When I first became a manager, three of my direct reports were new college graduates. The start of my professional career had been rocky. I was clueless, and my managers were not very good at coaching. Oh, and then there was the dot-com bust, which derailed me multiple times. I often think about what my career could have been with more support and without the external shocks. I was determined to do better for my new recruits.

What I realized was that my previous managers weren’t invested in me, and they didn’t seem to appreciate what was at stake for me. They chose what projects I worked on, how much I had to work, what I learned, how to help me, how much I got paid, and whether I had a job. That is an immense amount of power, but it was actually even more significant.

When I compared my career to my peers, it became apparent to me how important the first job was. That first job was key to my understanding of what a job was like, what it took to succeed, and what I was capable of. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn any of those things from that first job. Maybe it was mostly my fault, but my managers didn’t seem to try either.

That’s when I realized that being someone’s manager is a sacred trust. As a manager, you have massive control over someone’s present. Even more, when someone has little other professional experience, you have massive influence over their future. What do they learn? What can they demonstrate? What can they brag about? Do they look forward to their career with optimism, as something that can help them fulfill some greater purpose? Or do they see it as a necessary burden to keep from starving?

If you screw up, sure, they can recover. With a lot of luck, I did. But did I recover to where I would have been otherwise? And what if I hadn’t quite been so lucky? If you don’t do well for them, they’re going to be in a hole.
It’s your responsibility to keep them out of that hole and then ahead. That first job affects the slope of their career. One day, they’ll leave you. If you did your job right, it’ll be after a good long time, and they’ll leave on a much steeper trajectory than they came in on. It’s more than just paying money and getting work. You are influencing the shape of their entire life. If you don’t treat that responsibility with reverence, perhaps this is not your calling.