Burn Your Portfolio: Stuff they don’t teach you in design school, but should

2. The Extra Mile

When my career was still in its infancy—a mere two years old—I was privileged to experience firsthand how the act of exceeding the expectations of your employers can greatly advance your career. The year was 1998, and a children’s toy, game, and book publishing company located in Phoenix hired me to create a new corporate website.

The dot-com era was heating up and our nation had never seen excitement around an opportunity like the Internet since the California Gold Rush 150 years earlier. The ambitious CEO who employed me had a grand vision of what his maiden online voyage could become. He envisioned users coming to his site and finding a bookshelf loaded with books. The user would click a book, turn the pages to sample it, ...