'HR isn't your friend': 30+ people share their best professional advice

Emmy Pratt • Senior Editor

Jan 20, 2024 1:00 PM EST

There is no rulebook for how to be a working professional. Life gets much more complicated once you're no longer working a low-stakes job at the Wolfgang Puck Express inside a regional airport, where you're not particularly concerned with your professional development. When you're working a big boy job with an annual salary and everything, it can feel like you're riding a bike without training wheels for the first time, and when you're in that situation, you need someone to talk you through it.

Not all professional advice is created equally. When you're 22, you might feel like your 25-year-old friend has a lot of good insight about being a working professional when, in reality, they are just as clueless as you. That's why experienced adults over 30 recently took to Twitter to disperse some sage advice from a more experienced perspective. Take this advice with as many or as few grains of salt as you please.