There are a few things that have become rote at certain events in our lives.
These events are not guaranteed for every person. However, they have become so embedded in our culture to have becomes almost cliched caricatures of the original meaning and intent. They are as embedded as decorating a tree at Christmas and finding candy-filled eggs at Easter.
Yet when it comes to jobs, making money, and being a professional there are also some tried and true customs.
These aren’t your familial holiday traditions.
These are life and career milestones. The signposts of a successful path through the business and workplace periods of our lives that we strive to hit. The things that we call goals and compare and contrast against others as well as our own internal expectations.
A lot of people start this path with a simple event, a graduation ceremony.
And when that momentous event happens, the start of your career path, the launching point for going out and making your way in the world, it has become commonplace to receive at least one copy of a children’s book to mark that hallowed occasion.
That is right. Good old Dr. Seuss’s: Oh, The Places You’ll Go.
This book is so perennially popular that it sees a large spike in sales every year around the April to June timeframe, the time when students from all over march across a stage and receive a piece of paper stating that they made it through the trials and tribulations and have now graduated.
And most of those people have big plans for what comes next.
You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
That is right. Starting a career is both a wonderfully optimistic time as well as one of the scariest journeys to ever embark upon.
One of the problems with school is that school is almost always linear. You move from grade to grade. You keep moving forward. Sure, there are grades and things, but there is a path laid out in front of you. It is so incredibly easy to just fall in line and continue down this wide and easy path.
Until you graduate and the path ends.
Nobody stops and informs and tells others about this event. I had no clue. I sat back, looked at my parents who both spent 30+ years of their life in a professional capacity with a single organization, and figured in my head that I would just step onto that next path and follow in their footsteps.
You know, that movie script path where you rise up the ranks, working your way upwards in a single organization, all while falling in love, having kids, and celebrating a huge retirement party with cake and balloons before fading away into the sunset.
I’m sorry to say so
but, sadly, it’s true
that Bang-ups
and Hang-ups
can happen to you.
Dr. Seuss got something wrong here. The message isn’t that these roadblocks and detours and re-routing of careers and pathways “can” happen to you. The message should be that these “will” happen to you.
They happen to everyone.
Recently I had the opportunity to interview a potential candidate to join my team. This was a great candidate on paper and they performed well in the interview process. Yet one thing nagged at me at the end of it.
There was a sense of purpose and a definition of a target path that was so well defined in this person’s head that it even included a date for milestones on that path. Accept a job. Build knowledge. Work extremely hard. Achieve a senior title in two years.
Was it possible? Not sure. They seemed to be very talented. But I left that interview with part of myself desperately wanting to bring them onto the team to mentor them through this and to be able to work with them to show that there is not only one way to get from point A to point B. The rest of me was concerned that if circumstances prevents us from reaching that goal together in that timeline that I would be looking for a replacement candidate a few years in the future.
The jaded, experienced cynic in me also wanted to point out that no matter how deserving or not, or how topped off the tank of ambition is in any one person, the decision to bestow titles on someone in the workplace is not wholly up to that individual. Sure – you can work your tail off and hit all your marks but there are always outside influences that can throw up roadblocks all over the place.
Having personally spent too many of my adult years trying to stay on one singular perceived path and not realizing and embracing the Engineering spirit that, while there is always a solution, there are a near-infinite amount of ways to achieve said solution.
This conflict of a singular path to trod upon as opposed to an infinitely variable means to reaching a target or an answer is what bothered me with this candidate. My experience and knowledge showed that focusing so strenuously on one singular objective is an easy way to achieve failure in a career.
Please note that I am not intending to call someone’s entire career a failure. From an external viewpoint working so hard towards this goal can make someone seem to be a great teammate. However, in making one goal so large and prevalent in magnitude to all others, an inability to achieve this type of goal can bring some rough personal criticism that can have a lasting effect on anyone.
My personal experience went the opposite. I didn’t set any big target goals. They were all hazy and inconclusive. Kind of like the details in a movie script, where the pertinent details are over-simplified as plot devices but the rest of the goals and dreams are ignored or left vague so as to create a sense of mystery for a character.
This writing of an article and taking risks and putting myself out there and recognizing the value that I could provide any organization in the world was anathema to my growth in my twenties. It wasn’t part of my assumed path, part of my hazy lack of defined goals.
