Being Geek

Chapter 35. A Deliberate Career

I want to hear the story of how you got your first gig in high tech. Like me, you probably did all the things you were supposed to do: you went to the career center, searched the job boards, and attended the career fairs.

It was all vaguely confusing. Nothing was concrete. You threw your pathetic excuse for a resumé to dozens of randomly smiling people and wondered, “Am I ever going to get a job?”

And then it happened. A vacation in Italy. Some bizarre, unimaginable confluence of events that started with you being blind drunk and broke in Florence. You met this guy on the street who was clearly American, you hit it off, and long story short, this chance meeting on the other side of the planet resulted in you getting your first engineering gig at a fashionable start-up in Silicon Valley.

Your thought as you settled into your bright’n’shiny new gig was, “I’ve no control over what is happening to me. I just need to go with the flow, and I’m going to randomly meet someone who is going to randomly believe in me and then money will rain from the sky.”

As an avid fan of instinct, a frequent receiver of random career blessings, and a professional identifier of random opportunity, I understand and have lived this perspective, but hope isn’t going to define your career: you need a strategy.

Three Choices

When I write the word “strategy,” I picture this thick book with a light-blue cover and black binding. The title is My Career Strategy