🚀 Don’t chase money — chase experience

At the start of their careers, every young specialist — be it a developer, analyst, tester, or manager — faces a tempting choice: join a project with a salary slightly above the market rate but with old technologies and routine tasks, or choose a place with a more modest salary but with the opportunity to learn from strong mentors, work on complex challenges, and use a modern stack.

The answer is unequivocal: always choose experience.

“The money you don’t earn today will come back to you twofold tomorrow if you invest in your main asset — experience.”

🤔 Why is experience more important than money at the start?

Imagine your career is a building you are constructing. The first few years are the foundation. If you lay it with cheap and low-quality materials (superficial knowledge, outdated technologies), the entire building will be shaky. You will quickly hit a ceiling and won’t be able to build anything tall and impressive.

Experience is that high-quality foundation.

Accumulating “battle” skills. No courses or books can replace real problem-solving experience. The ability to work in a team, understand someone else’s code, debug complex systems, go through failed releases and successful launches — this is what shapes you into a true professional.
Developing a professional outlook. By working on diverse tasks, you begin to understand how business works, which technologies are better for which purposes, how to build architecture, and anticipate problems. This outlook allows you to make more informed and valuable decisions in the future.
Building a reputation and network. The people you work with on complex projects see your growth and potential. They become your network of contacts, which can lead you to your dream projects in the future.

📈 How does experience convert into money?

It’s simple market logic. The more complex and responsible the tasks you can solve, the higher your value in the market.

First, you work for experience, then experience works for you. After completing a couple of complex projects, you can apply for positions that are unavailable to those who chased easy money. Your resume will speak for itself.
You can “sell” your skills for a higher price. A specialist who not only codes but also proposes solutions, optimizes processes, and takes responsibility is worth much more. But to learn this, you need that diverse experience.
You get access to the “major league.” Interesting projects with large budgets and complex tasks go not to those who ask for more money, but to those who can prove they can handle it. And the proof is your track record, your experience.

A real-life example: A young developer turned down an offer from a large bank with a salary of 150,000 rubles, where he would have to maintain an old system on jQuery. Instead, he joined a startup for 100,000, where he was entrusted with building a product from scratch on React and Node.js. Two years later, he grew into a lead developer, and his salary exceeded 300,000, while his colleague at the bank was still “fixing bugs” for the same salary.

🏁 Conclusion

Don’t make the mistake that many people make. Don’t look at salary in a vacuum. Always ask yourself:

What will I learn here?
Who will I be working with?
What tasks will I be solving?
How will this experience strengthen me in a year? And in three?

✅ Invest in yourself. At the start of your career, your main capital is not your bank account, but your baggage of knowledge and skills. The bigger it is, the more impressive your future path will be.