Re:If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)
by Archit3ch on Monday December 22, 2025 @09:53PM
(#46361897)
> I've managed people for decades and this has been a common pattern. I'd have people come to me with their plans to be in the C-suite in five or ten years, based precisely on self-help advice like that. None of them ended up there.
According to the Gervais Principle, these people are Clueless. Of course they end up in middle management. The top spots are reserved for Sociopaths.
Re:If you don't design your career, someone else will (2014)
by robocat on Tuesday December 23, 2025 @12:13PM
(#46367029)
> The top spots are reserved for Sociopaths
How many people think the first step is to become a sociopath?
And then try to act like they think a sociopath acts? Few people are ruthlessly cunning in the right way.
Even worse, do people try and model their behaviour based on The Apprentice or the worst of the shows about chefs?
I've managed people for decades and this has been a common pattern. I'd have people come to me with their plans to be in the C-suite in five or ten years, based precisely on self-help advice like that. None of them ended up there. But several of the people who never had a plan did in fact end up as VPs, CTOs, etc.
I don't want to say that thinking about your career doesn't matter. It's definitely easy to self-sabotage it by sticking to your comfort zone for life. But turn-by-turn plans are not useful because a lot of it is a product of chance. In a corporate setting, the best advice is just: get in the habit of solving tough problems for the people who matter, and find low-key ways to let them know about the good work you're doing. The rest, more or less, follows from that.