Become Antifragile

As a junior developer, you may feel that your career has become fragile. Solution? Become antifragile.

Let me explain.

There are things that are fragile. Think of glass. It's easy to break. The same applies to fragile people.

Other things are robust. Think of a stone. It is very hard to break! But it's just a matter of the force applied. Get a good industrial grinder, and the stone becomes sand. Same for robust people -- they are strong, but at some point, they will break apart.

Now, think of a sequoia tree. Those are HUGE trees, up to 100 meters high, and they live for up to 3,000 years!

The seeds of a sequoia tree are hidden in a cone, high up in the tree's crown. The cone has a thick, resin-sealed shell, and it can stay closed for up to twenty years. It is waiting. Waiting for the biggest possible chaos -- a devastating forest fire. A fire that destroys everything in the forest: trees, shrubs, brush. The fire also dries out the cone, so it cracks open. And now the new sequoia tree can grow -- with everything else destroyed, it has all the sun it needs, and rich soil!

A sequoia tree is antifragile. It does not just survive the chaos. It GAINS from the chaos. In fact, the hotter the fire, the better the seedlings grow. Without fire, it cannot reproduce at all!

Now, when AI is disrupting everything around us, it feels like there's chaos everywhere. A "safe" job is actually fragile -- everything can change in a moment.

So, how do you become antifragile as a junior developer?

First: build side projects and share them publicly. Your public presence, your visibility, gives you options -- when one path closes, others (maybe better ones!) open.

Second: don't just learn things -- learn how to learn. (More on this in a later tip.)

And if you want more on antifragility, read Nassim Taleb's book, "Antifragile."