Getting married to someone that already had kids and loving and embracing them as my own was not part of that movie-perfect path. It wasn’t even a contrived creation of conflict like so many bad movie decisions are. It didn’t serve to drive the plot forward and define characters. It was simply a happy decision made that changed my path.
Becoming an Engineering Manager wasn’t on that path. However, when stepping into that role the path quickly changed to target growing and achieving a lofty title like VP of Engineering, or even better, Chief Technology Officer.
In retrospect, it was getting married at the end of my twenties that broke me out of that path-induced haze and became a catalyst to my professional growth. If I could do something so non-traditional in my personal life, then what was I missing out on doing and achieving in my professional career?
Getting married and having an instant family triggered that growth and my first big job change. The primary motivator was financial. Going from being single to an insta-family, having an offer on the table that greatly increased salary was a big driver. The professional, career-based drivers were also present but were more of an ancillary benefit.
Then, after seizing an opportunity to step into the management role, my next job change was much more focused on professional growth. It didn’t hurt that the organization I was with had some struggles as well at the time. But again, that triggered a professional change to a new company.
At this point, in my mid-thirties, I was still clinging to the increasingly tattered remains of the original path. Sure, I had been through major job changes twice now in my professional career. However, the common narrative was written on the wall and society had already decided that people were no longer intended to go one place and quietly ride out their professional with one organization.
At this point, in my mid-thirties, I was still mainstream. I was part of the “American Dream” to move ever upwards and onwards. I was still doing what “they” said was the right way to work and to live and to do things.
While I hadn’t realized it yet, that default, generic path had already come to an end.
Now I find myself in my early 40s reflecting on the journey to this point and also considering what path I want to be on going forward. Yet, even as that contemplation rages on in the background I find myself surrounded by a bubble of calm. At this point, I have the wisdom to know that the path really doesn’t matter, nor does the destination.
What I have come to understand and believe, and the truth that fills my mind as I fall asleep each night and what gets me up each morning, is that only one thing matters now. It isn’t the titles. It isn’t the points to be scored or the games to be won. It has nothing to do with being famous as famous can be, with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.
It is the enjoyment of the journey that is all that matters. There will always be ups and downs. Challenges. Solutions. Bad times and good times. This is true no matter how “good” or “bad” any job is.
Right now my professional path is probably the murkiest and most unknown that it has ever been. Sure, I still have goals and things I want to achieve. I have a good job that includes being part of a wonderful team of people. However, the biggest change from a professional career aspect is that for the first time, I can step back and enjoy the here and now.
Living in the moment, not fighting and scheming for that next promotion or that next salary bump, has opened my eyes to the enjoyment and sheer amazement at what can be accomplished in the here-and-now. That piece of software was something that I played a small part in creating. This box of hardware has gone from bare boards and components to functional, working hardware by some amazing people and I played a part in that.
My job is Engineering, whether that be products or the people on the team I am a part of, and embracing that joy of creation and problem solving every day makes life a much richer and more enjoyable experience.
One question often pops into my head as I write. Who is my audience? The primary answer is, and always has been: me, 20 years ago. The secondary answer is: anyone who loves Engineering and who might benefit the tiniest amount from these words and ideas in their own career and avoid some of the missed opportunities and assumptions that I made along the way.
So to you, younger Engineers just starting on your path with your hopes, dreams, and goals, I leave you with this:
Your path is your own,
All credit for the last three stanzas goes to Dr. Seuss, text from Oh, The Places You’ll Go
to tread and to walk,
That path is a journey,
not a title, salary, or two
it is a creation of purpose,
it is a definition of you
So get off of the path,
to the weeds and the rough,
The going could be easy,
but often it’s tough.
Don’t forget about why
you are on this wonderous trek,
it is your journey,
your goals and your life,
so write your own requirements,
create your own spec
Yours is the happiness that matters most,
So balance the goals with every path signpost.
And don’t forget the words that brought you here,
so read them again, with Seuss’s never-ending good cheer
Step with care and great tact
and remember that Life’s
a Great Balancing Act.
Just never foget to be dexterous and deft.
And never mix up your right foot with your left.
And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)
KID, YOU’LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!
Thanks for reading!
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