The best advice I didn’t take, and why

Working internationally will slow down your career trajectory.???

Don’t change disciplines.??

Stay in engineering organizations.?

Only change one facet of your job at a time.?

Have kids later.??

Today's blog provides some advice. About advice.?

Career advice is helpful when it enables you to do your best and most differentiated work. My professional differentiation leads with my ability to bring clarity and help teams develop a path forward through complex and ambiguous problems and opportunities. That's because I do my best work when I am in learning mode, open to other perspectives or approaches, a mode in which my motivation to figure things out propels me to provide my best leadership. I really thrive when I can help simplify complex, multi-faceted systems to drive transparent outcomes.?

In my article about creating an AI model for my career, I described how I tuned my AI model to optimize for a wide variety of experiences so that I could grow my ability to figure things out and lead multi-disciplinary teams. This "AI model for my career" approach is very much a reflection looking back, though – I can’t say that I thought this through early in my career. It was more that I was seeking to always stay in that growth mode I just described, where I am rapidly learning and changing my perspective. What I did have, though, was a lot of advice - from a lot of people. I remember being startled by how frequently people would find opportunities to give me unsolicited advice on my career. Much of the advice I have received over the years is aligned to generally understood career “rules” - and works well for many people. I’m here to tell you that it’s okay if common career best practices don’t make sense to you or don’t work for the way you’re navigating your career. Choosing between good advice and bad advice requires that you know what differentiates you.?

Let’s review some of that advice. ?

“Working internationally (aka away from company headquarters) will slow down your career trajectory.”? If you measure career trajectory in terms of level movement per year, I do not believe working internationally slowed down my career trajectory. Even if it had, my career accelerated in the long run because it enriched my experience. I could now bring global teams' perspective into rooms that had been missing it. It's also an experience I and my family will always treasure. Looking back, I realized that I received this advice from peers and mentors who had not worked internationally.?

“Don’t change disciplines: it’s most important to specialize.” The idea behind this advice is to grow one's reputation and expertise within one setting rather than change to a different environment. This advice works for many, and has grown impressive careers for many of my peers. For me, changing disciplines helped me build my multi-disciplinary perspective. Now, later in my career, it’s truly a differentiator to be able to think from the perspective of most of the key disciplines of our company. I'm often asked to contribute to problem areas or join decisions because I can act as a translator between different perspectives and priorities. ?

"Don’t leave the engineering/product team.” This one was probably one of the hardest decisions I made. I hugely value the 15+ years I spent in product development, engineering, and everything it entails – by far the most significant portion of my career. A few years ago, an opportunity came up to move into the customer and partner facing commercial organization along with part of my engineering and design team, specifically to tackle an opportunity I truly believed in to create more business value for customers by enabling solutions that integrate multiple products. For a while, every piece of advice I was given was the same: don’t do it. All from people who had followed that advice and believed that it was risky to move out of core engineering in a software company. But then I started to talk to people in executive positions, and they said the exact opposite: that deeply understanding how we take products to our customers and partners, what truly works and doesn’t, and developing a strong market understanding is critical for leadership. I took the plunge and have learned more in the past 3 years than I had in a long time. I’m very happy that I didn’t take the “don’t move” advice. I also believe that if I take another role in engineering team leadership, it will be as a much stronger leader. ?

“Only change one job facet at a time.” If you think about job roles as a combination of dimensions such as location, job discipline (finance, engineering, sales), individual contributor vs manager… many people will recommend changing only one of those things at a time. It makes a lot of common sense – you can continue to deliver value in the unchanged areas while you’re ramping up on the new area. Why hasn’t this typically been great advice for me? Because I thrive in complexity and ambiguity and changing two or more things at a time energizes me and grows my differentiated qualities. This is back to the point of selecting the advice that best fits with your personality, priorities, and how you thrive. ?

“Have kids later.” I’ve heard many times how important it is to establish your career before having kids (if you are someone who has chosen that life path!)? Being a parent is a long-term commitment that changes almost every part of life and can be a lot when you’re in the most flexible stage of your career. It turns out that for me, having kids as a young professional in my mid and late 20s helped me create balance in my life. I grew immensely in thinking through (and practicing) priorities and purpose. Later in my career, I'm finding there’s nothing as demanding of a growth mindset as living with teenagers – so I get to stay on my toes at work and at home. I would never claim to have the right advice about family timing for anyone, but I included this one just to point out that no matter what the topic, you’ll probably get mainstream advice and it’s ok if you find that it doesn’t fit your priorities. ?

My advice to you (pun intended): while you soak up and benefit from lots of well-meaning advice from friends, colleagues, family and acquaintances, remember that it’s ok to completely ignore it if your gut tells you it’s not right for you. Your career might just benefit.

What advice have you received that was useful? Not useful??

20 things I learned in 20 years ?

1. Power of the network ?
2. Getting sponsors ?
3. Growing trust, even in hard?times ?
4. The best advice I didn’t take, and why – this one ?