Ask Orbit · by Quiet Baker · 2026-10-11

What's one skill you wish you'd learned way earlier in your career?

For me it's writing clearly. Spent a decade thinking technical skill alone would speak for itself, turns out the engineers who could write a crisp design doc or explain a tradeoff in 3 sentences got promoted faster and had way less friction getting buy-in. What's yours?

0 sparks · 10 comments

Comments

Martina Fernández · 0 likes

saying no. took me way too long to realize every 'yes' to a random request was a 'no' to something that actually mattered

Chiara Romano · 0 likes

negotiating. i left so much money and so many better opportunities on the table in my 20s just because i was scared to ask

Hamza Malik · 0 likes

same, first real negotiation i ever did was in my 30s and i got a 20% bump just for asking politely. wild how much is left on the table by default

Rohan Mehta · 0 likes

reading other people's code without judgement. spent years assuming messy code meant a bad engineer, turns out context and deadlines explain 90% of 'bad' code

Hugo Martin · 0 likes

basic accounting/finance literacy, understanding how the business actually makes money changed how i prioritize technical work completely

Minji Kim · 0 likes

public speaking, even just internal presentations. i avoided it for years and it genuinely slowed my visibility and growth

Avery Johnson · 0 likes

delegation. as an IC turned manager i held onto tasks way too long because 'it's faster if i just do it myself' which is true in the moment and false over a quarter

Pixel Baker · 0 likes

honestly just asking for help sooner instead of struggling silently for 3 days on something a senior could unblock in 10 minutes

Aoi Ito · 0 likes

touch typing lol, genuinely, learned it late and wish i'd done it in school instead of hunt and peck for a decade

Mateo Cruz · 0 likes

underrated answer, the compounding time savings over a career is actually massive when you do the math