What My First Two Tech Jobs Taught Me

When people talk about entering the tech world, they usually expect to start at a fast startup to learn everything quickly, get tired, and then land a cozy corporate job with clear processes and slow releases.

My entry was the complete opposite. Fresh out of university, I was eager to finally apply everything I had learn to real world products. Instead, I got hit with a massive reality check right at the starting line.

I started in a slow corporate job, then jumped straight into a fast, chaotic AI startup. Doing both back-to-back showed me something simple: corporate being slow doesn't always mean high standards, startup speed comes with a real cost, and early in your career you kind of have to figure out what you actually care about.

Corporate: Slow, Stuck, and Code Over Telegram

My first formal job in tech was an on-site corporate role. On paper, it was a win for a fresh graduate. It paid great and had a clear chain of command. But day-to-day, it felt like the opposite.

It was slow. Uncomfortably slow.

I was always waiting on someone else's work, and there were days where I literally had nothing to do. The bottleneck was obvious: almost everything funneled through one backend developer who owned too many areas at once. He was underwater, so even simple tasks sat unfinished, but they never let me step in and help move things forward either. There was no sense of rush. Just a quiet acceptance of stagnation. As a first experience in the job market, it felt weird.

The money was good, better than what came next, but professionally I wasn't growing. I felt stuck. So I left.

Startup: Alive, Fast, and Micromanaged

Then I found another job, this time a remote startup. It felt totally different. This time it was fast, especially because it was an AI agentic company.

A lot of people already know this: now that AI tools are everywhere, expectations for how much work you can ship in a given amount of time have gotten bigger. Now imagine that inside an AI-focused startup. Those expectations grow even larger. But even with the impossible bar, I didn't feel crushed. I felt alive.

First of all, they used GitHub. I was allowed to think for myself, propose, explore, and implement ideas. Less filters. Less bottlenecks. I actually got to learn AI agents, tool calls, and RAG systems, and I improved my UX/UI skills too. I have a design tilt, so on every job I've had, my opinion has weighed on those decisions, and here that actually mattered. My coworkers thrived for their own growth and mine. Back in corporate, it felt like everyone was stagnant.

But it wasn't all flowers. This time I fell into the well of micromanagement, poor planning, and poor communication from upper management.

Two meetings every day: one to say what we were going to do, and one to say what we had done. Open issues for everything we were working on. Post in Slack what we got done through the day. The product itself was already a knot. On their own, those things aren't a big deal. Mixed with the speed expectations, reviewing coworkers' PRs, testing implementations, giving design feedback, and a much lower salary than my previous job for the responsibilities I had, there was simply no time to meet the bar.

But I've always been the kind of guy who can live with that pressure and still keep a balance between work and life. So I kept the bad parts aside. I kept learning. I kept making strategies to be faster, to improve my design, to improve my workflow. I saw a future for myself there.

Then life chose another path.

The Trip or the Job

I asked for PTO two months in advance. There was this unique chance to take the trip of my life with four of my closest friends. Anyone who has tried planning a trip with friends knows how rare it is for everyone to have the money, desire, and time align, especially when all of you have jobs, and especially for a one-month Eurotrip.

I had already thought through solutions so my absence wouldn't weigh on the product. I planned my activities, offered to stay available for advice, and I was even willing to bring my laptop and work remotely if needed.

My boss said if the trip was going to happen, that would be my last week. No other option. Go on the trip and get fired, or skip the trip and keep working.

I got fired.

What I Actually Learned

I don't write this to point fingers, say jobs are evil, or rage against the machine. Every company has its own flaws and trade-offs. What both worlds really taught me, though, was less about companies and more about myself.

Corporate showed me I can't sit still just because the paycheck is good. I need movement, ownership, and room to get better. The startup showed me the other side of that same hunger: I love shipping, learning, and improving my craft under pressure, but growth without boundaries turns into something that eats the rest of your life. Professional progress matters. So do friendships, trips that only line up once, and the right to put my life first, even if it costs you the job.

That is the through line for me. I will chase professional growth, and I will also protect the parts of life that make that growth worth having. Figuring out where that line sits is probably the real early-career skill i would recommend anyone to learn.