What advice would you give to someone in their first job?

Your question reminds me of an article that Jeraldine wrote, which I resonate with and wish my younger self knew :) You can read about it here.

In a nutshell,

1. Be careful about giving feedback and suggestions

2. Don’t underestimate the importance of managing up

3. Value alignment with your superiors is super important

4. If you want to get a pay raise, don’t blindly do more work or make sacrifices

5. In Singapore, personal branding needs to be done differently

Don't try too hard - replying emails and working past working hours

Your co workers are not your friends

I offered to help with the mundane chores that no one wants to do. In return, I politely ask seniors to teach me what I need to know to complete the mundane chores. Then I ask the technical people to guide me how to automate these mundane chores.

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Once I'm done with one, get another one. Stop at 2 or 3, continue to maintain what you have done, value-add even, then request to be involved in more complex projects. At this point, I will have shown that I can actually get shit done. At the same time, putting in some time to share knowledge with my peers so that they can also gain from my experience, and they might be able to improve their own workflows. Perhaps even provide them the tools I have built, and who knows they might come up with even more brilliant ideas.

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Now I'm in the same projects as seniors and building domain knowledge, while at the same time furthering my own technical skills.

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After 1 year, I guarantee you'll be able to lead small-medium projects by yourself. In essence, you get shit done ONCE, and find ways to make sure YOU and NO ONE ELSE have to do it again, and then you move up to bigger and more complex shit.