What are top lessons you learned the hard way between age 20 to 30?

I was young, smart, talented. People cheered for me, called me brilliant, said I was going to go places, gave me tons of opportunities. People help lifting the young and purportedly gifted.

And I believed them, took those opportunities and and kept waiting for the next thing to happen. And they stopped coming. I got older and stopped being that young "prodigy" and people didn't really give a shit.

Don't get me wrong, I did go places and I developed rich relationships. Realizing that I wasn't nearly as intelligent as I thought and accepting myself as-is was a GIFT.

But being that young rockstar/ninja will end some day and you'll have to survive on raw effort and tenacity.

A few that come to mind:

1. You don’t know everything. Even if you disagree listen to colleagues that have more experience and try to understand their perspective of why they think a certain way.

2. I wasn’t as mature as I thought I was. I was actually fairly selfish and it wasn’t until I had kids that I realised true selflessness and putting others first. Along the same lines: pre-kids you don’t realise how much spare time you actually have all to yourself.

3. The speed of life. I feel like each decade speeds up - make sure you check in with yourself every year or two on your life goals and happiness and make adjustments or you might just find many years go in the blink of an eye.

Time doing things that make you truly happy is not wasted time.

H.r. is not on your side, ever.

Promises of future compensation or promotion are meaningless.

Spend more time outdoors.

Learn a hobby or skill that doesn't involve a screen.

Your health isn't worth what they're paying.

A businesses relationship is just that and nothing more.

1.) Develop a hobby/skill that is completely and totally separate from your work (common examples are learning piano or a 2nd language)

2.) Invest early. Even if you’re 20 and can only invest a few hundred dollars, do it. And keep adding to that account

3.) Look at the stars often. Always stay grounded and remember that at the end of the day, nobody knows why we’re here or what the universe actually is. Enjoy the ride, because as far as we know it’s the only one we got. When you stare into infinity you realize there are more important things than what people do all day (Calvin and Hobbes quote)

Hmmm… between 20 & 30….

1. Being a rockstar dev means mgmt will cut you a lot of slack and overlook many sins. By the time you are 30 you will be “both too young and too old”

Too old to continue getting away with that jerk behaviour. Too young to know how to stop being that jerk.

I’ll admit I was a slow learner on that one

2. I had a major medical adventure my first year in uni.. I don’t finish with my bachelors degree until I was 22… the lesson is: progressing through life’s major transitions ( graduate uni, first job; first serious romantic relationship; kids etc..) happens at a different pace for many. It is not a competition to be married and kids on the way by age 28

Lessons learnt in my 50s: Recognise your younger Self in today’s crop of 20 somethings; enjoy their youthful exuberance and cut the jerks the same slack that the 50yo mgmt did to you

Physical appearance matters. How you dress matters. It's not everything, but it's more than zero.

Don't have your identity wrapped up in winning. It leads to you being a hypercompetitive jerk, which is hard on relationships.

You can get better at interacting with other people, even if it takes some work. In my case, it took literally writing down every time I messed up with other people, and then talking them over with someone I trusted, and figuring out what I should have done in that situation.

And an extra: When you're asking someone out, don't ask what they're doing that weekend. It's none of your business what they're doing. Instead, ask if you can take them to dinner that weekend. That one turned out to be very important for me...

1. People treat you how their feel about you

2. Don't tolerate toxic work environments. There are always other jobs out there. Don't be afraid to quit.

3. Don't ever settle and don't ever let someone make you feel like you are not good enough.

Traveling, dating random people, etc. is mostly a waste of time. Invest time and effort finding the right partner and the right place to live early and build a life. “Chasing experiences” is mostly unfulfilling.

- Finding a life partner can be really hard for some (and that some might include you). Ain't going to happen for some of us.

- You'll become more self-aware over time (what you really want out of different parts of life) but can take some time to get there.

- There is a lot to learn, and college will only provide a fraction it. The rest is up to you, and your life will reflect it. How to dress well, cook, stay healthy, establish relationships, think deeply and logically, overcoming your weaknesses, and more.

- Set your goal 5 years in advance, time flies - If your unsure about something, that probably enough reason to make a change. More time makes making up your mind harder because you get more invested. - Close your eyes, to imagine how you feel if you choose either option. Just do the one that feels best. Overthinking can be a huge waste of energy and often ruins a good time. - Never be affaird to negotiate and speak your mind. - Read a lot - listen to Naval’s how to get rich podcast. Read Untethered Soul by Michael Singer.

Life is harder than you have ever imagined.

"Starting a business is like having a licence to print money." Nope. Running a business is not for people who don't know what they're doing.

Getting married is simple. Being married is a lot more difficult.

