It's mostly about deciding what you want your life to be, and then that big decision impacts other decisions about your work life.

I grew up in a family where my parents worked normal (non-tech, non-professional) jobs and never talked about work when they were home. We would take cheap vacations in the summer for 3+ weeks and they never checked in at work to hear how things were going or whether or not the xyz project was approved.

If you work in technology, you're probably used to your work life spilling over, in terms of time, thoughts and concerns, into your life outside of work. Culture, which is a social phenomenon, has great effects on the lives of individuals, but there is usually ample room for the individual to decide what their approach and attitude will be.

People who hate working with you are a problem. It could stem from a cultural mismatch or from people who are better at their jobs than you are and aren't as inclined to work with someone on their level (I'm writing descriptively here, no judgment) or from a toxic environment, like some I've had the displeasure of finding myself in. What's going on there? Look at it honestly and without emotion, which is hard to do at first.

By observing and understanding how the world works, which is one of the most important skills you can possess, it is quite easy to observe what is the most common way to achieve a goal, to the point where it is sometimes surprising to see how delusional most people are. For example, if you want to build a muscular physique, it's easy to do the following: observe what most people who are muscular do - given some starting points (endo- or ectomorphic, tall/short, genetically weak or strong points) - and follow what they did at different stages of muscle development. But what you often see when you go to the gym is a large number of non-muscular people doing all sorts of bizarre exercises or protocols that people who have achieved success never did. Same with diets or learning or doing business.

And the same with career development. To get a, say, director position at Big Tech, say FAANG and company, the most common way is to move from IC to manager to director at a FAANG and co, either vertically within the company or horizontally with some possible down-leveling or a mix of the two. Now the second step is to look at how people are promoted, and it's a combination of technical skills, personality (someone has to promote you, remember, you're not promoting yourself), actions (e.g., backstabbing or turning the other way often works, this is unfortunately the world we live in, to the point where the "be nice" movement advocated by people in positions of high power makes me laugh, because to get to their position it's very likely they were only being nice in their minds. But I don't tolerate bad actions in my world), and timing. Do I have the technical skills? Do I have the personality? Do I have the right timing? Clearly, it's all situational, which is the second thing you should learn in combat sports (the first is being able to fight), i.e. you have to somehow adapt to the situation that arises in the fight (yourself and your opponent).

You might read this and say, no, it's not that easy. But actually it is, conceptually. Then, one sometimes cannot achieve the technical proficiency necessary for a certain position and peace. But at least one doesn't run in circles thinking that the secret to a great career is in adding brown sugar to coffee.

Then, one last (of many) aspect to consider is that new positions and advancements often don't provide a linear increase in "professional currency," but at the n increment, where n is much larger than 2. Say, you're working as an IC at the Nooneknows company with a certain skill set and you get by luck, skill and whatever else a position at a FAANG. In 6 months, you'll be contacted by 10-100 times the number of companies that were interested in you before. A good effort can be enormously rewarded.

But first, think about what you want to do with your life. You only live once, that will never change, and taking control of your life, forgetting as much as reasonably possible (we all want a piece of it) of validation from friends, family, neighbors and society at large, is the necessary first step toward a great, wonderful life.