Three months into my first proper job, I thought I was nailing it. I was not nailing it. I had the enthusiasm of someone who'd read three books on startups and the competence of someone who'd read three books on startups.
Luckily, I was surrounded by people who cared enough to tell me straight.
Here's what nobody tells you about being an early career employee: you are going to get things wrong constantly. Not occasionally. Constantly. And that's fine. That's the whole point. You're not there because you know things. You're there to learn things, and you learn by getting them wrong, getting feedback, then getting them slightly less wrong.
The people who grow fastest aren't the ones who make the fewest mistakes. They're the ones who hear "this isn't right" and think "okay, show me" instead of "okay, I'm terrible."
The moment someone tells you your work needs improving, your brain wants to translate that into "you need improving." Those are two completely different sentences.
One is about a spreadsheet you made on a Tuesday afternoon. The other is about your identity. If you merge the two, every piece of feedback becomes a personal attack, and you either get defensive and stop listening or collapse into self-doubt and stop trying. Both are useless.
The people who figure this out early build faster, learn faster, and become the kind of person senior people want to invest time in. Because nothing is more exhausting than giving someone feedback and watching them crumble. Nothing is more energising than giving someone feedback and watching them run with it.
Get things wrong. Get a lot of things wrong. Just make sure you're the kind of person who wants to hear about it.