Our culture worships planning. Everything must be planned in advance. Our days, week, years, our entire lives. We have diaries, schedules, checklists, targets, goals, aims, strategies, visions even. Career planning is the most ridiculous of these cults precisely because it encourages a feeling of control over your reactions to future events. As that interview question goes: where do you see yourself in five years time? This invites the beginning of what starts as a little game and finishes as a belief built on quick sand. You guess what employers want to hear, and then you give it to them. Sometimes this batting back and forth of imagined futures becomes a necessary little game you play in order to 'get ahead'.
I personally don't know anyone who "really" knows what they want. There is some amount of dilemma in everyone that I know. That's why career planning, or at the very least just deciding what you're going to do next, is so unpleasant. When I was 18 people asked me what I wanted to do. There seem to be so many different options, each with myriad branching possibilities, many of which lead in opposite directions, but all equally tempting. But I gave back the answer that my parents wanted me to give. Not that they were pressurizing me or something, on the contrary the encouraged me to pick my own path. But I picked the tried and tested path to become a software engineer, not knowing what the future was, but still planning for it! Doesn't that sound ridiculous?
If it was tough to be a 18yr old, its even more nerve wrecking at quarter-life. Now it's more clear what the downsides of certain jobs are. There's not only our own experiences of work but we also have friends at work, all of whom colour our perception of their careers. This results in even more frantic planning, trying to correct the 'mistakes', which is a result of previous 'planning'. First of all it is not a mistake because no one can exactly predict the future and the second loophole is actually planning for the future. According to me, all of us are poor at predicting what would make us happy in the future. And since we all predict and then not reach the target, we feel unhappy (and curse all the gods and fate). This is pseudo-unhappiness.
The best strategy for career planning is this: make your best guess, try it out and don't be surprised if you don't like it. But for heaven's sake don't mention this in your interviews.
I personally don't know anyone who "really" knows what they want. There is some amount of dilemma in everyone that I know. That's why career planning, or at the very least just deciding what you're going to do next, is so unpleasant. When I was 18 people asked me what I wanted to do. There seem to be so many different options, each with myriad branching possibilities, many of which lead in opposite directions, but all equally tempting. But I gave back the answer that my parents wanted me to give. Not that they were pressurizing me or something, on the contrary the encouraged me to pick my own path. But I picked the tried and tested path to become a software engineer, not knowing what the future was, but still planning for it! Doesn't that sound ridiculous?
If it was tough to be a 18yr old, its even more nerve wrecking at quarter-life. Now it's more clear what the downsides of certain jobs are. There's not only our own experiences of work but we also have friends at work, all of whom colour our perception of their careers. This results in even more frantic planning, trying to correct the 'mistakes', which is a result of previous 'planning'. First of all it is not a mistake because no one can exactly predict the future and the second loophole is actually planning for the future. According to me, all of us are poor at predicting what would make us happy in the future. And since we all predict and then not reach the target, we feel unhappy (and curse all the gods and fate). This is pseudo-unhappiness.
The best strategy for career planning is this: make your best guess, try it out and don't be surprised if you don't like it. But for heaven's sake don't mention this in your interviews.
4 comments:
good one! worth a thought :-)
It was funny to read your new year post and this back to back. Two contrasting topics, take it as it comes and plan ! Interesting.. :-)
Whatever you do, I am sure you agree that you should plan your accommodations before trips :-)
Actually I have said the same things in both the posts... planning does not work! Remember we were discussing this during the night drive in pondi, 2 shots down?
Very good post Madhu. How was I to know that Sprint would go through mass lay offs. Was I to have that planned in my future...Bravo sir!
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