Multi Path Careers

Author

Dileep Karri
April 14, 2021

Our typical career strategy - Join a company, draw a salary, save from it and retire. It is a single bet play - our career portfolio is relatively concentrated. We should diversify and make a balanced bet.

First, we must free up time to think of adjacent careers and skills. Figure out what not to do so we can focus on the few essential things we should do. Focus is important. With focus, it is time to pick up adjacent skills. These skills are peripheral to what you already know, like for a software engineer it could be technical writing. For a course creator, it could be community building. The learning process feels more organic, and we will be able to augment the current skills as well.

Here are a few benefits of Adjacent/Peripheral Skills:

  • Empathy: We understand what it is to be in a teammate's shoes. A software engineer who understands the pain of crafting content will be more patient with the copywriter crafting the landing page and product messaging. Empathy builds team bonding and helps in execution.

  • Communication: Beyond empathy, having adjacent skills also leads to better communication by acquiring the appropriate vocabulary from other teammates.

  • Motivation at work: As we enjoy our work, at times when we find it tedious, switching to an adjacent task makes it extremely easy. Rest is nothing but a context switch, and we find ourselves getting more productive.

  • Viewpoint: We will see the overlaps and connections we previously hadn't seen. Right connections and the corresponding outputs give us an edge.

  • Expand career perspective: Building skills will broaden your career scope and horizons and help open new doors.

  • Better evaluate candidates: When we need to hire someone—for example, a technical founder who needs to hire a product manager—having adjacent skills will allow assessing the candidates' aptitude better.

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