Advice to my young self: to succeed in your career, forget side projects and focus on your job

To develop my career, I was spending a lot of time outside work reading technical books, doing toy projects, going to meetups, browsing Hacker News. I was finding here what my company was fundamentally unable to give me, and I was feeling holding my fate in my own hands. I thought it was the best recipe to end with a successful career, while remaining free and protected from the meanders of corporate culture (or corporate politics, actually).

I was wrong.