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Ben Halpern Subscriber for CodeNewbie

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How Do You Balance Short Term Versus Long Term Career Goals?

Balancing short term versus long term career goals is especially important in the tech industry, where things are constantly changing. Short term goals can help you achieve immediate success, stay motivated, and build momentum. Long term goals can help you create a vision for your future and make strategic decisions about your career path.

Coders both new and more experienced: what considerations do you make when setting your goals? Personal interests? The current job market? And what are your goals, both near and far? Share with us!

Top comments (7)

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corners2wall profile image
Corners 2 Wall

In my view, if your Long Term Career Goals consist of Short Terms it's really easy. Closing short terms, you go to long goals

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integerman profile image
Matt Eland

The answer is somewhat straightforwad in my case: make the small goals serve the big goal. My big bucket-list goal was to see if I could make Microsoft MVP. 5 years ago my career goal was to teach or become a CTO.

In both of these cases, I served the big goals with little goals: write a few articles on a topic. Give a talk. Apply to a conference. Pass a certification. Complete a course. Watch at least X learning videos every Y interval. The small goals serve as short milestones to help build skills and validate that you actually want the thing you're aiming for.

Not all of your short-term goals need to serve long-term goals though. I've really enjoyed many of the smaller goals of the more interesting varieties. They didn't really prepare me for anything else, but they were part of the journey and were a fun and interesting distraction. Sometimes you just want to learn something or explore an idea, and that's okay too.

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anras573 profile image
Anders Bo Rasmussen

I think that's an excellent way to do it.
I somewhat find it easy to come up with big goals, but the small goals? - They're very hard to come up with for me.

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michaelsynan profile image
Michael Synan

I struggle with this question every day. Ultimately learning sets you up to do more in the short-term so I think its a good investment, but at some point you have to do what's necessary and focus on practical goals.

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jonrandy profile image
Jon Randy ๐ŸŽ–๏ธ

TBH I don't think I've ever had any career goals in almost 28 years as a professional developer

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corners2wall profile image
Corners 2 Wall

be water my friend

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rachelfazio profile image
Rachel Fazio

+1