Thinking of career capital

22 Apr 2022

It’s that time of year - when admits to B-Schools roll out and a pretentious Linkedin is filled with the posts about folks joining a fancy $100K business school.

And for those not joining a fancy school - there’s of course “I’m now a Noogler post”. Give a year and FAANG will absorb literally every knowledge worker in India.

LOL, last statement didn’t age well. Thanks to US Federal reserve.

Anyway, back to topic - while I have nothing for good wishes for your fancy admit or dream job. Infact, for all qualms I have, I’m happy to see people achieve their potential but alas, comparision monkey (read competition) is so ingrained, in few weak moments, I do circle back to my various decisions that has landed me in my current situation - career wise. Before I garner pity - I think I’ve been more than lucky to have a nice gig, intellectual growth with excellent trajectory.

That however doesn’t mean I will ever be content, years of conditioning of worrying about future won’t just go away in a smack, right?

And as I recently hit my official milestone of venturing into late 20s - colloquial anxiety has again piqued. It’s almost ironical how I took a leave on 15th (Friday) motivated to dedicate the day to self care and ended up partially panicking with writing a note on possible path ahead. This also got amplified by conversation with my folks where I was told to make up my mind on next organic milestone of personal life (read marriage) where principal argument were the “receding market of eligible bachelor” and how this is right age to get settled where I got ambush-advised by multiple unrelated people at random places with advice that I have to admit made sort of sense, bizzarely. And I’m not going to discuss it here, maybe another post.

Anywho - I wrote this post near about August and a lot has happened since then, the tech stock market has virtually crashed. Almost all big tech has had layoffs and Indian companies are following the lead.

Let’s face it - no one thought it wass sustainable. Post covid boom - Economic slowdown was expected, crash was imminent, valuation hit were expected but layoffs are always uncomfortable. Specially in firms with comfortable FCF and herculean margin. Why would Apple even think of freeze is literally beyond me but it does show that at the end, it’s shareholder value that’s supreme. You were chased by recuriter but it was literally free money then so get off high hourse that you’re important. No matter your designation of Staff Engineer - you’re just a number in cost centre side of balance sheet.

This begs to answer if all we do is even worth it. Let’s clarify one thing before venturing deep, which is :

Nothing is ever enough

Unless you hit a colloquial lottery - you’d almost always be working to next milestone with no FatFire in sight. For last decade, the definition of lottery for knowledge worker in tech was :

1. Joining early stage and hope it becomes big (High Risk)
2. FAANG gig with refreshers (Low risk as liquid and always go up)

While your first option remains, the recent bust of tech IPO will surely deter your prospects. I understand that what you’d potentially liquidate would be significant (possible even 20x of Seed allocation) but it’s just such a rare event. Add to the fact that by the time it’d happen - you’d have almost destroyed your physical health, mental health, relationships due to long work commitment and lost hobby that you cared about. Begs to differ if it’s even a worthy choice.

Brings we to option #2 which is was the sought after position for all smart folks of decade. But cometh the fed resevrve and they saw almost 100K drop in total comp. Not a joke! Worst part - issuing infite RSU, as it turns out - is not sustainable. Who would have thought!

But wait - why are we discussing this? Aren’t we supposed to talk about career capital?

Well, my point of coming to this is exactly that. We should not be looking at career in isolation because it’s just such a big part of life.

• We should also not expect any big event to happen - if it does - good riddance but just take life as it is. Importantly - Job, as it is. Give 100% if you like it by trying to excel but probably see it just means to an end and not the whole journey.
• Secondly, always know that you're dispensable. Your title, perks, comp mean nothing when push comes to shove. Always be paranoid about this fact which will inturn make you ready to intreview and face the mini crisis of imminent layoff should it happen. Be OK because it really is OK!
• Your credentials matter but more importantly your network - even in that what truly matters - are people you worked with. Not the random person you met on twitter. An ex-colleague referring you to a good gig or calling you to work with him is best possible validation you can have. So nurture relationships and be kind, helpful. A smartass with less EQ works well only in bull market in leadership exclusively.
• Investment are your best friend. It's ok to have aspiration in life and increase your quality of life but with each increase in your comp, the contribution to investement should be more than material things (except for health + food which are never that costly). This will be a cushion you'll be thankful for later in life when you have more reponsibility. Just to calrify - I've moved after from my thought process of going for FIRE because it feels a state of mind, what will you call enough. I'm okay if my interest on investment payout for basic neccessity i.e cost of living at place I choose - maybe UAE, India or UK! In India, that's about 1L/month, in UAE - that's about AED 10K per month. For this, I'd need a corpus of 1.25cr in India and 2.5cr for UAE which is something that's doable with current run-rate of average knowledge worker.

I know this is generic advise but try to go through it once and evaluate what is important and doable, your career is important - so is your mental peace, your relationship, your family, your partner and above all you - YOU! If you’re not at peace with your life, what shall a VP title do :)

Shobhit