Working in the volatile tech industry comes with changing jobs, founding companies, raising capital, getting fired, and moving onward, and this wealth of experience has produced some really stellar career advice among our guests on the Stayin’ Alive in Tech podcast.
Hear our favorite bites of wisdom from these top names in marketing and technology—visionaries who have brought us to where we are today and have incredible advice to share about their journey.
HOW TO FIND—AND PURSUE—WHAT YOU LOVE
For anyone just starting out or wondering where to go next, almost all of our guests recommend leaning into that crossroads moment. Instead of freezing up in fear or looking backward, read this advice about how to take the next step (or leap) in your career.
Ellen Petry Leanse:
I'd love to use the platform of your podcast, Melinda, to say to anyone out there who's listening, who feels that “if only I'd been able to…dot, dot, dot, dot,” I would say really look at that story. Maybe there is even a better way, a truer way to look at it. What are you able to do? What do you know that you're capable of? And then what is the best step toward that goal you want, that you can take right now?
Jim Sterne:
What's the most fun that you have? Do you really enjoy branding? Do you enjoy creating customer experience? Do you enjoy solving difficult mathematical problems? Do you like building data pipelines and constructing development systems? Because there's a career in each one of those. But "what do you like to do?" turns out to be the most difficult question of all.
My best advice for any young person about their career is Go Do Stuff and find out which of it is interesting. Because you're not going to end up exactly where you're aiming. But when you get there and you look back, you'll see it's an absolute straight line from where you are now.
Philip Rosedale:
The data is never going to tell you the new thing you need to do. It never does. Despite all this data, you still have to follow your heart. Are you working on something that’s genuinely interesting? What do you want to do?
I KNOW WHAT I WANT TO DO. BUT HOW DO I GET MY FOOT IN THE DOOR?
All of our guests had to get their own feet through doors and know how hard it can be. But they are good examples of how eager people are to help those aspiring to join the ranks.
Coraline Ada Ehmke, speaking to aspiring software engineers
I have a soft spot for people who are self-taught or who are switching careers, who want to make a significant change in their life and take advantage of all the privileges that we have as software developers. We get to work from home, we get exorbitant salaries, we get to travel. I think it's great for anyone with some interest to get involved. A lot of the work that I do is aimed at making it more accessible to otherwise marginalized people.
Avinash Kaushik, speaking to aspiring web/data analysts
Curious people will succeed in this area. We help other people make smart decisions and anybody who is curious will do it really well. Just because everything you knew about anything, about how to currently accomplish it, is going to not be true in two years. Send me your resume, yes, we would like to hire you in our team. We currently have positions open [at Google].
Kumar Garg:, speaking to those looking to enter the government service sector
You want to work in the administration? Especially for a lot of people, it's really hard. Where do I send my resume? Who do I call? I'm always happy to give advice to people about ways to get into policy, now that I've been on the other side. The classic thing is to just move here [to D.C.] and talk to people and figure something out.
Kumar Garg: continues:
So, I called up [my future boss] and I said, "I did computer science back in college, but I've gone to law school. I've worked on political campaigns. I've done lots of other things, but I'm not a PhD in this topic." And he said, "Well, the Office of Science Tech is filled with PhDs that are real issue experts. I wouldn't mind having a few generalists on the team as well that could get up to speed quickly on a lot of topics." So I said, "I'm happy to fill that role."
The pairing actually works well. It's folks who are on different parts of that T shape of generalists versus deep issue experts. I found it really enriching. A lot of my colleagues had been studying particular aspects of a science and tech topic for most of their career and they found it interesting to work with somebody who was coming new to the topic, but could give them a lot of fast feedback on whether the ideas made sense, how the ideas could be framed for conversation with the President, how we could do an event on that idea, how those ideas intersect with ideas on other topics. A lot of policy-making is actually mixing and matching.
ASKING FOR HELP
Jim Sterne:
If only I had known that experts are put on this earth for you to ask them questions and not to be impressed or flummoxed or afraid or timid. Somebody holds themselves out as an expert, they gain their identity by having people come up and say, "Oh, can I ask you a question?" If I had known that as a small fry, I would have asked the most difficult questions of the most impressive people. Generally, they like answering questions. Don't be afraid.
Karen Catlin:
Vague feedback holds women back. Make sure you're giving equitable feedback to all of your employees.
BE FORTHRIGHT & KIND
Ellen Petry Leanse:
I was so warmly welcomed by this beautiful community [at Apple]. I would often look at my work and think to myself, "Well all I did was this small thing.” To me, they seem like small things, but amplified over thousands of user groups, these small things ended up making a difference.
And every time I felt like the small offerings were so warmly received and the times where I couldn't do what they wanted me to do, as long as I was honest and forthright about it and said, "Here's why we can't," there was always so much understanding and forgiveness and acceptance.
Rand Fishkin:
I have tried to optimize for surrounding myself in my personal and professional life with people who are the kindest people I could find. That's not to say they're not also intelligent, but I didn't optimize for intelligence. I optimized for kindness, and that's made my life kind of wonderful.
PERSEVERANCE
If one common personality trait has shone forth among our guests, it’s perseverance and tenacity. Get a load of these motivational lines:
Ellen Petry Leanse:
It didn't take long before I realized I could ignore the people who are saying, “we're not going to do it,” and to simply go ahead and do it. Nobody ever stopped me.
Jim Sterne:
The best things that ever happened are when people told me that I couldn't do something that I wanted to do and I found a way to do it. The best advice is: go for it.
Joe Meyer:
I think the hardest thing to do is to not only know when to cut bait, but to know when to stick with something.
Sian Morson:
You know how you get an idea and then you forget about it. It just kept nagging at me. For me anyway, when something is that persistent, it requires exploration.
LEADING YOUR TEAM
Kumar Garg:
A really valuable practice that [my supervisor] Tom did was he took me to his meetings and said, "Why don't you just tag along and then after each meeting, you and I can debrief on what you think happened in the meeting." It was just fascinating because we were meeting with the deputy director of the National Science Foundation. After that, we debriefed, and he says, "Well, I think part of what they're trying to get done is this, and this is why they wanna meet with the White House. Here were some of my goals for that meeting. Why don't you think about the following next steps." You don't need to do that too many times before you start to pick up some general rules as to how to be effective.
For each person that you bring onto your team, if you can help them go up that learning curve, they’re going to accomplish an incredible amount.
Karen Catlin:
Use this phrase: "What I learned from so-and-so is…fill in the blank." Whatever it is, give someone credit for teaching you something, and have a little humility yourself that you're learning from these people, especially if those people are from these underrepresented groups in tech.
Rand Fishkin, on choosing your team’s focus:
Pick the marketing channels and get good at them as they prove themselves, not before. There's just so many channels that I think investing in all of them is impossible. So you have to balance and choose where you're going to invest, and if you make this mistake of trying to lead the pack, lead the field before it truly gets adoption, before there's real opportunity, you can [easily fail].
In closing, don’t be afraid to open that next door, ask for advice and mentorship, be kind to one another, and for goodness sake, let your grit work for you!
Thank you to all of our podcast guests for your nuggets of wisdom.