Careers — a walk in the park?

I’d like to confess my latest fetish: reading Shogun to immerse myself into the Japanese samurai culture, while sipping a bit of Nikka Whisky from the Barrel.

Hint: after you’ve finished reading for the night, you’ll sleep “like a mule” but don’t drink more than one small glass at a time. Ah! And, no ice.

I’m astonished how a deep samurai society like Japan is now facing this: “Japan’s Lost Generation Is Still Jobless and Living With Their Parents” — a “nice” read on bloomberg.

Makes you wonder, when will programmers start losing their jobs too? Maybe it’s not that far after all… just check this tweet to lose your mind.

So, yes, careers are not a walk in the park. And I’m not even sure if this is the right analogy, I’m not even sure if it’s a walk or even if there is a park.

(POV from Eduardo VII park in Lisbon, an actual nice place to take a walk)

The year is 2018, and we’re kicking-off our first tech conference in Berlin with a red pill, blue pill video reference. Remember the scene on Matrix that depicts Morpheus handing over to Neo, who’s been deadlocked in a prison-desk programmer job at a grey-corporate, the choice to quit that mullet life and begin a new challenge, or to remain inside the matrix, forever.

To re-watch this epic moment of amateur cinema go here.

While this sounds great, it’s such a binary system. It made some sense back then but makes no more. Our society has evolved. Our company’s vision has evolved.

It’s now 2020 and we no longer see the world into Neos or Smiths. We see a world with a diverse color spectrum, a time-continuum where talent can cut a pill in half (someone would call that a half-measure, neh?), or take two pills at the same time (multiple and parallel careers calling?), or not even doing that in-person, what about remote experience with home-delivery career pills?

Our world evolved and our futures are lining up to be made.

When we first started building Landing.Jobs, back in 2013 (ask yourself: what was your career like back then?), we were on our way to disrupt the tech hiring sector! We had this “automate-everything” approach in order to remove the unproductive human element out of the equation — how ironic, uh?

Even though a Shoshin mindset (aka a curious mind of a child) was needed to stir the waters, we’ve evolved.

We’re now more like a Samurai who is patient, decisive, loyal and wise. We see humans as the core center of the equation for hiring and career development, and we’ve been working hard to make sure our core products resonate with this renewed ambition.

One of the things we, actively, started doing was to create new career products to allow talent to cope with this ever-growing hectic work life and crazy society where the white rabbit is always evading us and never to be followed. There are no two pills anymore — how about three or four, or a thousand? Yep, I told you: careers are complex!

So, maybe we still have a bit of Shoshin inside us?

That’s exactly why we need to be eternal students and empathic human beings who know some career tricks and can guide you, who can be your career architects, who can help you re-skill and up-skill in order to keep up with the future of work.

We need Neos and Smiths to work together to architect a better Matrix.

Today we’re announcing a new set of career tools to help talent navigate this crazy world of work, and we need to do this together — as a community. As of today, you can keep up with everything we’re doing for both hiring and career development-wise on Future.Works (read more about this new brand here).

And, in case you’re wondering what our latest inventions are, you can check our new talent agent, career coaching and re-skilling products. If you find yourself stuck in a career conundrum, then… let’s do this!

Pedro Oliveira

Founder @Landing.Jobs and @Future.Works