Overthinking your career

I have some thoughts that are like regular customers, that often stop by to order that same meal. They always start ordering a "Why am I doing what I am doing?", with varying sorts of time-horizons toppings. The conclusions and outcomes of said questions are indeed useful. But mostly to other people; they can often foster good discussions and I've found it to be a good way to convey intention and drive clarity of how you're perceiving and approaching your work. Personally, I like being able to focus faster and easier, and knowing exactly what and why you should be doing.

It can lead you to dig some rabbit holes, as well as to explore some, often frustrating, dead-ends. Some of the best people I've worked with all have unique (with a surprisingly little degree of variance) approaches to answering this type of question. Some will do that very explicitly, organized and coordinated. Some will be more intuitive, less explicit and more open to change. It's a spectrum, and I've found that one way isn't better than the other. They are different qualitatively because they are, essentially, personality expressions i.e., behaviors, that target a common goal —define what's important and why.

An effective starting point for this exploration is asking: "If I were the best in doing what I do best, what it is that should I be doing?". This question, at its core, involves understanding your unique "moat" —the aspects that strengthen both your professional prowess and the overall advantage of your company. The concept of a "moat", borrowed from Warren Buffett's partner Charlie Munger, can be summarized as a company's sustainable competitive advantage. Good moats are often a mixture of several factors. Think of what makes Apple a good company to invest in —ecosystem, technical prowess, design excellence, brand, etc. It's the set of things that make a company "easy to invest in", which gets (hopefully) converted to high margins and a tough-to-compete market position.

Well, the Apple example is an easy one. "How can I find moat systematically?", you may ask.

You basically want me to explain to you the difficult subject of identifying moats. It reminds me of a story. One man came to Mozart and asked him how to write a symphony. Mozart replied: ‘You are too young to write a symphony.’ The man said: ‘You were writing symphonies when you were 10 years old.’ And Mozart said: ‘Yes, but I didn't have to ask how.’

Charlie Munger

In other words, you ultimately can't. It's like asking: "How can I systematically identify the best stocks to invest at any given moment?". That's because of the complex, intricate system dynamics that society is embedded in. Moats are easily identifiable in retrospect, more so if the stock prices had just soared +100% (NVIDIA, anyone?). The hard thing is to find one now, in the present moment. Being human phenomena, it renders them fundamentally impossible to address and tackle theoretically, from a precise, mathematical perspective. However, one can try to answer them practically, targeting a good enough approximation, by devising systems that help you leverage these intricate and complex dynamics. That is what Munger and Buffet's value investing theory and principles are rooted in —get close enough.

Drawing parallels to a software engineer's career, the high-return "stock" equivalent would be to identify a "path" that greatly maximizes one's impact. And one's impact can be effectively measured by the number and the degree that you've changed people's lives. This capitalist analysis, lacks a moral dimension i.e., that one is totally up to you (hear me, ByteDance?).

To figure out how to maximize your impact, it is instructive to look at past technologies that have genuinely made a difference and to understand their essence. That is, (surprise surprise) also similar to Berkshire Hathaway's founders' approach: to even consider a company, you gotta analyze and consider its history. To understand what constitutes a good set of companies, it is reasonable to identify their common denominators. If we were to analyze the history of effective technology, a common, undeniable denominator, is that they all have made people achieve more i.e., they were truly useful.

The prize is the pleasure of finding things out, the kick in the discovery, and the observation that other people use it [my work] — those are the real things; the honors are unreal to me.

Richard Feynman

Therefore, the mark of true utility is that people willfully, and deliberately choose to use what you've produced. They can even become loyal fans to brands, because of what they produce. Explain that to a citizen living in the 18th century. That is because it somehow makes their lives better, and makes them truly achieve more. (It's funny because if I just said that tl;dr "You need to help people achieve more", it would've been a blunt, soul-less statement). Driving the point home, Jobs famously put it, computers are "bicycles for the minds". Ok, back to our never-ending stack of questions: "Then what should I do (with whom) that would have the greatest impact on other people's lives?" or "How can I best use my time to empower the maximum number of people?"

Now that is a good question that a lot of people are trying to answer. If we break it down, for illustrative purposes:

1. **What you can do** i.e., what you can that is above average, your personal leverage

2. **What other people are doing**, and how you can help them do it better i.e., in what area lies the most opportunity for you to apply your leverage?

3. **In which context you should be**, to maximize the impact of your actions i.e., what is the most effective context that you can be in to materialize your leverage i.e., with whom?

4. **How you should position yourself** in that context, in a way to maximize your opportunities to make the above happen i.e., in which role? with which responsibilities and incentives?

5. The intricate mechanisms of society and its industries and business, how they operate and their opportunities i.e., how can you apply your leverage that is aligned with the current state of the world?

6. How all the points above can evolve and change over time i.e., if thinking 5-15y, where I am, what I am doing, with whom, etc

Even though you can get help and input from other people, mentors, friends, etc, it is up to you to define, agree and commit to these answers. You can't (or at least, shouldn't) lend yourself away from this kind of responsibility. What is funnier is that even if you get some insightful answers, you're still at the mercy of the world and its constraints and a lot of people that do achieve those outcomes do not intentionally target them (requires citation). That is to say to don't over-attach with this sort of reasoning, as it can easily become a source of paralysis and procrastination. And who knows? Maybe those WebGL demos you've been playing with the past months might be the background you needed to help you co-found a new tool for designers.

Another funny thing is that the more you think about these questions, the more questions will arise. It's like a philosophical fractal. You got to be OK with defining a stopping point that is good enough.

This is all thinking on an individual level; as we start aggregating units of individuals, it is then expected for patterns of high-performing groups to emerge. This is a superset of leadership patterns, and being able to incorporate the individual paths of the group in an attempt to generate maximum leverage for each individual and the organization is one clear trait of an ideal organization. Imagine a group where each individual is intentionally there because it is the right context for them to externalize their creative potential, and the organization is directly benefiting from that.

For that to happen, you can't have leadership present on some key, up-in-there individuals. It needs to be scattered and present in every individual.

[...] management is a specific profession, and leadership is an approach one can demonstrate within any profession.

Will Larson

Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management track

Therefore, leadership should be viewed as a trait —a dimension, a quality of your work— that should be incentivized and fostered, early on. Therefore, it is the individual's responsibility to understand what their creative purpose is, and how they can best externalize it; note that this ideally shouldn't be a lone endeavor. And is the organization's responsibility (embodied in some individuals) to understand how to place and leverage each individual in a way to maximize their impact. The true manifestation of leadership in both "entities".

I'd guess that a lot of individual frustration and organizational dysfunction can be traced back to a lack of alignment in those areas —being in the wrong place, with the wrong people. That's one of the top reasons for thinking about this sort of stuff! To figure out what is the right place for you, and how to get there :)