Career Capital

Taste is simply having a point of view on what is good and what is bad, and being willing to say so. You build it by trying lots of things — products, art, music, food — asking yourself why you like or dislike each one, and slowly building an internal framework. The more domains you expose yourself to, the sharper your judgment becomes.

Early in your career, the single most important decision is which company to join, not which title you get. A fast-growing company gives you more learning in one year than a slow company gives you in five. Once you are in, figure out what you are genuinely great at and find work that lets you use that strength every day — do not spend your energy trying to fix your weaknesses.

Early in your career, your job is to make the team successful, not to own the process or be the CEO of the product. The fastest path forward is simple: learn aggressively, admit mistakes quickly, follow up on results you shipped, and do the unglamorous work nobody else wants to do.

Early in your PM career, your job is not to have all the answers — it's to learn faster than anyone thinks possible. Find the most trusted, most knowledgeable person in your company and ask them to teach you or let you help them. People trust what they've watched you learn, not just what you claim to know.

Think of getting better at PM like getting stronger in the gym — you can read every fitness book ever written, but you only grow by actually lifting. Do your job every day, check what happened after you shipped something, and ask yourself what rule you can take from that experience to the next problem. That cycle is how you actually improve.