Does this apply in chaotic context ? I can't foresee what jobs there will be in 2 years now.
If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)
121–130 of 270 posts
Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)
#122My 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.
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sharks-use-math-hunt
A new study suggests that some sharks and other marine predators can follow strict mathematical strategies when foraging for dinner. The work, reported online June 9 in Nature, is the latest aiming to show whether animals sometimes move in a pattern called a Lévy walk.
Unlike random motion — in which animals take similar-sized steps in any direction, like a drunk stumbling around — Lévy walks are punctuated by rare, long forays in any direction. Draw a Lévy walk on a graph, and its squiggly pattern echoes a fractal, the mathematical phenomenon whose shape remains similar no matter the viewing scale.
Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)
#123I planned to get out of my current company and stop wasting my life two years ago. The job market and my visa status meant that it's either impossible or I need to make significant sacrifices. So that's life.
Wondering if working as a contractor is any different. you won't stay longer than 6-12 months on a project and you can safely say goodbye without having to explain a gap in your resume
Visa.
Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)
#124This 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.
> This is a very "live to work" article.
That's not the impression I got. It's about wanting a career that's meaningful to you. Whatever that means to you. Maybe your answer to "What would I do in my career if I could do anything?" is working 9-5 without a care in the world. That's totally valid.
Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
Vision is not a dictator, it's just having half an idea of where you'd love to be in X years. It can and probably will move as you age and gain experience. But if you're thinking you'd love to be your own boss and, as you have that vision, you find something much more interesting, you can still re-assess.
That's a good point. I find it very hard to find the optimum balance between flexbility / vision.
Don't let optimum be the enemy of good and enjoy the ride.
Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)
#126My 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…
It is not something I share very often, because people assume a lot when I do, but von Braun[1] shared a similar idea. Ignoring for a moment his past, one cannot say that he had no achievements further supporting position noted by OP. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Aim_at_the_Stars
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Aim_at_the_Stars
> Despite his moral quandaries, von Braun participates in the Nazi's V-2 rocket program during World War II to further his ambitions in rocket engineering. The film carefully depicts his efforts to reconcile his love for scientific exploration with the knowledge that his work is being used for destructive purposes.
I have a similar short story idea where a person of the calibre of Elon Musk who works so hard is made to feel and see his successful moonshot projects being used for destroying and subjugating nations. This would be similar to Oppenheimer. Another twist I can take with the story is Hero "Elon" knows about this outcome but still in the hope of change in institutional ideology over decades hopes for better use for his technology. In the movie Watchmen, Ozymandias feels the pain of millions he is going to kill to save future billions.
Watchmen: Killing millions to save billions
Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)
#127My 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 basically diffusion versus drift. But I think it is the wrong view, as generally people do move into the direction they want to go. Take a person doing plumbing but wanting to be in art. The problem is not the direction, the problem is taking the first step. In general, many people dislike changing jobs, so they don't take steps. The steps are the problem, not the direction.
Drift made me think of electron drift under applied voltage or electric field.
Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)
#128My 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…
Hamming was also writing from a highly privileged position. He was able to work at Bell Labs for the majority of his career. That just doesn’t exist today. The Art of Doing Science and Engineering is a great book but it needs context. The last edition was released in 1994. Programmers had a lot of labour power back then. Today though? The median house costs more than a third of the median income. Inflation has raised…
> Hamming was also writing from a highly privileged position.
Hamming had a lot of career capital. He was the only person in the world with his track record. If you needed his kind of research/output/teaching/etc, he was the person you needed.
Cal Newport talks a lot about this. Great books.
Have something [unique/valuable] to offer and you'll be surprised how many doors it opens. Yes it takes time to stairstep your way there. A fresh grad has less career capital than a seasoned engineer with a track record of building billion dollar companies.
Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)
#129I would take it one step up and say if you don't design your life intentionally your career will.
Statements like this one come for a position of privilege, which is to be expected on a forum like this one targeting techies who are most probably solidly middle-class, but just wanted to point that out. More exactly, most of the (normal) people are NOT in the position of designing their lives, believing otherwise is, again, tainted by said position of privilege.
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Re: If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)
#130I would take it one step up and say if you don't design your life intentionally your career will.
Statements like this one come for a position of privilege, which is to be expected on a forum like this one targeting techies who are most probably solidly middle-class, but just wanted to point that out. More exactly, most of the (normal) people are NOT in the position of designing their lives, believing otherwise is, again, tainted by said position of privilege.
I never considered that angle because no one ever explained it to me. It feels like this "privilege" concept explains a great deal about society. It is like a master key.
Someone recently told me about Jesus and the fact that he died to cleanse my sins. I never heard that one before either.