\1 Career advice + luck Tweetstorm based on the work of the legendary venture capitalist Marc Andreessen (@pmarca)
1st rule: Don’t plan your career.
Why? You can't plan your career because you have no idea what's going to happen in the future. Life is chaos.
1st rule: Don’t plan your career.
Why? You can't plan your career because you have no idea what's going to happen in the future. Life is chaos.
\2 So what do you do instead?
Focus on developing skills and pursuing opportunities.
We will get to skills in a moment, but there are two kinds of opportunities:
Those that COME TO YOU and those that YOU CREATE.
Focus on developing skills and pursuing opportunities.
We will get to skills in a moment, but there are two kinds of opportunities:
Those that COME TO YOU and those that YOU CREATE.
\3 Those opportunities that come to you are timing based. Right place, right time. If you get one of these, drop everything and seize it. If not, someone else will. As in investing, easy alpha only lasts so long. Get the gains while they last.
\4 Those opportunities that you create should be viewed from a risk-return perspective. Just graduated from college? Have geographic flexibility? You can take far more risk now than someone that has multiple mouths to feed.
\5 The key is to look at each opportunity in the context of your entire career, kind of like a portfolio of opportunities. Just like an investor, your allocation to “riskier” opportunities will change through time.
\6 However, what is risky is not easy to define. Why? Because you are always facing risk. The decision to NOT pursue opportunities can be risky as well. As I have said before, “The biggest risk you can take in life is taking no risk at all.”
\7 So what do I recommend? As @choffstein once said to me, “maximize your surface area of luck.” In other words, expose yourself to more people, more projects, more networks because you never know where a big break can come from.
\8 Compare the person who moves to NYC to the person who never leaves their small hometown. Their “luck landscapes” are vastly different in size. One is like a huge spider web grabbing everything the wind blows its way, the other isn’t.
\9 So what skills allow you to maximize your luck? These change with the times, but technical, management, and communication skills seem to be the most important. If you can be one of the best in any one of these, do it.
\10 However, if you are like me, and you can’t be the best in any one thing, be in the top 25% of a few things. That’s my forte. Top 25% in programming, writing, and Tweetstorming (I hope haha). This advice comes from Scott Adams: dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_bl…
\11 Lastly, the industry and the city you go to both matter. For the industry, make sure it is growing, and for the city, make sure it is the heart of your industry. Wanna do tech? => Silicon Valley. Wanna do finance? => NYC.
Why? This is the area of maximum opportunity.
Why? This is the area of maximum opportunity.
\12 If you are interested in learning more, please read Andreessen’s full set of thoughts here (click through at the top to go to the next page): pmarchive.com/guide_to_caree…
As always, best of “luck” from Of Dollars And Data
As always, best of “luck” from Of Dollars And Data
