This article is crossposted from IEEE Spectrum’s careers newsletter. Sign up now to get insider tips, expert advice, and practical strategies, written in partnership with tech career development company Taro and delivered to your inbox for free!
As we enter 2026, we’re taking a look back at the top pieces of advice we shared in the Career Alert newsletter last year. Whether you’re looking for a new job or seeking strategies to excel in your current role, read on for the three most popular recommendations that could help advance your career.
Across a decade working at hypergrowth tech companies like Meta and Pinterest, I constantly struggled with procrastination. I’d be assigned an important project, but I simply couldn’t get myself to get started. The source of my distraction varied—I would constantly check my email, read random documentation, or even scroll through my social feeds. But the result was the same: I felt a deep sense of dread that I was not making progress on the things that mattered.
At the end of the day, time is the only resource that matters. With every minute, you are making a decision about how to spend your life. Most of the ways people spend their time are ineffective. Especially in the tech world, our tasks and tools are constantly changing, so we must be able to adapt. What separates the best engineers from the rest of the pack is that they create systems that allow them to be consistently productive.
Here’s the core idea that changed my perspective on productivity: Action leads to motivation, not the other way around. You should not check your email or scroll Instagram while you wait for motivation to “hit you.” Instead, just start doing something, anything, that makes progress toward your goal, and you’ll find that motivation will follow.…
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One of my close friends is a hiring manager at Google. She recently posted about an open position on her team and was immediately overwhelmed with applications. We’re talking about thousands of applicants within days.
What surprised me most, however, was the horrendous quality of the average submission. Most applicants were obviously unqualified or had concocted entirely fake profiles. The use of generative AI to automatically fill out (and, in some cases, even submit) applications is harmful to everyone; employers are unable to filter through the noise, and legitimate candidates have a harder time getting noticed—much less advancing to an interview.
So how can job seekers stand out among the deluge of candidates? When there are hundreds or thousands of applicants, the best way to distinguish yourself is by leveraging your network.
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