I’m rejecting the career ladder metaphor in favor of the career river. Here’s why:
1. The ultimate goal of the career ladder is: reach the top.
The ultimate goal of the career river is: reach your ocean - a thriving, wide-open ecosystem fed by other rivers to explore. /
You make your own luck. There's a great experiment that I can't cite, but it has stuck in my mind since I was a child. They identified people as lucky and unlucky, and asked them to count the number of photographs in a newspaper. The unlucky people took a long time to count the photographs, while the lucky people took a very short... See more
It’s important to have a strong learning signal — a fast feedback loop between effort expended and success. This way, you’ll know quickly what it takes to succeed, and whether you can be happy doing so. Look for environments where competitors see themselves as playing a game, rather than fighting for survival — this prevents rankings within the... See more
Obama's career advice for young people --
Just learn how to get stuff done. What I mean by that is I've seen at every level people who are very good at describing problems, people who are very sophisticated at explaining why something went wrong or why something can't get fixed. But, what I’m always looking for is,... See more