Maximizing for career success as a professional, Part I

For most people, your professional life aka your 9-5 compromises somewhere between 1/3 or 1/4 of your time. For many working in early stage companies - it could be a lot more than that.

There’s so much advice out there for founders. 1-2% of people out there will have the stomach to put up with the whirlwind of being a founder and starting a business. For 95% of people bring a professional could be extremely rewarding and I wanted to write this piece on my thoughts on how to maximize your career as a professional.

In general when you are working as a professional they are 4 core things to look for

1. Do you resonate with the mission?

2. Whats the learning opportunity?

3. Do you fit into the company culture?

4. Compensation package

When maximizing for compensation conventional wisdom is find a role, reevaluate every 12-24 months if you don’t get a promotion/raise & jump ship if needed. It makes sense because its often easier to get a promotion when you switch jobs. By constantly moving you keep getting pay bumps and more responsibilities.

What i’ve learned from some of the most successful professionals in my network is somewhat unconventional wisdom.

Once they find a mission they resonate with, a role with learning upside and a culture they vibe with they stay in the role for much longer than conventional wisdom would warrant. Staying in the role despite having far significant monetary or title opportunities in the market.

What these individuals realize is getting the first 3 right is more important than the 4th. Being able to defer the financial incentive for a learning opportunity is a power move. Later on in live that experience would much more than make up for your lost wages.

And when you stay with a company long enough it might not always be possible to only use financial incentive as a reward. There’s always going to be some company in the market willing to pay you more money.

The reason these people stay is they are focussed on the learning opportunity. By staying in the company longer, they build trust and with trust they get exposed to opportunities which come along with that trust. These are often unconventional opportunities with responsibilities different from the initial job description.

This gives them a much broader skillset in the longer term that their counterparts who jump ship might miss out on. Special projects or navigating difficult circumstances are examples of projects that are filled with goodies that develop a broad range of experience.

These people become irreplaceable in the company. Becoming irreplaceable has asymmetric upside. Thats because people remember the absolute best people they worked with and want to work with them again.

• If the company does well they might get additional equity grants which could be given just to the one individual.

• If when someone else leaves the company they probably try to poach these people at their next company - with a much higher title and comp often skipping a few levels.

• Even if the company fails these individuals are going to be picked up before anybody else. Again with a much hight title and comp

• They might develop the right experience having seen enough to go start their own venture

Having said this - Being at a job for a long period of time is not enough. You have to be growing at a tremendous rate, reinventing yourself every 12 - 18 months. At every growth step you need to give up 80% of the work which made you successful in your last stint and focus on reinventing yourself for the next challenge. Thats how you get access to the unconventional opportunities.

Demonstrate time and time again that you can solve hard problems for the company and everything else will work itself out. The best people I’ve seen don’t ask for promotions or raises, they let their work do the talking and become irreplaceable in the company. Becoming irreplaceable has asymmetric upside. Willing to leave some $$ on the table and deferring financial gratification is a power move. To double your income, triple your rate of learning