[puntofisso]

My biggest mistake... is not a technical mistake. It's a mistake about the career in its entirety :) The story is that I spent all my university years (and a couple of years after that, working in the IT industry) thinking that what I really wanted to do was being an CS academic. For a few personal reasons, I really inflated the idea. Then, finally, moved countries to start a PhD in one of the best universities in the UK, and... quit after not even 6 months. The mistake: idealising the academic lifestyle. I thought that being an academic was the only way to really work on something you love, being free to do it when and where you wanted, engaging with brilliant people. It turns out that two things are true: that you can find these things in many other professions; and that... often the reality is you won't find these in academia (of course, there are great exceptions). Moreover, a PhD – especially in the UK, and especially in computer science – is an really, really narrow endeavour. I wanted breadth on the side of depth, and a PhD (nor 90% of academic research) would ever be like that. I had entirely idealised a profession without looking at the reality of what it's like, and the reality wasn't a good match for what I wanted. It's taken me about 10 years to process and be happy with it, though :-)