Archive for the 'Careers' Category

Impatient Experts: Deciding When (Or If) To Try Something New

Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, gave an interesting piece of advice on his blog last night: “Do something new every three years.” He writes:

For the first ten years of my career, I changed jobs every three years. Then, for the seven years I was at The Economist, I changed countries every three years (London, Hong Kong, and New York, although sadly not long enough at the last). Here at Wired, I seem to have achieved the same rhythm by publishing a book after my fifth year and, next summer, my eighth. Each time it changes my life and puts me back on a steep learning curve with a new subject to immerse in and a new pace of travel and speaking. I’ve got a new foreign land to explore.

Anderson goes on to tie his “three and flee” advice (my words) to a theory advanced by Malcolm Gladwell in his new book Outliers: that it takes about 10,000 hours of disciplined application to something to create a true master.  In an excerpt from the book provided by The Guardian, Gladwell writes:

This idea – that excellence at a complex task requires a critical, minimum level of practice – surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is a magic number for true expertise: 10,000 hours.

“In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice-skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals,” writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin, “this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or 20 hours a week, of practice over 10 years… No one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.”

Though I appreciate the unique insight he brings to interesting subjects — and I’ll also admit I haven’t yet read Outliers — I’ve always been slightly skeptical of Gladwell’s reductionist theories (see also: Thomas Friedman’s Flexible Deadlines and the F.U.).  My skepticism aside, Anderson calculates that (60 hours/week) x (50 weeks/year) x (3 years) = (a little under 10,000 hours).  And so, according to rough Gladwellian-Andersonian metrics, if you work your butt off for a little over three years, you can consider yourself a master in your field.

Having done that, Anderson writes: “Great. Now go do something else.”

Continue reading ‘Impatient Experts: Deciding When (Or If) To Try Something New’

Blogging Your Passions (or, How I Got Into Google)

Robert Scoble, a famous tech personality in Silicon Valley, is hiring an assistant.  In a post expressing his frustrations with the résumés he’s received so far, he lets the candidates know the best way to stand out: blog.  Sure Scoble’s hiring for a “tech” position, but I am confident that blogging is going to play an increasingly prominent role as a qualification for all sorts of opportunities.  Unfortunately, this aspect of the Web’s impact is not getting as prominent a place as the warnings against expsoing too much about yourself on Facebook.  This tone damages the conversation, overemphasizing the paranoia and neglecting (if not rejecting) the positive possibilities.  I want to change that tone, and that’s what this post is all about.

Scare Tactics

Over the past few years, there’s been a lot of commotion about how companies, and even universities nowadays, are investigating the digital “breadcrumbs” left across the Internet by candidates for employment/admission.  Whether doing a simple Google search to see what appears in the top few results, or using dedicated tools to “check between the sofa cushions”, if you will: those whom we seek to impress are taking more and more seriously our online behavior.  (On an interesting side note, Spokeo — which I covered in one of my first posts on this blog — has begun advertising itself as a tool for HR professionals to do “deep social search” on job candidates).

I’ll never forget the story my friend Henry told me of his first day at the White House as an intern last year.  As they walked into one of their orientations, there was a projector and screen set up showing slideshow.  The images being projected were drawn from the public albums of the new interns’ Facebook profiles; you can imagine that a good number of those pictures were, well… not flattering.  When the nervous interns were settled uncomfortably in their seats, they had a nice little talking-to about how they were the face of the White House, how all these images could be accessed and republished by anyone, etc.  Luckily for Henry, he had previously (and famously) sanitized his profile to include only the following message: “I’d rather talk to you in person.”

“Be careful what you leave behind,” the experts and mainstream media tell us.  This is certainly fair advice.  What they fail to point out are the many positive ways in which we can embrace the idea of the “perpetual digital dossier”, and harness it to really take ourselves places.

Continue reading ‘Blogging Your Passions (or, How I Got Into Google)’

Changing The Way We Think About Change

I know many of you are with me when I offer a big round of congratulations to Jarred on his upcoming journey to the west coast and his new post at Google. Oddly enough I had this piece in my backlog of half-written posts that you may see in the coming weeks and decided this might be a timely reminder for Jarred and others about the possible frustrations of change and how they may not matter as much as you think.

This is a blog — if you couldn’t tell from the banner above — about change. For the most part, change is seen for its positive characteristics. Change means progress, change means advancement, change means opportunity. Sometimes, however, change means severing bonds and losing out on things you had in the past.  This leads to frustration and sometimes unhappiness.

