Pros and Cons

It’s important to have a range of experiences in order to know just how good or how bad a situation is. Think of the child that refuses to eat new foods and instead will only eat chicken nuggets with ketchup. By avoiding new foods, they lock themselves into believing that the mediocracy of the chicken nuggets is much greater than it actually is. Their refusal to expand what they know by taking in more good (and bad) experiences limits their own growth.

I’ve worked at several companies, each with their own sets of pros and cons. I’ve worked at agencies and vendors where the CEOs had money problems or anger problems. I’ve worked at two multi-nationals. I’ve worked as a consultant. I’ve done projects big and small. I’ve done front-end, back-end, infra, DevOps, UI/UX, and more things that don’t have catchy buzzword classifications yet. This has helped me understand just how good or how bad things can be, and it drives me to weigh all of the data that I have available in order to make better, more educated decisions.

In making an educated decision – a decision made from data and not raw emotion – it’s imperative that you do not spend all of your efforts focusing on the pros to reach a conclusion. The goal is not winning the argument, it’s about reaching the most beneficial conclusion. Don’t lose sight of what you are trying to accomplish, which is to achieve the best possible outcome, not a minor sense of victory with the associated risk of upsetting others.

You need to gather information to make a good decision, and all of that information needs to be compared. You should approach all data points with the mindset that they will not be 100% good or 100% bad. Look at the information from an objective standpoint, and after gathering as much information as you can only then do you form a conclusion.

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