He worked at Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon: here are his 3 tips for success

© LinkedIn/Aaron Goldsmid

Aaron Goldsmid is not your average tech executive. The son of Broadway performers, he is the first in his family to go to college. Now a product director at Deel, he has had an impressive career with the giants of Silicon Valley.

After twenty years of career in tech, he gives Business Insider an unvarnished testimony on the mistakes that can hinder a promising career. Here are his 3 main pieces of advice.

Always be two steps ahead, not one

“It's a marathon, not a sprint.” This phrase perfectly sums up Aaron Goldsmid's philosophy. Too often, young professionals are focused solely on their next job, trying to solve the frustrations of their current position or land a prestigious title. A mistake he himself made when he left Microsoft for NBCUniversal, then for a startup that offered him a high-sounding title, but which he had to leave less than a year later.

The key? Project yourself two positions ahead and ask yourself this essential question: “How will my next role allow me to reach the one after that ?”. This approach notably led him to join Kiva, a microfinance NGO, not for the prestige, but to acquire essential skills in business development and communication with institutional actors. These experiences proved invaluable when he then took a position as general manager at Twilio.

Investing in human relationships before the rest

His time at Twitter taught him a lesson that is the opposite of what we usually hear: quantifiable objectives are not everything. Responsible for growth at the time, he often had to intervene in the projects of other teams to optimize performance. “We were so focused on achieving goals that we sometimes forgot the importance of interpersonal relationships,”, he confides.

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This approach often backfired on his team, creating tensions that then had to be repaired. Looking back, Aaron Goldsmid stresses the importance of taking the time to explain your approach and build alliances before taking action. “In a company, not everyone pursues the mission in the same way, he explains. By investing in relationships, you can better communicate your alignments with others, and even if they don't agree with you, they'll respect your process.”

Avoid copying leaders

Coming from a family far removed from the corporate world, Aaron Goldsmid had no role model for navigating the corporate environment. A situation that led him to copy the behaviors of the leaders he admired, including their bad habits (hello Elon Musk fans). “Young professionals have a hard time distinguishing what truly makes a leader successful from the flaws that the company tolerates”, he explains.

He particularly remembers imitating the tendency of some leaders to make sweeping statements about the future, without realizing that their credibility was based on years of proven experience. Now a leader himself, he pays close attention to his behavior in meetings,aware that younger people might be tempted to reproduce his faults.

The 3 tips to remember:

• Plan your career by thinking about two positions in advance rather than just one
• Prioritize building solid relationships rather than achieving goals at all costs
• Avoid blindly copying the behaviors of leaders without understanding what really makes them successful

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