"The actual writing would be easy. All he had to do was to transfer to paper the interminable restless monologue that had been running inside his head, literally for years". 1984 by George Orwell
When I entered at Engineering six years ago I really thought all my problems were solved. I would just have to suffer a bit with calculus and that was all. After all, the Brazilian economy was good. Companies came to the university searching for good students. All those stories about graduate students who could find excellent jobs. Everything looked like a dream.
Until it didn't.
Economic crisis came and then the dream jobs were gone. All of a sudden I realized things in life aren't so colored as they paint in classes. I thought I deserved to have a job just because the university was going to give me a piece of paper calling me Engineer. How naive I was!
This April I read one of the most important books in my entire life. "Only the Paranoid Survive" by Andrew Grove may seem too paranoid. But it is real life as harsh it may sounds. This special part of the book got me hooked for nights. I barely slept the night I read it.
"The sad news is, nobody owes you a career. Your career is literally your business. You own it as a sole proprietor. You have one employee: yourself. You are in competition with millions of similar businesses: millions of other employees all over the world. You need to accept ownership of your career, your skills and the timing of your moves. It is your responsibility to protect this personal business of yours from harm and to position it to benefit from the changes in the environment. Nobody else can do that for you."
I was expecting a promotion with the feeling I deserved it. I kept waiting for the company's movements towards me. My mistake. I had to make the best decisions for my self interests despite how selfish this may sounds. Andrew Grove states that in any good co-op, people acting in their own self-interest act in the interests of the whole.
Grove probably has taught me in a single book more than all the books I read for making exams. Within a single paragraph he could make me run more towards my career objectives and life plans.
In technology, whatever can be done will be done. We can’t stop these changes. We can’t hide from them. Instead, we must focus on getting ready for them. The lessons of dealing with strategic inflection points are similar whether you’re dealing with a company or your own career.
I let you a last statement from the book to think about.
"Simply put, be a little paranoid about your career. Who knows if your job will even exist and, frankly, who will care besides you?"
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