job at Microsoft in 2002 and spent nearly six years there, largely working in the security space.
During the 2010s, I held tech roles at Amazon from 2011 to 2012, Facebook from 2012 to 2014, and Twitter from 2014 to 2015, as well as working at several smaller companies.
I've been fortunate to work at some of the most iconic tech companies during interesting periods. I've taken tools from each opportunity and now apply them to my current job as the head of product for Deel, a payroll and HR platform.
Because my parents didn't have 9-to-5s, I sometimes struggled to determine how to succeed in the corporate world. I didn't have anyone telling me about things like checking boxes to get to the next level in my career and how frictional relationships can impact the workplace.
Now that I have two decades of career experience under my belt, I understand how to avoid some of the mistakes I made early on and plan a career more intentionally.
When I informally coach folks about careers, I usually advise them to think two jobs ahead.
Instead of thinking about what you dislike about your current job and whether your next role will solve that, think two jobs ahead. I tell early career techies to ask themselves how their next role will get them to the role after that.
After leaving Microsoft, I moved from Seattle back to New York, where I grew up. I wanted to secure a job in the city, and because the tech scene wasn't as mature in New York in the early 2000s, I took a role at NBCUniversal, helping build their video streaming service.
I did good work in that role, but I'm not sure it necessarily advanced my career. I then joined a startup because they gave me a very fancy title, but I ended up leaving before completing one year because I felt there were problems at the company, and I realized I'd chased a title instead of thinking things through.
As I advanced in my career, I knew I needed to focus on the skills I needed to acquire rather than the prestige of a position.
When I joined Kiva, a microfinance nonprofit, in 2018, I didn't view it as a permanent job. I took the job to gain skills outside a product and engineering capacity.
During my time there, I learned about business development and communicated with UN officials and central bank leaders. Not only did I get to experience the challenges faced by other teams, but I also got to know different contours of the product, business, and customer experience.
When I moved into my next role, a general manager at the communications company Twilio, I had a broader scope of experience and could operate more effectively.
You can accelerate quickly into a senior role, but taking a less fancy role and diversifying your experience might mean your upside long-term is much higher. If you're thinking two jobs ahead, evaluate what opportunities will help you more in the long run. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
Early in my career, because I didn't know how corporations worked, it was easy to think that everyone in a company was aligned and felt the same way, which is foolish.
When I worked at Twitter on their growth team, my job was to play in other people's sandboxes and tweak things. The company was having a difficult growth time, and we had to be hyper-focused on hitting our OKRs. This sometimes came at the detriment of my team's relationship with the rest of the product engineering org.
We had to step into other team's territories and move quickly. I felt I needed to hit a goal at all costs, and the problem was "at all costs." We often weren't on the same page as that team and had to go back and repair relationships afterward. In hindsight, I needed to do a better job of explaining why we were doing something from the outset.
Not everyone is trying to achieve a company's mission in the same way, and so by investing in relationships, you can more clearly communicate how you align with others in a company. Even if they don't align with you, they'll respect your process.
Early in my career, I didn't have a role model in the corporate environment, so I questioned what "good" looked like and how I should show up.
Folks who are early in their career will often look at people who they think are successful and think, "I want to be just like them."
But sometimes, early-career workers have a hard time distinguishing the reasons for a person's success from their bad habits. They might not know things that the company has been willing to work around or that hold that person back.
Early in my career, I over-indexed on emulating senior leaders. For example, I'd see some of them making sweeping statements like "This is the future, or, this isn't the future." They can get away with that because they've proven themselves, but I'd do the same, and it would fall on deaf ears. I hadn't yet earned that level of credibility and still needed to "show my work" before I earned that trust.
As a senior leader at Deel, I'm very conscious about how I present myself to early career folks. In larger meetings, I remind myself that there will be people on the call who view my role through a limited set of interactions. I don't want to pass on any bad behavior or shortcomings for them to emulate.
Do you have a career story you want to share with Business Insider? Email [email protected]
Diana Feil.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Madeline Mann, a 32-year-old career coach and CEO of Self Made Millennial from Los Angeles. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I've been a career coach for about six years. As the CEO of Self Made Millennial, my career coaching service, I want people to feel confident in selling themselves and ultimately land the job offer.
When it comes to job hunting, I tell my clients that recruiters will definitely check their LinkedIn profile — but they might not stop there. It's very likely they'll search for candidates on other social media platforms too.
For that reason, when looking for work, there are several things you shouldn't share online. Here are four of them.
When you're job searching, I'd heavily advise against documenting your journey. There has been a surge of people on LinkedIn, sharing what it's like to apply for jobs in today's market.
They say things like, "Oh, I just went through this company's interview process, and I didn't get the job," or, "Look how silly this job application is — and here's how I feel about it."
While it might get you some good engagement, understand employers are watching, too. As a job seeker, you don't want them to think, "Oh no, if we put this person through our interview process, what are they going to publicly say about our company?"
Although the job search journey can be pretty isolating, and it can feel good to talk about it, you really want to be cautious here.
Similarly, I would advise against sharing your mental health journey online. This is something that has become a much more mainstream conversation and for such good reason.
But understand, it's something that an employer could make snap judgments on. Those hiring might question your ability to do the role, and you might not know it — as they won't tell you that.
Sharing things about depression, or anxiety, might make an employer wonder, "How is that going to impact our business?" and "Are they going to be capable of this job?"
Even if you're being uplifting and reflective, it's very risky. Instead, I'd try to keep this more to your inner circle, where you can control who has access to knowing.
On LinkedIn, there's an option to share your résumé — and I wouldn't recommend doing that.
If you share the same résumé everywhere online, you're missing the chance to tailor it to what that company is looking for. This is especially important if you have diverse interests in different roles; that one résumé could send the wrong message.
Instead, I suggest only sharing your résumé with the company you're applying to, rather than making it public on your website or LinkedIn profile.
If you've worked on a political campaign, it's important to consider whether you should actually include it on your LinkedIn profile.
Yes, you likely gained valuable experience, but before posting it, think about the cities you want to work in, the role you're applying for, and the jobs you'd like to pursue.
Many people struggle to separate their beliefs and may make assumptions based on who they think you voted for. These differences can cloud someone's judgment, and when you're applying for jobs, you don't want that to happen.
Even if they shouldn't, small biases can make a big impact. In the end, you don't want to give people the ability to quickly judge you before they get to know you.
When applying for jobs, go to Google, type in your name, and see what comes up. A recruiter will usually start there. They might see your LinkedIn profile, but they could also come across your X and Instagram accounts, too. If those platforms appear, they'll likely click on those links.
To protect yourself from that happening — you can do a few things. First, you can put your social media accounts on private, which isn't necessarily foolproof, but a start, or you can set your social media accounts to include just your first and middle name, so your last name doesn't appear.
You can also slightly misspell your last name. For example, I saw someone whose last name starts with "W," but he used two "V"s instead. That way, if someone searched his last name, it wouldn't show up.
But just as a general rule, know that if someone does get through your privacy settings, there are ways to see what you've liked and who you follow.
Before posting, ask yourself is this the right way to portray myself? Should I just send this in a group text to my friends instead? Really consider those things before posting.
If you're a career coach who would like to share helpful job searching tips, please email Manseen Logan at [email protected].
