A very rudimentary prospect and perplex for how I envision the first 10 years of my career will look like
My best friend is initially super excited about being able to switch into tech. As he finally makes it, he begins to feel scared by how everything seems to fall into place, and began to feel like a “retirement” life - climbing the career ladder, starting a family, buying a home, raising kids….. He is worried.
Similar to you, I have the same concerns. Based on my very limited knowledge, lack of context and knowledge, this is how I imagine my next 10 years will be like from 2021–2030.
Timeline
2021: Join company in June as junior — IC3, end of the year promotion to IC4.
2022: End of the year, promotion to senior — IC5.
2024: End of the year, promotion to staff — IC6.
2025: Seize an opportunity to switch into management in the same company. At the same time, taking GRE.
2027: end of 2027, promotion to Senior manager. Sending applications to get an MBA, and got into Stanford.
2028: Go back to school for 2 years. Do internships as product management, operations, and consulting.
2030: Graduation, becomes Head of xxx for a startup to midsize company.
My young and restless desires:
- I still want to learn what product management and product operations is about.
- I want to find my special niche that makes me a 99th percentile person which will lead me into valuable opportunities.
- I want to do more product strategy related stuff.
- Some people such as Jack Yang can seize the opportunity to go from Junior to CGO in less than 5 years, I am sure there is a way for me to do that to. Just like how I got to where I did in 3 internships.
- What is best is probably if I can ask to do a project rotation just like what a coworker has done to try out different projects and gain some product knowledge in a very short amount of time.
- I am very interested in learning about growth strategies, it seems super cool. I think I should really crave out the time to talk to Richard Yang more, he seems to be a really legit mentor.
On the ground:
- However, I have to be aware that all 5–6 years of Jack’s university life has been gaining him relevant work and education experience, whereas for me I am missing that piece. Therefore, I should aim for the same thing in 5 years, but should give myself a buffer of 8–10 years.
Ultimately, I think its still important to strive big, know what is unique to me, and how I can seize the opportunity and only I can do it when it comes around. This means I should really work on a brag document next!
I’m the 24-year-old of you from 2021, how have you been? Since 2021, I decided to start writing rawly on medium to track my problems, challenges, and how I overcome them, right when it’s fresh, so you can look back can see how you really made decisions to change your actions, and hope this can help you for your future.
This is the 3rd mail that I am sending you.
Mar 02, 2021
