Career development in the 21st century

It’s performance review time at Google, and that means that I am reassuring the young’uns in their mid-20s that it’s all going to be fine. They have been at the top of their class their entire life, they got into the best colleges, and they plan on continuing to ace every test they’re given. And so they come to me to ask me whether they are on the right track with their career development. I have given out the same advice to several people in their mid-20s recently, so I figured I may as well share it here as well. And that advice is: Chill!

It is a ridiculous concern to be worried about being on the right career path in your mid-20s. Your career is not like the Milton Bradley Game of Life, where everybody is on the same path, and it’s a race as to who gets there first. It’s about figuring out the right path for you to achieve the results that you desire. I suppose I should stop here to caveat that I have an unconventional career path that influences my viewpoint, but so far it seems to be working for me – I keep finding interesting jobs and convincing companies to hire me.

Here is the situation in the 21st century:

  • The world is changing faster and faster. World-famous companies are appearing and disappearing in years, if not months. The old model of going to work for a company and retiring 40 years later is not realistic in this fast-changing world.

  • More possibilities for careers exist than ever before. We are not constrained in our choice of professions by what exists in the world – we can create our own professions by combining existing skill sets in new ways.
  • Because the world is changing faster and because the possibilities are growing exponentially, the one thing you can guarantee is that the skills you have today are not the skills you will need in ten years. Developing an aptitude and zest for learning will be key to staying relevant.

Unfortunately, most career development advice is still based in 20th century thinking.

  • Work your way up the career ladder.

  • Do what you have to do to get promoted, jumping through the hoops.
  • Visualize your dream job in ten years, and develop the skills to have that job.

These all assume a static world, and I just don’t think that’s a reasonable assumption. My last four jobs (three at Google) didn’t exist before I took them, so there was no way I could have planned to get those jobs in advance – they existed on no career ladder. And I think that’s the direction we’re heading, where more ad hoc positions will be created to bridge gaps in the state of things.

So how should a college grad face this new world? What does it mean to develop your career in the 21st century?

  • Always be learning (ABL?). Learning is the key to keeping up with a rapidly changing world, so developing that skill at every opportunity will put you in the best position to succeed.

  • Also, make sure that you are learning useful skills – skills at managing people, building influence, and domain-specific knowledge are transferable skills that you can keep in your toolbox, skills on how to play the politics at a dysfunctional company are not transferable.
  • When you’re in a job, solve problems and build relationships. These are often related – you don’t build relationships by schmoozing – solving people’s problems is what earns you respect and ensures that you are remembered.

So pick jobs where you are learning useful skills, and where you can have an impact and build relationships. If you do that repeatedly, you will find new positions and careers being created for you, rather than trying to climb over other people on a ladder that others built.

One other point – people early in their careers often worry that a given position is the wrong choice and that it will put them “behind”. I tell them that there are no wrong choices at that stage, as they will learn something from every position they take. Comparing themselves to peers who may be “advancing” faster is not useful since careers are no longer comparable given the multiplicity of options – we are each creating our own path.

So, yeah. Keep learning, get things done, build relationships, and then learn how to package together your unique skill set to find or create your next opportunity. That’s my advice – what do you think?

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