Don't End The Week With Nothing

If you cannot gain exposure at your day job, try to get some exposure outside of it. Network actively. You don't have to have an audience of thousands for an audience to be worthwhile -- for landing a new job, having an audience of one hiring manager is a darn sight better than having no audience at all. Blog and collect an email list. It's old and... See more

Write about those lessons as you learn them. If at all possible, publish what you write. Even if it is published to an audience of no one, you will be able to point people back to it later.

I realized something which is fundamentally true of a lot of day jobs. Nothing I did at the job mattered, in the long run. No matter how much I spun, nothing about my situation ever changed. I worked my week, got to the end of it, and had nothing to show. The next week there would be more emails and more tickets, exactly like the week before. The w... See more

This could mean working on particular projects within the organization which like external visibility (e.g. Android) rather than projects which don't (e.g. AdWords)

Don't end the week with nothing. Prefer to work on things you can show. Prefer to work where people can see you. Prefer to work on things you can own.

Social capital -- the ability to call on someone who trusts you and have them do something in your interest, like e.g. recommend you to a job.

If you cannot build things you can show at work, you should build things you can show outside of work.

You don't have to optimize for "sexy" projects. You know, sexy projects: I don't know how to describe them but I know it when I see it. Most engineering work isn't intrinsically sexy. I would, however, optimize for impact and visibility.

The failures and false starts aren't extremely interesting to most people, but having some successes under your belt credibly demonstrates that you're capable of either reproducing them in the future or experimenting your way to new successes in your new environment.