he Insider Guide to Careers
Insider information, secrets and tips about getting hired and building careers. For employees and job candidates.
The fear of technological obsolescence drives a frequent question I get from students and working professionals. In a world where you get branded as a mechanical, computer science or electrical engineer for life, what field should you specialize in so that you are not impacted by technological change? Workplace change is not a new phenomenon. Right from the discovery of fire 1.5 million years ago to the changes of the 20th century, continuous upheavals and revolutions have always been a part of human life. It is just that the transformations have become faster and faster, needing students and employees to also respond with alacrity. No longer is there a safe space or cushion to mitigate the labour market shocks. Every employee has to embrace change with open arms now and incorporate a “growth mindset” to deal with disruption in their daily life.
Let us look at what Sam Altman had to say:
This verse is borrowed verbatim from the Bhagavad Gita 2:47. Sam Altman is no stranger to Indian philosophy, having spent a long time in an ashram, possibly of Ramana Maharishi.
For people today, all this is counterintuitive. People waste their time living the lives that others want them to lead. They chase money and promises of quick wealth. They rarely build anything long-lasting, as that requires too much hard work and patience. Obsessed with rewards and enticed by instant gratification, they have no idea of their long-term passion and run behind the flavours of the month. Every couple of years, some new transformational trend appears, and everybody is behind that quixotic search for El Dorado. Rarely do they ask themselves if that is what they absolutely want to do. You will know what you want to do when you introspect deep within. The answers will always come from within, never from anyone telling you what to do. Of course, there are many student loans, family expectations and burdens for people early in their careers. You will have to solve the existing problems before you decide to do the things that really matter in your life. The fun fact about individual problems is that they will all end one day. Be patient until that day comes; when that happens, remember the original goal – to follow your long term passion. Most people get so distracted and sidetracked in life that by the time all their issues vanish, they have lost all their energies and become hopeless cynics. They are not ready to take a bet on themselves after being jaded in life. If you cannot help yourself in life, then who can?
Meditation is important not just in your personal life but also in the workplace. Learn to focus on your inner self. Avoid the testosterone rush to run after riches, crave public adulation, be recognized by the media and be praised by your community. The only truth that matters is whether you feel content in the work you do and if you get satisfaction by influencing the world positively. What others think about you is not good or bad; it is inconsequential. The person everyone struggles to answer to is our inner self. The self is the image of the best person you can ever be. This exalted version of yourself is the only person worth answering to. This inner voice will be with you day and night, decade after decade. Even in your final days, you must answer this self regarding what your stint in this world has meant. This relationship between you and your inner self is a deeply personal journey. Wealth, fame and recognition have no consequence in this deeply personal relationship.
To begin with, do not enter a company thinking that your job will be there forever. You will only be there as long as you are wanted. Every day can be your last day unless you are adding value. Value is not just your contribution to the company’s bottom line and helping the team become better; it is also about yourself. It is about what you have learned on a daily and weekly basis. If you are in a job where you have learnt nothing for many months, you should consider changing your job through lateral movement or by changing companies. The cost of learning nothing new for six months to a year could spell a lot of trouble. One gets accustomed to a new culture of idleness, sloth, office-politics and turf wars. The people who indulge in these antics are the folks who know that there is nothing more they can achieve in their lives. To grow in life, you can either get better yourself or push everybody else down to look better than the others. People with a “growth mindset” embrace the earlier strategy, and those with a fixed mindset adopt the latter. With a fixed mindset, you adopt a strategy of waiting for things to happen to you. With a growth mindset, you actively venture into the unknown, embrace hard work, and learn every day.
The world of tomorrow is not necessarily such an evil place, ready to devour you. It will bring up new opportunities if you can wisely spot them. If you are established in an evolving space as an expert, you will find great opportunities in the future. Inside a Pan IIT organization I volunteer with, my team had a chance to work with Persistent systems. The company was established in 1990 and went public in 2010. It is currently worth more than 7 billion dollars, and almost 95% of that increase came after 2020. It takes time to establish trust and a long time for the market to turn favourable. It is the same for the most powerful person on Wall Street – Larry Fink. Blackrock was started in 1988. The two biggest companies in the world, Apple and Microsoft, were founded in the mid-1970s. Everybody is a nobody when they begin.
Citadel, the most famous hedge fund of all time, started in 1990. Getting enormous success takes a lot of trust; the only way to build trust is over time. One shot at big success takes decades of hard work and patience. This forbearance is what some students and startup founders of today lack. They over-promise and under-deliver. They rarely have any of the skills they claim to have. Fancy and expensive degrees not backed up by fortitude, hard work, and sincerity cut no ice with anyone. Yes, there could be short-term success where someone can fool everybody else, much like what happened with the much-hyped company Nikola, but one day, the bubble will fall apart.
To sum it up, here are the three tips for career success:
1) Identify your passion that needs no reward – Dharma
2) Focus on your interest 100%. This means working damn hard and learning something new every day.
3) Stop hankering after rewards. I do not mean run away from reward but do not exclusively hanker after it. Work is its greatest reward. If this homily does not make sense, go back to step one.
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