What doesn't seem like work?
What do you do when you stand at one of the most critical crossroads of your life facing one of those decisions whose repercussions could follow you your entire life, all this at the young age of 23? You have panic attacks, sleepless nights and then some more.
I should know; I had to decide on how and where to begin my career just after my MBA; I had offers from a couple of Fortune 500 conglomerates, one company disrupting the real-estate industry, one which is the first-mover in the digital content space in India, one startup out-innovating several biggies in the highly regulated payments space in India and one which is already a global biggie in the social media space with over 10 millions users spread across the globe. I spent a lot of time introspecting and deliberating on which company to join and why (Needless to say, I eliminated the Fortune 500 biggies very early on in the process for reasons I outline below) and I hope this post really helps anyone tasked with making similarly difficult career choices.
I decided early on that I wanted to join an early-stage startup experiencing rapid growth and one which would grant me the sort of opportunity and responsibility which a Fortune 500 company couldn’t, to create an impact equal to my talents and my potential. Why?
A. Because if you really really want to make a dent in the universe, if you really want to chance at changing the world, that position is an extreme rarity in any company, even say a Google.
B. Rather than finding validation in working for a big brand, I’d rather let my work speak for itself.
Whereas people may work for a big brand for a variety of personal or financial reasons, only highly-motivated, passionate, driven and ambitious risk-takers would work for an early-stage startup. And working with these kind of people at such a young age, is the fastest learning curve one could possibly ask for since you really are an average of the people you spend most of your time with.
Prestige is a huge part of working for a corporate bigwig. Prestige is like a powerful magnet that warps even your beliefs about what you enjoy. It causes you to work not on what you like, but what you'd want other’s to think you like.
It’s really important to remember that plenty of companies we now consider prestigious were anything but at first. Flipkart even a few short years ago comes to mind—though almost any established modern-day company would do. So just do what you like, and let prestige take care of itself.
‘Experts’ like your parents or well-meaning relatives may advise you against the same but it’s easy to see when the experts are wrong, it's often because they're experts on an earlier version of the world.
C. Freedom. Do I wanna spend the best years on my life working on PPTs and running around for approvals? Or do I wanna execute, make mistakes and iterate? Remember how happy and excited you got about stuff as a kid? When was the last time you got as excited about your work?
Freedom is almost always, inversely proportional to the size of the organisation. It’s an inevitable consequence of bigness, true even of the smartest companies around today.
D. There is something to be said about a culture where you can just walk into your office in plain shorts, whenever you feel like and work at your most productive hours unlike a corporate bigwig which assumes that your most productive hours in any day are from 9 to 6 and you HAVE to trade in a certain amount of time each day for the amount you’re being paid! You do as instructed.
The system we grew up with is based on a simple formula: Do your job. Show up. Work hard. Listen to the boss. Stick it out. Be part of the system. You'll be rewarded.
That's the scam. Strong words, but true. You've been scammed. You traded years of your life to be part of a giant con in which you are most definitely not the winner.
If you've been playing that game, it's no wonder you're frustrated. That game is over.
There are no longer any great jobs where someone else tells you precisely what to do.
A day's work for a day's pay (work <=> pay) cheapens us.
This simple formula is bothersome for two reasons:
1. Are you really willing to sell yourself out so cheap? Do you mortgage an entire (irreplaceable) day of your life for a few bucks?
2. Is that it? Is the transaction over? If we're even at the end of the day as the formula says, then you owe me nothing and I owe you nothing in return.You have become a day laborer and I have become a day boss.
The alternative is to treasure what it means to do a day's work. It's our one and only chance to do something productive today, and it's certainly not available to someone merely because he is the high bidder. A day's work is your chance to do art, to create a gift, to do something that matters. As your work gets better and your art becomes more important, competition for your gifts will increase and you'll discover that you can be choosier about whom you give them to.
E. The other big force leading people astray is money. Money by itself is not that dangerous.The test of whether people love what they do is whether they'd do it even if they weren't paid for it—even if they had to work at another job to make a living. If they could make a comfortable living working on something else.
The advice of parents will tend to err on the side of money. All parents tend to be more conservative for their kids simply because, as parents, they share risks more than rewards. If your eight year old son decides to climb a tall tree, or your teenage daughter decides to date the local bad boy, you won't get a share in the excitement, but if your son falls, or your daughter gets pregnant, you'll have to deal with the consequences.
F. When you see something being built first-hand, it inspires you and gives you confidence that it can be replicated. You are exposed to a variety of tools,skills and people in the startup circle, that you may very well see yourself building your own company a few years down the line. And building your own company is the fastest way to becoming CEO, isn’t it?
I’ve devised a simple test which can help determine if you are truly satisfied with the work that you’re doing? I’d like to call it the ‘weekend test’.
Just ask yourself this simple question: Do I regard each weekend as the prize and the time I spend working as the pain I endure to earn it?
If the answer is yes, it’s time to make a few tough calls.
It's hard to find work you love; it must be, if so few do. So don't underestimate this task. And don't feel bad if you haven't succeeded yet. In fact, if you admit to yourself that you're discontented, you're a step ahead of most people, who are still in denial. If you're surrounded by colleagues who claim to enjoy work that you find contemptible, odds are they're lying to themselves. Not necessarily, but probably.
It's also wise, early on, to seek jobs that let you do many different things, so you can learn faster what various kinds of work are like. If you work hard at being a bond trader for ten years, thinking that you'll quit and write novels when you have enough money, what happens when you quit and then discover that you don't actually like writing novels?
The stranger your tastes seem to other people, the stronger evidence they probably are of what you should do.
Getting Rich:
To get rich you need to get yourself in a situation with two things, measurement and leverage. You need to be in a position where your performance can be measured, or there is no way to get paid more by doing more. And you have to have leverage, in the sense that the decisions you make have a big effect.
Everyone who gets rich by their own efforts will be found to be in a situation with measurement and leverage: CEOs, movie stars, hedge fund managers, professional athletes.
A good hint to the presence of leverage is the possibility of failure. Upside must be balanced by downside, so if there is big potential for gain there must also be a terrifying possibility of loss. CEOs, stars, fund managers, and athletes all live with the sword hanging over their heads; the moment they start to suck, they're out. If you're in a job that feels safe, you are not going to get rich, because if there is no danger there is almost certainly no leverage.
But you don't have to become a CEO or a movie star to be in a situation with measurement and leverage. All you need to do is be part of a small group working on a hard problem.
This is easy advice to give. It's hard to follow, especially when you're young. But then thinking long-term is easily one of the best competitive advantages to have, simply because next to no-one really does it.
If you’re merely good enough, follow instructions to the T and are basically reliable, well so are thousands of others and I’m sorry to say, you are replaceable.
What we need today are gamblers, provocateurs and original thinkers.
People who are ready to exchange their vulnerabilities and the fear of failing for the certainty of instructions handed out to them.
Life is not a dress rehearsal—this is probably it. Lets make it count. Here’s to hoping we are more reckless, vulnerable and foolish: Almost all of the magic lies in there. :)