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

Thus my first piece of advice: if you have the choice between multiple jobs, all else being equal, pick the one where you are able to show what you've worked on.

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)

This could mean working in industries which default to being open rather than those which default to being closed.

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.

Reputational capital -- the way your name rings out in rooms you aren't even in, simply when your topic of expertise comes up. (Hopefully in a good way!)

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

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.

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.

There are many types of capital that are no less real just because you can't conveniently reduce them to a number.