Career trajectories are non-linear.

less than 1m read

·Nov 3, 2024

So this question is: What is the best advice you've ever received?

Career trajectories are not linear. Especially if you start a company, you might actually bypass a bunch of things, but it might not feel that in the moment. A lot of people that start startups feel like they're getting behind in their career trajectory because other people are getting well-paid jobs, advancing, getting fancy titles, and you are not, because you're solving something that is tremendously hard.

The truth is, um, you are doing a lot of things, which means you're learning a lot of things at the same time. Many of these things are tremendously valuable in other companies.

So, I worked in a bunch of startups, and when I joined EDBB in 2012, I was one of the first five or six product managers. It turned out that most of us actually are former founders, because we really valued that. And that was unknown to me, sort of like when I became a founder, that being a founder is actually a really valuable thing when you join another company.

So I think my best advice here is: career trajectories are not linear.

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Career trajectories are non-linear.

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