A career is a product
Since most of the skills are related to work and have a direct impact on it, I decided to touch on the topic of career a little. After all, when you ask yourself about some skills, “why should I learn this?”, then 80% of the answers will be in the “To earn a lot/more” layer. The rest will be in the personal goals layer. You can embellish that you want to be a sought-after specialist. But why would you do that? To get guarantees that you will not be left without a job and without money.
Do not think that I am a mercantile person and consider money the main thing in life. This is not the case, which has been repeatedly proven, but I will not deny the importance of money. Money is a resource for freedom and comfort. There should be so much of it that you don’t have to think about it. It can be obtained in different ways. You can work for hire, open a business, become a blogger or trade on the stock exchange. It’s all work, and as Steve Jobs said:
“Your work will fill most of your life, and the only way to be completely satisfied is to do what you think is a great thing. And the only way to do great things is to love what you do”
Steve Jobs
Remember your first job. Did you love it? Undoubtedly, there are people who immediately made a business out of a hobby or went to work in a place they liked. I think most have a different story. After university, I worked as a system administrator in an auto repair shop. Life immediately showed me what it means to hate work. Every Friday I drove home, and I was already sad that I had to go to work on Monday. Six months later I quit, and as a part-time job, my friend Stepan and I provided the Internet all summer. We earned a penny, but we visited different apartments. Seeing some of them, I thanked fate for what I have.
But seeing others, I felt humiliated because I didn’t understand how people buy such apartments. I envied them and justified that everyone had inherited, stolen or worked in a cool company because of their connections to someone big. With these toxic thoughts, I went to work at the factory, and the rest you already know. Before red_mad_robot, I never knew what it was like to love work. Work in Russian is from the word “slave”. You always get ripped as much as possible.
They want to pay less, but they need to get more work. When I was studying information about the labor market before moving to Moscow, I read a lot of articles about web development. Many have wondered where to start, and what the prospects for career development in this field were. I had no idea that people were building a career. I didn’t think there was such a possibility in general. If you look at Wikipedia, what does the word “career” mean, we will see this:
A career is a successful promotion in the field of official, social, scientific and other activities.
The keyword here is “promotion”. In order for the promotion to begin, you need to get to the right place where you can get your promotion. This is very similar to the process of bringing a product to market. Therefore, it is logical to apply a product approach to a career. You are a business that produces a product and gives the customer value. Your place of work is a client for a product, and your career is promoting you as a business in the market. In short, you give value to the employer, and he pays you for it. When you are looking for a new job, you are looking for a new client for your product.
See what products you use yourself and why you pay for them. They give you value. Save time or money, cover needs and values. Every expert in launching new products knows that 90% of startups go bankrupt precisely because they make an unnecessary product. Same happens when we’re talking about a career. If you don’t give the company any value, then it just doesn’t need you. Accordingly, you need to constantly learn in order to increase your value, stand out of competitors and correctly transfer it to customers.
“If you want to earn more, increase the value of your work for the employer”
Khariton Matveev
Now we can see that you need to choose a field and profession where there are more opportunities to increase your value. You need to look towards professions where you can influence the outcome of the business. You can optimize processes to reduce costs, launch new services, or increase people’s productivity. It is important to bring any benefit that directly improves business results.
You can choose the path of indirect influence when your responsibility grows and you start managing people or business lines. In general, I consider the metaphor of the career ladder outdated. I really like Peter Drucker’s metaphor that this is not a ladder, but a vine. There are many ways to grow, and not only up, but it needs to be carefully looked after. Concentrate not on the steps in the form of positions, but on competence.
You can continue to go into the analogy of a career with a product or business, but the essence is simple. When you form a development plan, then focus on those skills that will help you increase your value to the employer as quickly as possible. Figure out how your employer produces value for its customers, and what skills will help you improve or optimize it. With this approach, you will develop and develop your career as well. So, there are definitely more chances to get reasonable arguments of your influence on the employer’s business in order to talk about a promotion.
Although it’s not about money at all. When you think about the value of business and learn how to improve it, you will reach a completely new level of career development. You will choose employers, not vice versa. What exactly you need to do you can read in Reed Hoffman’s book “The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career” The author is an entrepreneur, venture capitalist and co — founder of LinkedIn. The book is simple and useful. At the end of each chapter, it is written what you need to start doing tomorrow to organize career development.
I definitely advise you to read it. I wanted to inspire you with such a paradigm of thinking about a career. You can increase the value by developing soft skills and hard skills. And the first ones are more priority. Hard skills will give specialization, but soft skills will give the opportunity to change specialization, to stand out of competitors and take more responsibility. With a product approach, you will always have an answer to the question, “why should I learn this?”. You will also be aware of what you lack to do what others do not know how to do. The process is not easy, but if you do only easy stuff, then you do not grow.
“Be someone who is difficult to compete with”
Sam Altman
