You never control the arc of your career
The article explores limited career control through Bruce Springsteen and the author's experiences. It reflects on unexpected events like furloughs and economic downturns, stressing adaptation to career challenges amid external influences.
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The article discusses the lack of complete control individuals have over their career paths, using Bruce Springsteen's experiences as a musician as an example. The author reflects on their own career as a software developer, highlighting unexpected twists and turns such as being furloughed during the COVID-19 pandemic and dealing with economic uncertainties. They mention past challenges like the Dotcom bubble burst and the 2008 downturn affecting their career decisions. Despite efforts to steer their career in the right direction, the author acknowledges the influence of external factors like economic conditions and unforeseen events. The article emphasizes the importance of adapting to unexpected changes and challenges in one's career journey.
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8 commentsAn old business mentor gave me some excellent words of wisdom about starting and running a business:
When you start a business, you should have a clear idea of what you want to do and you'll have a vision of the path it will take. That's important. But it's also important to be willing to let all of that go.
Once your business starts running, it will have its own ideas about where it should go and what it should do. And the business knows the right path better than you do. If its trying to go a direction that you didn't have in mind, you're smarter to go with that direction than to try to force the path to the one you had planned.
I think career management is pretty much the same. Your career, after all, is really just a business in disguise. There are too many unknowns -- unknown risks and unknown opportunities -- for you to be able to lay out what your career arc should be in advance. Nimble is the key word here.
But I'm just stating what the article said in different words.
My late dad hated insurance. He told me it was a scam, so I hated it too. My first job after graduating was in an insurance company.
I hated MLM because they're scam. My second job was building an MLM system.
Before smartphones were popular, premium SMS (that charges a dollar for 1 "fortune teller" SMS) was a booming business that preyed on gullible people. I hated it. My 3rd job was building a backend for that SMS thing.
I never intentionally go for that kind of company (except the insurance company because I had just graduated and scrambled to get any job), but somehow, the company I work for always does projects in the things I hate.
Talk about the law of attraction...
That's an important qualifier. You can still direct it towards the right path.
If you don't do anything, you won't get anywhere (generally speaking).