This reminds on the sentence of a former boss, who said:
"if you do not take care of your money, someone else will do"
If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)
101–110 of 270 posts
Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)
#102I do something similar for development of me as a human being. I ask myself how can I improve, what kind of person do I want to be, how can I help make the world a better place. My "career" is just a means to an end to put food on the table. Also being in my 30s I think I have mostly maxed it out anyway. Sure I might increase my wage a little bit but all in all as for being an IC it is a good as it gets. Sure there i…
> In the end my work just makes someone else richer, it doesn't have any meaning. This is something I struggle with a lot. I left companies before, because the job felt meaningless and making some rich guy richer doesn't sound meaningful to me. I am trying to come up with a business idea I can work on on the side, that actually is supposed to make the world a better place, but I am struggling to find anything I have…
> But that does not feel fruitful either. My everyday life is consumed by the desire of having some kind of impact, making the world better.
It nearly impossible to achieve substantial change alone. The key is to be organized with others, to find a community.
Now, I don't mean joining a political party, especially not at first. That can be important work but also very soul crushing
I am talking grassroots-level, local groups that work on a concrete topic, preferable something that concerns you personally. It is important to get into doing things as quickly as possible, be it organizing a small protest or maybe just a get together.
With this you will gain practically experience and you will find other people that share your goals and with whom you will struggle together.
Now, for the long term, you will also need to actually read political theory, you will have to get organized with people that have a more concrete strategy on how to create change but I generally would urge you to avoid analysis paralysis and focus on gaining practical experience first.
Building community is really the key.
Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)
#103Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's really nice, but the point where the vision is should move too. You learn as you progress. What you enjoy changes. The entire industry moves. Being focused on the goal you defined 30 years ago is almost certainly wrong for most people.
>>Being focused on the goal you defined 30 years ago is almost certainly wrong for most people. I think there are certain things that are not likely to change, and must be aimed for. For starters, being healthy, proactively working towards a retirement nest egg, so that you don't end up homeless and starving in case things go south too fast. There are many such things I hold as things I would want several years from…
>> Good health, free time and enough money to not need a job to just put food on the table, and a roof above my head.
Sound like the utility function for a lot of people I would say.
Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's really nice, but the point where the vision is should move too. You learn as you progress. What you enjoy changes. The entire industry moves. Being focused on the goal you defined 30 years ago is almost certainly wrong for most people.
I can’t emphasize this enough. Every 5 years or so I reassess what my goals are and refocus my vision on where I want to apply my skills. Things change fast in our industry so being able to pivot to something nearby is paramount for maintaining a career in this field. Not everyone has the fortune to spend 15 years at a FAANG or other large corporation. Sometimes you have to build it.
Every five years or so, my wife asks me, "What do you need to learn now for the next five years of your career?"
It's the same as what you do, except I need the reminder...
Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)
#106My favorite lens on this comes from Hamming: > It is well known the drunken sailor whos taggers to the left or right n independent random steps will, on the average, end up about sqrt(n) steps from the origin. But if there is a pretty girl in one direction, then his steps will tend to go in that direction and he will go a distance proportional to n. In a lifetime of many, many independent choices, small and large, a…
Great point, and great blog post (as usual).
PS Tangent - FYI there's a typo "Minset" should be "Mindset" in the reference to your book. HTH
Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)
#107My favorite lens on this comes from Hamming: > It is well known the drunken sailor whos taggers to the left or right n independent random steps will, on the average, end up about sqrt(n) steps from the origin. But if there is a pretty girl in one direction, then his steps will tend to go in that direction and he will go a distance proportional to n. In a lifetime of many, many independent choices, small and large, a…
That's really nice, but the point where the vision is should move too. You learn as you progress. What you enjoy changes. The entire industry moves. Being focused on the goal you defined 30 years ago is almost certainly wrong for most people.
After ~15 years, I've realized that no good things come to you without sustained focus / attentiveness, and gentle pressure in the direction of attention. What everyone here is saying is "be closed loop", vs the drunkards "open loop". Combined with a bit of progress every day, it's (so far, at least) magical what happens.
Another bit to consider: It took a long time to realize that basically everyone wants basically everyone to succeed, as long as incentives align. It was very easy to imagine I was swimming upstream early in my career - especially my early mentors urging me to specialize to find success. My initial temptation was to "specialize" in hot/attractive topics in an effort to be the "indispensable X authority". But my PhD advisor urged me to "not swim in red water", where the incentives are inherently conflicting - everyone wants to be "the X person".
Much better to find a team working on a good problem somewhat like the ones you want to solve and just push along with them. You can save yourself a lot of energy by slotting yourself into a system that aligns with your preferred direction of travel, even if only a little bit. The current carries you.
Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)
#108My favorite lens on this comes from Hamming: > It is well known the drunken sailor whos taggers to the left or right n independent random steps will, on the average, end up about sqrt(n) steps from the origin. But if there is a pretty girl in one direction, then his steps will tend to go in that direction and he will go a distance proportional to n. In a lifetime of many, many independent choices, small and large, a…
I don't think jus the raw distance (from here) is the metric to necessarily optimize for. It may be more useful to throughly search the nearby area, for example - especially if you feel you're in a good neighborhood already.
Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)
#109This is a very "live to work" article. Is it wrong to have your career on autopilot if you are satisfied with your job? Clearly, the author wasn't, switching from law to becoming a teacher/writer. So I guess that the article makes sense in this context.
I can want a decent work/life balance, but I also want to not be in a dead-end job. I can give some thought to my career (not being on total autopilot), and also have my job in balance with the rest of my life.
Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's really nice, but the point where the vision is should move too. You learn as you progress. What you enjoy changes. The entire industry moves. Being focused on the goal you defined 30 years ago is almost certainly wrong for most people.
After ~15 years, I've realized that no good things come to you without sustained focus / attentiveness, and gentle pressure in the direction of attention. What everyone here is saying is "be closed loop", vs the drunkards "open loop". Combined with a bit of progress every day, it's (so far, at least) magical what happens. Another bit to consider: It took a long time to realize that basically everyone wants basically…
I always wondered about that.
Seemed like everyone was doing topics in the “red water” and felt useless to not.
I found my areas of interest were the “red water” of 20 years prior and there was little left and it didn’t solve problems relevant to industry.
Quit PhD and got a job where I was grossly underpaid until the next one.