No Tutorial For This

I joined a hypergrowth startup during COVID thinking I had a pretty good idea of what was ahead.

I didn't.

The tools changed. Priorities changed mid-sprint. People I worked with one quarter weren't there the next. Most of the real problems didn't have an obvious answer, and the ones that did usually weren't the ones worth solving.

You can't really study for that. You do the work, get some of it wrong, and show up the next day a little sharper than you were.

That's mostly been the job.