Career advice from Denzel Washington
Issue 259: Learning, Earning, and Returning
Gladiator II was a much anticipated sequel from the academy award winning original. However, my opinion is it was a fun one-time watch but left a lot to be desired. One bright spot was the every-entertaining Denzel Washington, who played Macrinus. He has that rare presence where, even when the script is uneven, he elevates every scene he’s in. Watching him, I kept imagining his Training Day character, Alonzo Harris, mysteriously transported back to the Roman Empire.
While following the film’s press tour, I came across a clip on Reddit where an interviewer asked Washington what advice he’d give to young actors. His answer was concise and powerful: "First part of your life you learn, second part of your life you earn, third part of your life you return."
Learn, Earn, and Return
Though Denzel was speaking about acting, this framing resonates far beyond Hollywood. It’s a three-act structure for life and career—a reminder that growth, contribution, and legacy come in phases.
Act 1: Learn (Skills)
The early part of life is about absorbing everything you can. From mentors, mistakes, books, side projects—whatever’s in front of you. This is where you sharpen discipline, nurture curiosity, and practice humility. It’s less about rushing into achievement and more about equipping yourself. You’re laying the groundwork for everything that comes next.
In the craft of software, this means developing understanding of skills and fundamentals: understanding systems, the materials of code and vectors, and trying different tools to build understanding. It’s the season to ask questions, shadow others, and put yourself in environments where you can practice without fear of failing big.
Act 2: Earn (Experience)
In your early career, you begin turning what you’ve learned into value. Earning is capital in all forms. It can be money, but it also means reputation, mastery, and purpose. This is the stretch where you test your craft against reality by shipping products, taking risks, building teams. The aim isn’t just financial stability, but creating momentum, establishing credibility, and finding the work that gives you energy.
For designers and builders, this is when your skills start compounding. You shift from “how do I do this?” to “what can I create with this?” It’s about making an impact through products, solving real problems, and proving you can deliver at scale. The reward is not only the paycheck but also the chance to earn trust and shape outcomes.
Act 3: Return (Knowledge)
Once you’ve achieved success, the focus shifts from yourself to others. You give back what you’ve gained through knowledge, resources, access. This can be through mentorship, investing in the next generation, or being generous with your time. The measure of success here is legacy: leaving the people and communities you touch better than you found them.
In software, that might look like mentoring junior teammates, contributing to open source, or sharing hard-earned lessons so others don’t repeat the same mistakes. It’s when your role evolves from just building products to building people.
"First part of your life you learn, second part of your life you earn, third part of your life you return." —Denzel Washington
Tweaking the framework
Denzel’s model encourages lifelong growth and purpose: no phase is ever truly “over,” but each builds upon the last. It emphasizes gratitude and social responsibility: the ultimate measure of success is not what you accumulate, but what you give back. For careers in software and design, it’s a useful reminder to measure progress by fulfillment and impact, not just income or titles. There are two tweaks I’d add by making Learn, Earn, and Return a continuous loop and developing a maturity model for it.
Continuous loop
I love Denzel’s framing. One way I’d “yes, and” it is to think of Learn, Earn, Return less as three decades of life, and more as an agile loop. Instead of a waterfall model where you graduate from one act to the next, you’re constantly cycling—learning a new skill, applying it to create value, and giving back even while you’re early in your career. The trick is keeping the right level of graduation: you don’t stay a perpetual learner who never applies, nor a perpetual earner who never shares.
A maturity model
I love a good maturity model. It helps capture the end state and allows you to work backwards from there. I wrote about career parallel paths where the maturity model of Learn, Earn, and Return can be applied. By identifying the career outcomes you desire, you can reverse engineer what Return looks like and it’ll force you to think about experience and skills you need to have to do it well. Here is an example of Learn, Earn, and Return for a brand designer:
Learn visual literacy for brand and creative
Earn by becoming an expert in rebranding by doing it several times well at companies
Return how to approach leading rebrands by mentoring younger brand designers, writing about your experience as shared knowledge or open-sourcing patterns and templates
The same loop can be applied to engineering, product management, or even leadership. Maturity comes from moving fluidly between learning, earning, and returning as your career evolves.
Personal reflection
Watching Denzel’s clip made me reflect on my own Learn, Earn, and Return journey; where I’m spending my time this moment.
AI and Design Engineering (Learn): We should always be learning and in in the middle of a career reboot where everyone—no matter their title or tenure—has the chance to be a beginner again. For me, that means diving deep into AI and Design Engineering. The field is moving so fast that humility and curiosity matter more than credentials. It’s energizing to be back in “student mode,” experimenting, reading, and practicing daily.
Investing and Advising (Earn): It’s important to remember earn doesn’t have to be financial capital. It can take the form such as human or social capital. This is why I’m so passionate about angel investing and advising. The “earn” here isn’t about chasing ROI from an exit; it’s about earning trust, relationships, and perspective by being close to people who are building. The greatest ROI isn’t a startup I invested in IPO’ing (though that’d be great), it’s joining a founder I admire eventually in their mission—that’s the earn.
Design Career (Return): I’m grateful to be at a point in my career where career progression is something I focus on. It’s a place of privileage, yes, but that privileage was earned. Despite this, I am more inspired and ambitious than ever because I can focus on building and making. I’m only focused on the current role at hand as if it’s my last; not worrying about what’s next. I now keep my mentorship focused on a few people, mentoring like a Sith. This allows me to be dedicated to two people at a time to go deeper; enabling them to be mentors.
Recap
Learn the craft as much as possible, earn capital through the experience you build, and share knowledge as the way to return
Learn, Earn, and Return doesn’t have to be blocks of life as an act. It can be a dynamic loop applied to different domains of your work and life.
The key is balance: don’t rush to “return” until you’ve developed the skills and gained relevant work experience. Many people are eager to mentor without building the depth to genuinely helpful.
Denzel Washington has had the rare privilege of working with both Scott brothers: Tony and Ridley. The Pelican Brief and Crimson Tide were my first introductions to him, the latter directed by Tony Scott. Denzel and Tony would later collaborate on one of my all-time favorites, Man on Fire—an action thriller that paired him with a young Dakota Fanning and featured Nine Inch Nails’, “The Mark Has Been Made” on the soundtrack. Years later, he worked with Tony’s brother, Ridley, on American Gangster.
Tony Scott’s passing in 2012 left a profound mark on the film world. I can’t help but wonder if Denzel’s decision to join Gladiator II was, in some way, about working with Ridley to honor his late brother’s legacy—a full-circle moment. It’s a return, if you will.
Hyperlinks + notes
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Love the quote and how you expanded on it. Thanks for sharing!
this really resonated with me - needed to hear it today! great share