Earlier this year I had an opportunity to work with a sub-group within my department and bring it up to speed with the rest of the group. While I initially jumped at the opportunity, I hesitated when I realized that the switch meant I would have to move groups and physically move my desk away from the comfort of the small team that I had worked with for the previous five months. In those five months we carefully built a well oiled business machine that produced high quality work tailored to those above us. These bonds were forged over late nights and pressing deadlines that I was, in many ways, afraid of giving up.

Continue reading ‘Changing The Way We Think About Change’

Monday Links: May 26th, 2008

Happy Memorial Day to everyone. Monday Links are a little late today, but nobody is at work to read them anyway, so enjoy these on Tuesday Morning:

  • In case you didn’t know, geeks rule. David Brooks offers definitive proof in an NY Times Op-Ed published on…wait for it…my birthday:

Among adults, the words “geek” and “nerd” exchanged status positions. A nerd was still socially tainted, but geekdom acquired its own cool counterculture. A geek possessed a certain passion for specialized knowledge, but also a high degree of cultural awareness and poise that a nerd lacked. [...]

So, in a relatively short period of time, the social structure has flipped. For as it is written, the last shall be first and the geek shall inherit the earth.

  • Via Grist and Ezra Klein, here’s an advertisement for wind power that won an award at Cannes. It’s brilliant:

<a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=cQbl1c63Ofo&amp;e">http://youtube.com/watch?v=cQbl1c63Ofo&amp;e</a>

  • I really enjoyed a provocative post from Brazen Careerist on “10 Ways Generation Y Will Change the Workplace.” A few of these made me want to shout out an ‘amen,’ like: “We’ll Promote Based on Emotional Intelligence,” and “We’ll Hold Only Productive Meetings.”
  • Here’s a gem of a story from Mental Floss: haunting, sad, curious, and beautiful. Coming across things like this makes me love the internet. I encourage you to read the whole thing, but here’s a tease:

Yesterday I came across a slightly mysterious website — a collection of Polaroids, one per day, from March 31, 1979 through October 25, 1997. There’s no author listed, no contact info, and no other indication as to where these came from. So, naturally, I started looking through the photos. I was stunned by what I found.

  • One more video: this one, from TreeHugger, is a Greenpeace ad illustrating the ocean’s role in producing oxygen and absorbing CO2. Simple, effective, and beautifully edited. Watch it with sound but beware: the heavy breathing might be a bit awkward if you share an office.

<a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=tzcGFUsL4HM&amp;e">http://youtube.com/watch?v=tzcGFUsL4HM&amp;e</a>

  • In “come on people…why!?” news this week: some crazy frenchman has decided that skydiving from 25 miles in the air is a good idea. Just for a bit of context, that’s 131,200 feet; transatlantic flights fly at about 42,000 feet. He’s expected to break the sound barrier during his dive. Good God.

Enjoy! Check back this week for more regular bloggin’ (thanks for your patience last week).

Monday Links: April 21st, 2008

Another week closer to Spring…or so we hope.  This week’s links are very heavy on environmental stories.  I apologize for the one-dimensionality, but Jarred has some Web 2.0 stuff planned for this week to even things out a bit.  Links:

  • Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. offers three major environmental policies for the next president: a carbon cap-and-trade system (wisely endorsed by Senators Obama, Clinton, and McCain); smart grids and modernizing energy delivery infrastructure; and drastic improvements in energy efficiency for buildings and machines.  Sounds like a start [Hat Tip: Grist].
  • Treehugger features stories on space debris (click through to see the image…pretty unbelievable) and the “Pacific trash vortex“–an area twice the size of Texas in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that’s entirely covered in garbage (more here).  Further proof of the attitude that out of sight is out of mind…until our children grow up, anyway.
  • The latest version of Google Earth includes a feature that shows users when a satellite image was taken; this is enormously important for conservation efforts aimed at tracking land and water conditions over time.  Also helpful for spies.

You could train a recent college graduate to do your job well in a few days or less – This demonstrates you do not need any experience or knowledge learned over time to complete your tasks, which implies busy work or menial duties.

  • The New Yorker featured a really fascinating article on something I rarely give a second thought: elevators.  The story includes an account of the horrific experience of a guy trapped in an elevator for 41 hours.  The time-lapse video of his ordeal makes me think I’ll be taking the stairs for a few weeks.
  • I keep procrastinating on a green architecture post; in the meantime, this is one of the coolest green building concepts I’ve seen recently: urban skyscraper farming, courtesy of the Dwell Magazine blog.  Check out this design, and follow the link for details:

dwell city farm

  • I’m giving Jarred this raw meat themed iPod case for his birthday, just to send Ashish (and Steve Jobs, for that matter) over the edge.  Fortunately for you, Ashish, it’s way too expensive for a gag gift.

Enjoy those links while I go read the NY Times magazine “green issue.” More to come….