The Evolving Career

For the 6-year work, I accomplished a lot. This was the beginning of my career and among my two unqualified successes. I should have left at least a year earlier. Best to leave while there is a little challenge still to look forward to and work is still exciting.

Challenging work should be distantly achievable, but put you far out of your comfort zone. I've come to associate minor heart palpitations and panic attacks with the subsequent obsession over problems that drives personal growth. If I don't have that stunned feeling of "how in the world do I do this?" I won't enjoy it. The pattern is the same: a problem is introduced, I panic, I sit back paralyzed, and as I calm down and ruminate over it, I find ways to eat around the edges of the problem with potential solutions until the path forward appears. And then full steam ahead.

Interviewing

This business of projecting confidence in an interview is forced. Confidence derives from competency, which in turn derives from experience and success. The more accomplished you are, the more confidence you should naturally project. If you’re not projecting confidence, you need to focus less on imitating confidence and more on gaining experience. That means you have goals. Listing specific goals is useful in an interview as it projects a sense of direction, careful thought, of making and following a plan, and it helps narrow down what you want from the company and the deliberate activity you will bring to it.

Things learned in 13 (and counting) years

My career started officially in 2004 (or 1997 if you count my IT work at college). In 13 years I have worked for 10 different employers. In 7 years, I have worked for 9 different employers. The longest I have worked for any company has been 6 years, followed by 3 years and just over 1 year. My shortest tenures have been 2, 3 and 6 months. Two places I lasted 9 months. Interviewers in my area always ask if these have been contract jobs. On average, this works out to be just over one employer per year. When put that way, it's an uncomfortable realization, where I look forward to the longer tenure. However, it has also been extremely beneficial and instructive. I have a better idea of how to spend the next 13 years than many of my peers.  Know thyself. And the learning has been phenomenal.