What was the biggest mistake you made early in your career that ended up teaching you a valuable lesson? One of mine was assuming everyone interpreted requirements the same way I did. Learning to ask clarifying questions saved me from a lot of rework. What’s yours?

If you could permanently eliminate one workplace meeting from your calendar, which type would it be and why? I’d probably choose status meetings where everyone simply reads updates that could have been sent in an email. Curious what everyone else would remove.

How do you know when it’s time to leave a job vs. stick it out and push through a rough patch? For me it comes down to whether the core reasons I took the role are still intact. If the work is still interesting and the people are decent, a rough patch is survivable. But if I’m dreading Mondays every single week, that’s usually a signal worth listening to.

I've been stuck in a pure maintenance cycle for six months, and I'm starting to feel like a script-runner instead of an engineer. I'm trying to move into a senior-level job, and I worry about stagnating, but I'm not sure what to do. Is this a common issue with engineers who hope to level up?

Obviously, no one expects a newly graduated hire to know everything during their first week, but early impressions stick. Question for the managers and senior engineers on here: What can a new grad do in those first few days to make you incredibly glad you hired them? What sets them apart early on?