Underrated career advice: Choose to work in a place with high talent density early in your career.
You tend to rise or fall to the level of the people around you. When you work with exceptional people, you absorb their standards, pace, frameworks, and instincts almost through osmosis.
High-talent environments compress learning cycles and force you to grow faster than you would on your own. They change your opportunity set and rewire your brain. The compounding effect of a few years in that environment can change the trajectory of your life.
Early in your career, there’s probably nothing more valuable than choosing the room with the highest talent per square foot.
My frontal lobe fully developed, and I realized that spending five days a week working a 9 to 5 until I’m 60 just so I can finally “enjoy life” for a few years at the end is one of the worst deals we’ve ever been told to accept.