Name: It May Be Time to Rethink Your Perfect Career Plan
Uploaded: 2023-09-29T20:17:00Z
Duration: 5 min 40 s
Description: Many people envision an employment path with clearly defined steps up the career ladder. Wall Street Journal “Work & Life” columnist Rachel Feintzeig joins host J.R. Whalen to discuss why being open to detours and unexpected obstacles can be a key to getting ahead. Illustration: ELENA SCOTTI

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Many people envision an employment path with clearly defined steps up the career ladder. Wall Street Journal “Work & Life” columnist Rachel Feintzeig joins host J.R. Whalen to discuss why being open to detours and unexpected obstacles can be a key to getting ahead. Illustration: ELENA SCOTTI

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It May Be Time to Rethink Your Perfect Career Plan

Here's "Your Money Briefing" for Friday, September 29th. I'm JR Whalen for "The Wall Street Journal." Rather than dreaming of the perfect career path, having expectations that there will likely be several detours and dead ends along the way could instead set you up for success. "Wall Street Journal" columnist Rachel Feintzeig joins me to explain why. So Rachel, it seems like past generations had it so easy. They got a college degree, got a great job, a couple of promotions along the way. When did the tides start to turn?

I don't wanna oversell how easy it was for everyone who came before us, although that is always tempting. This has been going on for some time, this kind of fraying bond between employer and employee, the idea that decades ago, people got a pension, they stayed with the company for life. I mean, some of that is a teeny bit of oversimplification, but there certainly has been a change. What I think is changing more recently is just this new kind of moment we find ourselves in. Companies are cutting back, whether it's because they actually have to do layoffs or they're following suit to show that they are lean and efficient. They're getting rid of layers of middle managers in industries like tech. Meta has been very outspoken about this, and I think things like technology and AI are changing this, too.

So, does that mean that the expectation of moving up the career ladder in more or less a straight line is unrealistic?

I'm not saying no one can pull it off, but this idea that, it's something I've heard from experts in months of reporting is this expectation that you're gonna be moving up and to the right, you know, your job trajectory is gonna be this straight line heading that way, that's just not how things work. Real life doesn't really work like that to begin with, but especially with all of these things shifting and changing, we just have to expect that it's gonna be a little bit more up and down and sideways.

What about being a good corporate citizen and living by the golden rule of doing right by others? Couldn't that help propel someone forward in their career?

I'm not telling people not to be a good corporate citizen. I think being nice at work is always a good principle as long as you don't let it veer into people pleasing. But this idea that we're just gonna kind of be magically propelled by a system that is there to just make sure that we're continuing to rise in lockstep is probably not a good expectation. And Adam Alter, the professor who I interviewed, talked about how, especially here in the West, we have such an allegiance to science and medicine and those are obviously great things, but they've created in us this expectation that there's just not gonna be that much change, that we can control the world around us. And then we're kind of flabbergasted when we find that that's not the case.

So, what career expectations should someone set for themselves instead?

I like this idea of the squiggly career. An author that I talked to coined this phrase that you're moving in all different directions and you're thinking, what do I want to be known for? Not just rising in lockstep to that next promotion that's directly above you. It's actually quite wise to diversify a little bit so that you have different skills that can be applied in different ways, so you're not left in a really tough spot if something above you goes away.

What role has technology played in the altering of people's career paths?

AI especially seems to be having some impact. It's still early days, but I talked to a researcher who co-authored a working paper and found that AI is flattening hierarchies. We're seeing more kind of skilled tech workers, younger educated tech workers being hired straight out of school to fill the bottom ranks of companies and then less of a need for middle managers, which then, of course, cuts off some of that room to grow. This idea that AI makes data available to people in all corners in the company, and the CEO might not need all these middle managers running around communicating back to him or her. AI might be able to do some of that for them.

You've spoken to several people whose careers took sharp turns as their expectations changed. What do they tell you about that?

Yeah, I talked to a lot of people about what this felt like, and I mostly heard from people that it was oftentimes terrifying. I talked to a vet who had just climbed and climbed, and it's not to say that the climbing isn't hard or doesn't take a lot of work, but this idea that there was some comfort in it, too, that he knew what the next step was going to be. And then he reached this moment where a job above him that he thought he was kind of a shoo-in for, the job ended up going away. And just the sense of, what am I gonna do now? And not knowing how to move forward. I think that's really hard for people. People often find a lot of blessings in taking a new path that maybe they didn't expect. Looking back, there's also some sense of like, did hewing so closely to this exact path that someone else set out for me, even if it was a parent's expectations, was that hurtful to me in any way? Was I not of creative or open-minded as I could have been? Did I miss out on stuff? And so, I think there's a lot of learnings here, many of which are positive after you get through the initial kind of agita.

That's "Wall Street Journal" work and life columnist Rachel Feintzeig. And that's it for "Your Money Briefing." Today's show was produced by Ariana Aspuru. I'm your host, JR Whalen. Our supervising producer is Melony Roy. Aisha Al-Muslim is our developing producer. Scott Saloway and Chris Zinsli are our deputy editors, and Philana Patterson is "The Wall Street Journal's" head of news audio. We'll be back with a new show on Monday morning. Thanks for listening.

WSJ's Your Money Briefing podcast is your personal-finance and career checklist. Finance reporters and experts break down complicated money questions every weekday to help you make better decisions about managing your money. 