Why You Should Work at Unicorns
As a generation Y person, creating my own startup has always been my biggest dream. Maybe you too. But that might not be the best option out there. Working at unicorns, at least to me, definitely offers a great option. Here’s why.
1. Following Your Passion Is A Terrible Idea
Figure out what you like to do, and then find a place that needs people like you — Richard Bolles
The notion of claiming a pre-existing passion, then do the searching to find a perfect career, was initially spread out in 1970 by Richard Bolles, a priest from San Francisco. It was a total mind shift back then, but now that idea has been dissolving, knowing so many research continuously reject it.
That passion mindset has a serious downside, which focuses on what value that job can offer him — which leads to an ego-centric attitude. When he finds difficulties on his job, he will obviously step back and go search for another opportunity, because now he can’t enjoy it anymore. Although, we know that stretching yourself, entering the growth zone, and quitting your comfort zone might be a good sign of progress.
There’s another option for that, which is to convert your mindset to the craftsman mindset, as mentioned in the book ‘So Good They Can’t Ignore You’ by Cal Newport. This mindset talks about what value can you bring to the table, and continuous improvement of yourself to reach mastery. When you do this, fortunately, passion will follow.
Angela Duckworth, on the other hand, puts interest as the first door to reach success, as mentioned in her book ‘called Grit’. I couldn’t agree more. I believe that each one of us has different talents and interests. You just gotta trust your own intuition to pick an area of work before putting your best self to deliver value to that job. And that is an important part of planning your career journey.
When you work in unicorns, you will surround yourself with so many skillful people who really put out the value through their great work. You will also get loads of support to show your potential. When you deliver values, you will get a sense of purpose, then, your passion will slowly form and become stronger.
2. Guaranteed Self Actualization
To compete and collaborate in this world, we need to be skillful to be able to solve specific problems within our responsibility. We call it ‘career capital’. We need to build it patiently and deliberately, because career capital is rare and valuable. For example, in this specialized world, companies will hire Product Manager with specific niche or industry knowledge instead of general Product Manager. A robo-advisory company will prefer to hire someone who has an AI and Finance background, rather than a guy who builds his career capital in Health industry.
What got you here, won’t get you there — Marshall Goldsmith
I learned a lot in classrooms, workshops, and online learning. I also took a lot of courses to understand the new knowledge domain, for example in Product Manager-related field. That is what separated me from others, when nobody actually has or only has a little knowledge of what Product Manager actually is. However, lately, when I go to workshops or listen to podcasts, somehow it doesn’t really add up my skill stacks. That was the time I realized that I need a different strategy to build my career capital.
My friends and I were in our Tribe Town hall, a quarterly meetup for my division. My boss, Alfredo, was the speaker and he opened a Q&A session. I doubtfully asked, “What advice do you have that is hard to get the point across?”, to that he answered, “Sense of ownership. The real meaning of ownership is actually very deep.”
That is the moment when I started to look at my career capital from a different perspective. I need to put all of my efforts to deliver value to my work, instead of spending time to learn about my career theoretically. Practical knowledge is very different from bookish knowledge. The more you work with planned and deliberate learning, combined with constant feedback from colleagues, the higher level of mastery you will reach. Luckily, those aspects are most probably provided in unicorn startups.
Moreover, Unicorns invest a lot to provide a ‘Results Only Work Environment’. You will not be micromanaged by the leaders, your autonomy is guaranteed as you can do anything with your own way, and your creativity is constantly challenged to solve complex problems. As Daniel Pink says, the three aspects motivate us in our job are actually Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose.
3. Career Path of Successful People
According to a popular article in HBR, CEOs encountered similar patterns in their past. They crawled their careers starting from the bottom. Then, their career got catapulted and accelerated. Next, they somehow shifted to a lower position, got really big challenges, and successfully survived the crash. Finally, they are on their way to be CEOs. In this story, I once again learn about the importance of career capital.
Next, successfully starting ventures actually has its own pattern as well. Say, Steve Jobs, he actually founded his first startup with Wozniak in his part-time job. This pattern echoes the theory from the book ‘Pivot’ by Jenny Blake, where people who start their ventures in their spare time actually has an imbalanced (good) rate of success. Because, they see their startup as their own laboratory with no pressure at all. This, again, will push their creativity forward without any constraints. That is the enormous power of side job.
So here’s my strategy (and you can do this too, why not):
- Working in unicorns to build my career capital, or/and
- Working in unicorns and having a side job.
I don’t see any downsides in doing so. As I see myself as a normal person (not Bill Gates, not Elon Musk, not Timmy from Kitabisa.com who already figured out his mission in social welfare early in life, not Gibran from e-Fishery who had started involving in fisheries years before he built it), I choose to follow the pattern that many people have done. So yes, I still want to create my own company in the future. Spoilers, I am really into Waqf, an endowment fund-like, for Islamic charity.
Bonus: The Obvious Perks, Benefits
Here’s the happy part. At least in Tokopedia (my company), we get:
- Competitive compensation
- Nice amount of bonus
- Health insurance
- Gym
- Snacks on Friday
- Career growth (I see Tokopedia really appreciates employees who have been there for a long time)
- Great culture and collaboration with our 3 DNAs (Focus on Consumer, Growth Mindset, and Make it Happen, Make it Better)
- A LOT OF internal and external training.
- Sometimes free concert tickets.
- Sense of Purpose :)
- And so on…
To Close The Discussion,
Everybody has their own timezone. I shared my career idea through this writing, but this obviously doesn’t apply to everybody. But, I hope this gives you a reflection of how high the potential upside is, in terms of working at Unicorns, especially in Tokopedia.
If you are interested or having thoughts about joining Tokopedia, you can email me at jodhi.adhikaprana@gmail.com. If you like my writing, you may want to click visionary.id.
