I appreciate the thoughtful reflection on company stage. It’s definitely a confusing market. My heart has been leaning towards early stage and startups, but instability is holding me back. You gave me a lot to consider. Thanks for sharing!
I think physical location and cultural constraints play a huge psychological mind game on you. As an American, my career developed as a PM in an American business corporation (Barcelona), COO in a couple startups ±25 people (London, Sofia) and now I'm surveying Lisbon (the new tech expat playing field), where yearly salaries rarely top 30K net. Big Tech / Bay Area seems like a universe away and the gatekeeping erodes your resolve to develop in the tech sphere. Often times you wonder whether you irrevocably missed the right train.
Nikhyl, it feels to me like the general thrust of your advice is to consider and prioritize the 'edges' of the company stage spectrum (very early <--> mature or very mature), and to be skeptical of companies in the 'middle'. It's so interesting since the 'middle' was probably the most appealing & lucrative subset of the market up until fairly recently... no more than 1-2 years ago!
Yes that's exactly right. That's why I am updating my career frameworks as I think it's non-intuitive that the career lessons from the past no longer apply.
Makes total sense, thank you. If the past doesn’t always predict the future, it’ll be fascinating to see how the advice evolves in a few years. It’s very possible things converge to the ‘middle’ again with a new crop of startups in pre-growth and growth phases. That would be exciting to watch
I appreciate the thoughtful reflection on company stage. It’s definitely a confusing market. My heart has been leaning towards early stage and startups, but instability is holding me back. You gave me a lot to consider. Thanks for sharing!
Do you believe some of more recent changes will revert back to the 2020/21 format when things swing back up again or are permanently changed?
I think physical location and cultural constraints play a huge psychological mind game on you. As an American, my career developed as a PM in an American business corporation (Barcelona), COO in a couple startups ±25 people (London, Sofia) and now I'm surveying Lisbon (the new tech expat playing field), where yearly salaries rarely top 30K net. Big Tech / Bay Area seems like a universe away and the gatekeeping erodes your resolve to develop in the tech sphere. Often times you wonder whether you irrevocably missed the right train.
Nikhyl, it feels to me like the general thrust of your advice is to consider and prioritize the 'edges' of the company stage spectrum (very early <--> mature or very mature), and to be skeptical of companies in the 'middle'. It's so interesting since the 'middle' was probably the most appealing & lucrative subset of the market up until fairly recently... no more than 1-2 years ago!
Yes that's exactly right. That's why I am updating my career frameworks as I think it's non-intuitive that the career lessons from the past no longer apply.
Makes total sense, thank you. If the past doesn’t always predict the future, it’ll be fascinating to see how the advice evolves in a few years. It’s very possible things converge to the ‘middle’ again with a new crop of startups in pre-growth and growth phases. That would be exciting to watch