Do you know anyone who has made a wrong move in their career and they have yet to recover from it?
I'm currently having a debate with one of my friends who works in VC about career trajectories. He believes that, although careers are relatively flexible, there are certain major career decisions people make which stay with them for the rest of their lives. On the other hand, I believe that with the right mindset and work ethic, you should be able to recover from any career "mistake" (not counting extreme things like getting arrested or being blacklisted for insider trading).
Obviously neither of us have conducted empirical studies on this subject, so I'm relying mostly on the stories of people in my network. That's why I'm curious to hear if anyone of you know of or maybe even experienced yourself a wrong career move that has basically screwed you over the long run?
I went out on my own for a few years and it was really hard to jump back into corporate roles and I then fell into healthcare for 9 years and had to go back and get my MBA (in progress) to get back into finance. I don't regret any of it and I would say using the phrase "wrong move" isn't entirely accurate as if you're living, you're learning for the most part. Every experience can be meaningful if you're in high finance or not.
Career outcomes often accrue defining gains from compounding similar to investments only the effect comes from various forms of social capital.
There are studies into this but for fun just note that as far back as the 1800's Ralph Waldo Emerson was writing about this.
Can you elaborate a bit?
Share the Emerson essays
Me but I don't regret the pivot (won't elaborate on here, it's a unique story).
I assume it was a new industry on your horizon.
xD
I think it depends what you're trying to recover to. Are you optimizing for money, lack of regret, different experiences, time with family etc?
If you were solely optimizing to have the biggest NW by the time you're 50, and you took a swing outside of the regular PE / IBD finance track to join a startup that didn't workout, then yeah you may not be able to 'recover' from that. If instead you were optimizing to minimize regret, or spend more time with family, or move to a track outside finance then maybe you're okay?
That said I agree with you that you should generally be able to 'recover' until a certain age and then the opps back tend to dry up.
Well, it depends on your risk appetite. If you’re risk-averse then going down the IB/PE path makes a lot of sense for maximizing NW. If you’re risk-loving, you’ll probably pursue something a lot more entrepreneurial to maximize NW.
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