Kids cost thousands and thousands per year. That money has to come from somewhere. If you can't make ends meet before you have kids, you've no hope at all in doing it afterwards.

Give yourself time for enjoyment. It doesn't have to cost anything.

Whatever you do everyday really adds up.

Studying a new language? 3 new words a day will give you a formidable vocabulary in a few years.

A can of coke everyday? The calories will have to go somewhere.

1) Life isn't fair. I know it's cliche, but these 4 simple words contain so much in them that rings true to so many places and situations you'll be in life. Accept it.

2) The contrast to that is that nobody has it all. Especially every person you perceive as having enjoyed the 'life isn't fair' side of the equation.

3) Most of what you are taught, told, believe, spew (by thought fashion) will more than likely not withstand the test of time. The best thing you can be is adaptable and open minded, tho age has a way of curtailing that.

4) Having a continuously curious (and open) mind and preferably a pair of hands to go along with it is the perfect antidote for a world that desperately wants to make you an automaton.

5) Lastly, don't believe everything you think. This is a quote that you'll find everywhere online so not original here, but I wish someone told me this with conviction when i was 20.

1. Don't think too much about the mistakes from the past. Make sure that you don't repeat those mistakes again.

2. Even if you think you're smart, you would have limited financial literacy.

3. Never compare yourself with others. Different people have different paths. Some people make it early, some people make it late.

1. Don't shortcut on education. I wish I would have earned a more challenging degree, instead I got a 16 month AS and went to work. At 30 I have to decide whether or not it's worth going back to school.

2. Don't put your health aside. It's easy to say you'll workout later, eat healthier later, walk more later. Do it now and start routines that will carry your health into later stages of life.

3. Try things, meet people, and go places. Even if you'd rather be at home focusing on something. The stories and experience you earn will be worth more than the items you could buy. It's hard to buy back things you could have done but didn't.

Your relationship with your employer is entirely business. Do not stay somewhere you do not want to be simply because you feel they can't afford to lose you. As soon as it makes business sense, they will drop you.

You might not know what you're going to wind up doing. Keep an open mind. You might be completely surprised! (Many in history have been.) There are many ways to live, many kinds of little-known occupations.

I used to have a lot of strong opinions and insisted everyone else was wrong, even when presented with evidence... my justification? I mean, I was right, why could I be bothered.

Idiots are full of confidence, I lived that out.

Real estate isn’t always a good investment.

* Do not tie your identity / self-respect to your job (or) interviews

* Learn to cut through bull-shit stuff at work. These are mostly to increase employee retention(targeting juniors) (or) free marketing/branding with our time.

* Moderation, in everything! Living life as a pleasure chasing ride is tiring. Self-restraint to experience happiness in day-to-day stuff is sustainable.

That more often than not, those in high positions, either in companies or politics, are often clueless about a lot of of things.

I learned to identify and avoid propagandistic and conspiracy-theory contents after being an avid and gullible consumer of it

What I didn’t realise (and to be fair it didn’t exist as it does today) is how much developers don’t need business people to employ them.

If you don’t have many responsibilities (ie no kids, no sick/poor relatives, no serious illness) you are pretty free to spend 5-10 years on starting your own thing.

You might need to give up on luxuries you are used to: living in the city, living alone, take out, regular nights out but surely the freedom is worth it.

For $50k you could probably survive for 5-10 years in a low COL place it the world with a laptop and internet. Have another 50k for business costs to help you scale up.

Or you could plan another sprint, argue with the manager to work on tech debt instead of hack another feature in, and pretend to be “on the same hymn sheet” while angling to learn enough of the next JS framework to get a $20k rise so you can afford COL increases.

1.) Track and manage your money better

2.) Invest, DYOR and DCA

3.) Learn more foreign languages

Life is complicated, always more than initially realized. Don't forfeit family for career.

California real estate only goes up. Once you have bought it, do not sell it, ever.

Hardest lesson I learned is that most people have no clue what they’re talking about. Especially with regards to life advice. If someone is pushing you hard in one direction, but you think it’s a mistake, it probably is. I’m speaking generally here, someone who has been writing Java for ten years, probably knows Java. But life advice wise, be very careful. Jealousy, arrogance, success bias etc heavily influence people’s advice

> Dear fellow men

Why limit hard-lessons-learned to men? Woman wont have any lessons you could learn from?

1) you can't make someone happy; that's on them.

2) find what (re)charges you and make time for it.

3) transitions in our society (thinking US) are not given the proper ceremony/reflection. It is important to notice that something is ending, that there will be a period of unease, and there will be a new beginning. For me, I was not embracing some changes and it made my life worse. Acknowledging/embracing the changes allowed me to stop fighting and start enjoying.