Why You Need an Inspiring Career Narrative for the Next Decade

I was recently encouraged by a friend to articulate why one needs a career narrative, especially in the technology industry. As we roll into 2020, many of us in our mid-career are taking the time to reflect on what is the purpose of our work. Constructing inspiring career narrative - a story - is most powerful technique for providing guidance and meaning to one's career.

Having a career narrative accomplishes 3 very distinct goals. I will illustrate these goals through my own journey on crafting my own narrative. Over the last 2 decades, I've gradually changed my own career narrative from "Inventor" to "Engineer and Entrepreneur".

Goal 1: We learn how our world works through stories that link actions to outcomes.

Experiments have show that we rely more on stories than direct observation to understand causality. Having a career narrative allows people to understand how your actions impacted a company objective / etc, but it also helps with performance reviews because it makes it easier for others to "advocate" for you.

Personal Example: Transitioning from "Inventor" to "Engineer and Entrepreneur"

Early on in my childhood, I've always wanted to be an "Inventor" who creates "novel inventions". However, as I grew up, it turns out that "novel" VS "useful" are often 2 very distinct things, therefore being an inventor is an important insufficient to make impact in this very complicated and messy world. For example:

An "inventor" may come up with a novel invention, but an "entrepreneur" has sell the that invention for money, hence by definition seeks to create inventions that are useful to society. Furthermore, inventions need to ultimately be built, therefore it requires "engineers" to design and build those inventions.

Goal 2: Only stories worth telling are stories worth living

I hear many people ask me - how do I have an exciting and fulfilling career ? Every human being is different, but at the end of the day - if your own career narrative is not inspiring to to yourself, it's going to be hard to motivate yourself to come into work every day.

Great career narratives often have what we call the "heros' journey". Just like a hero's quest, most exciting careers consists of beginnings, meeting mentors, crossing first challenges, defeats, facing down inner demons, and comebacks. They never consist of linear progressions of increase responsibilities such as the typical career ladder you see in a corporation. Infact,

Personal Example: Juxtaposition of Engineer with Entrepreneurs

What I personally find most interesting about my career is purposely juxtaposing engineering with entrepreneurship. When one thinks about a great "entrepreneur", they conjure up images of someone who leaps from one venture to the next, taking calculated risks along the way. When one thinks about great "engineer", they conjure up images of someone who systematically builds new skills and hones' the craft. What draws me to this narrative the most is the fact that very very few people can manage both successfully. By definition, this is hard - but interesting and differentiated, which hopefully will have an impact on society. Furthermore, as I "level up" in different skills as an engineer, I'll be able to participate in more "fantastically" inventions. Progressing my career from enterprise software (e.g. Application Performance monitoring for Mobile) to Quantum Computing plays very well into my own career narrative.

Goal 3: Stories define what you "ought" to do

All great stories has their heroic characters following their own Guiding Star. By having a career narrative that you believe in, you ultimately can derive "self-esteem" by acting the way expected by your own narrative. Career narratives, especially crafted in the language of a hero's journey, also allows for a certain degree of "failure" and "growth". Every hero has their ups and down, therefore by when we encounter failure in our own career, we realized that those failures are just the necessary precursors to greater success. Lastly, career narratives help eliminate what you should not do, regardless of how beneficial it will be in the short term. This helps with creating focus, and long term growth.

Personal Example : Expectations of an Entrepreneur and Engineer as a forcing function for career development.

What I love about my own career narrative is that it is a forcing function to make me do things that I'm not necessarily good at, or complacent at - especially working for a large company like Google.

Expectations of an Entrepreneur that I'm still learning

• Getting out of the building - a key requirement of any great entrepreneur is talking to customers to get a first hand information what they need, and how their products are delivering value to them. This is probably the #1 problem of large companies, because decision makers end up being disconnected with the end customers.
• Raising money - great entrepreneurs are able to raise money, and deploy the money effectively to build value. I'm not good at this, but I'm learning.

Engineers in particular are expected to build things. Given that I don't actually don't build stuff (either designing hardware, or coding software), how to I justify to myself that I'm an engineer especially when my main interaction with engineers are in the context of program and product management ? I code engineers. Yeap - as impersonal as it may sound, I believe this is my role as an engineer. Project management literally is the development of instructions that are issued to human beings. Engineers are simply complex programs that take in certain inputs and create certain outputs. However, all great coders understand the code that are using, which actually plays into my other personal strength - empathy. Without empathy, one cannot possibly understand how an engineer reacts to a particular input. But just like how great programmers rely on "peer programming" and "code reviews", I believe my best work results from working with multiple people - engineers , coders, and customers - to come up with project requirements and plans. I like working with engineers, and I especially like creating teams of engineers building impactful products.

Conclusion

As we transition to the new decade, all of us can use a refresh of our own career narrative. If you need help with your own career narrative, feel free to contact me on Linkedin. You only live your life story once, and it is up to us to write it.