Sunday, September 11, 2011

Career Advice

I have a stock response for people who use the line "Do what you love!" as career advice.  Here it is:

<bleep>

Sorry, the internet seems to be censoring swear words today. Anyway, I hope you get the idea. First off it is a dicey proposition that whatever you love will be economically viable. For instance I love petting cats but cat sitting is not really that lucrative; I am sure my wife would be a little annoyed if I quit my job to go and pet cats.

But more that that, I have noticed that among the ASD crowd we love accumulating knowledge about something or somethings. Knowledge is great; I love knowledge... the money comes from the application of that knowledge. Just accumulating it is not as valuable. Sure you may carve a niche for yourself in a company as a go to person for a specific subject but that is an uncertain position.

One of my best positions was one where I was required to learn calculus, statistics, financial mathematics (really an extension of calculus and stats) and programming. Of course that was all in order for me to understand a system/series of programs that were poorly documented and understood. When I was done we had a baseline for another five years worth of work that I was involved in.

So my career advice to you is find a way to apply what you learn. You will enjoy the learning aspect of it and benefit from the security of being a subject matter expert on something your business values.

3 comments:

  1. It is not that the life coaches’ exertion is as neither counselor nor professional advisor but they don’t have snooping and task exploration in their work. To seek for life coaching training in Philadelphia; seek for a executive coach place where you will be assisted by life coach to put eagerness for the associates in diverse areas including sociology, psychology, positive traits development, job counseling and other types of enticement.

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  2. you have given excellent tips for job seekers, best of the job websites offer good information

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  3. Well said, as an autistic individual I will say: if your interest can't be monetized or applied in some form we all can experience, it might as well not be done, go on and try to find another hobby. I may sound harsh but I learnt all these the hard way!

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