Career Skills: Start Here

#What These Lessons Are For

Think of a shelf of repair manuals in a workshop. Nobody reads the whole shelf. A mechanic with a flat tyre takes down the tyre manual. A mechanic with a noisy engine takes down a different one. The shelf is useful because you can find the right page for the problem in front of you.

The career lessons work the same way. There are twelve, and they answer different questions.

Two things this track is not. It is not a way to learn machine learning itself: the other tracks in this site do that. And it does not promise a job. No lesson can tell you how the hiring market will treat you, and the market changes.

A word about numbers. Some of these lessons quote pay ranges, the shape of a company's interview process, or percentages. Treat every one of them as an example to check, not as a fact to plan around. Companies change their processes, pay differs by country and level, and a figure with no named source cannot be checked. As of October 2026, verify any such number against a current job posting, a public salary source, or a person who works in the role, before it affects a decision. A lesson that says "most candidates" without naming who counted is giving you its opinion, and you may weigh it that way.

In one sentence: the career lessons are a shelf of guides, each answering one question, and the numbers inside them are examples to check.

#Where You Stand: A Six-Question Self-Check

To find your starting lesson, answer six questions with yes or no. Be honest and strict. "Yes" means you could show it to someone today, not that you plan to.

1. Code. I can write a short Python program with a loop and a function, without copying it.
2. Project. I have one finished project that another person can open and try, by a link.
3. Explain. I can explain that project aloud in two minutes, including one thing that went wrong.
4. Résumé. My résumé has at least one line that says what changed because of my work.
5. People. In the last month I spoke with one person who works in the field, even for ten minutes.
6. Time. I have a weekly time slot for this written in my calendar.

Why does order matter? Because each gap blocks the next. A résumé line needs a finished project to describe. A two-minute explanation needs the project to explain. Polishing the later step before the earlier one only makes a better description of nothing.

Do: Answer the six questions for yourself, left to right. Stop at the first box where your answer is no, and look up that box in the table.

Notice: Every arrow is labelled yes. A no never moves you right: it stops you there. Asha's answers (yes, no, ...) stop her at the second box, even though she has later yes answers.

Why: Each step needs the one before it. A project comes before a way to explain it, and a way to explain it comes before a résumé line that describes it. Starting at your first gap is the shortest way through.

In one sentence: answer six honest questions in order, and begin with the lesson for the first one you answered no.

#Your First Week

A plan needs a time budget, or it stays a wish. Here is a first week built from the first-no rule. It uses small blocks so it fits around work or study.

Use this shape: five weekdays of 30 minutes each, and one longer block at the weekend.

• Monday. Write your six answers on paper. Circle your first no. Write the one lesson you will begin with.
• Tuesday. Read the first half of that lesson. Write down one action it suggests, in your own words.
• Wednesday. Read the second half. Pick the smallest version of the action that could be done in a weekend.
• Thursday. Do the first 30 minutes of that action. Stop on time, even if you are in the middle.
• Friday. Write three lines: what I did, what was hard, what I do next week.
• Saturday. One block of two hours on the action. This is where most of the real work happens.
• Sunday. Rest. Do not add a bonus session. A habit you can keep beats a heroic week you cannot repeat.

Now do the sum. Five weekdays at 30 minutes is 5 x 30 = 150 minutes, which is 2.5 hours. Add the Saturday block of 2 hours, and the week is 2.5 + 2 = 4.5 hours. If you want to change the plan, change it on paper and check the total. A plan that adds up to more hours than you have is a plan you will drop by Wednesday.

Two small rules keep the week honest.

• Finish something small. A finished small thing, such as a short working script with a link, counts for more than a large thing you describe as nearly done.
• Write it down. The Friday three lines are the cheapest record of progress. After a month of Fridays you can see what you did, which is also the raw material for a résumé line and for the two-minute explanation in question 3.

If the week goes badly, which happens, do not erase it. Write why on Friday, shrink next week's plan, and keep the slot. A smaller week that happens is better than a perfect week that does not.

In one sentence: a first week is five short weekday blocks and one longer weekend block, added up on paper, with a written record on Friday.

#Where to Go Next

You can now find your starting lesson with the first-no rule, treat figures in these lessons as examples to check, and plan a week that adds up.

• Next: read the one lesson your first no points to, from the table above.
• If you are unsure what job to aim for: the Forward Deployed Engineering: Start Here lesson describes one kind of AI job in plain words, with a worked example.
• If you want to learn to build first: the Python Setup lesson starts the Python track.
• If you want to see what goes wrong at work: ML Production Disasters tells ten stories of real systems failing.

This track is a shelf, not a ladder. This is the start, Level 0. After it, use the table in the first section and take down one guide at a time.

In one sentence: read one lesson, act on it for a week, then return and pick the next.

#Key Takeaways

• The career lessons are a shelf of guides, each answering one question, not a course to read in order
• Answer the six-question self-check honestly and begin with the lesson for your first no
• Each gap blocks the next, so the order of the questions matters more than the count of yes answers
• Treat pay, company processes and percentages in any lesson as examples to verify, as of October 2026
• Plan a first week as minutes you add up, and write three lines every Friday

#Quick Check