After how many years in the industry do you think your career settles?

For those of you with several years of experience,  around what time did you feel like your career was settling in the way that you were getting most of what you want out of your career? Or if you're not there yet when do you think you'll hit it?

Right now, i'm really enjoying where I am at. And this is after 6 years in the industry and only one job change. I'm a development manager, and i feel satisfied or am really on that road to success. I'll admit my comp is not spectacular and that's one aspect, I'd like to change, but my firm is quite lean and pretty young, so i can really see a lot of potential in the long-run to really get far without having to move elsewhere.

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Gotta say... there have been a few times I guessed or thought my career was "settled" (like with respect to field/role, path/trajectory, and even firm at times).. then some external event comes and "unsettles" it (like 08-GFC, and years later a head hunter tagging for a major up-move role). Frankly, those unsettling moments made me grow/advance the most (the 08-GFC one was a wild wide... but really positively transforming long-term... personal thing).

So, not sure what to say, shit changes, sometimes you unleash the chaos monkey on yourself, sometimes the world/market does it. Just try and prepare yourself to be resilient, or better, antifragile in the face of it. It's gonna happen! 

 
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I’m in my early 20s so maybe I’m not the target of this post but given that I’ve had 5 different jobs I think I can give a couple of comments.

I think that you should not let your career slow down. You should choose when your career slows down. Every time I switched jobs I had a haunting feeling after giving my resignation. I constantly thought about what would happen if the new company rescinded their offer and I stayed unemployed. And then came the months of stress thinking about what would happen if I made an early fuck-up and got fired - killing my career. This made me think that I probably don’t want to deal with that feeling after a certain age. So by a certain age I should have found the job I want to stay at for the rest of my life.

I currently put that target at 35. I will continue working my ass off and being HR’s nightmare until I’m 35. By then I target being at least at the VP level somewhere. I probably won’t make VP at my current company so in the coming years I may have to jump to a pre-IPO company and grow from there. And then I’ll just sit back. If someone wants me to change companies they better be ready to give me a fat signing bonus so I don’t have to stress about the change.

 

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