January 31, 2008
So very purposive drift
More great advice from Mark Andreessen:
"The first rule of career planning: Do not plan your career.
The world is an incredibly complex place and everything is changing all the time. You can't plan your career because you have no idea what's going to happen in the future. You have no idea what industries you'll enter, what companies you'll work for, what roles you'll have, where you'll live, or what you will ultimately contribute to the world. You'll change, industries will change, the world will change, and you can't possibly predict any of it.
Trying to plan your career is an exercise in futility that will only serve to frustrate you, and to blind you to the really significant opportunities that life will throw your way."
Posted by richard at January 31, 2008 05:40 PMThis bit here seemed particularly cutting:
Working for a big company is, I believe, much risker than it looks. I'll talk about this more in the next post, but people who work at big companies are subject to impersonal layoffs at any time, and often forego the opportunity to develop skills and gain experiences as rapidly as they would at someplace smaller and faster growing. And then five or ten years pass, and you realize your skills and experiences are only relevant for jobs at other big companies -- and then you have a real problem.
I think the idea of starting with 'risk to my happiness' as a metric for measuring opportunities is a fundamentally good one, it's a shame more people don't see things this way.
Posted by: Ben at January 31, 2008 06:20 PM