punctuative! by Matt Winn

Forget Job Stability - Here’s Why

I think of Ben Casnocha as a “life lessons prodigy.” He’s received recent attention as one of BusinessWeek’s “Top 25 Entrepreneurs Under 25″ but he’s been riding high on the blogosphere buzz-train for some while now. And deservedly so. You can read about his accomplishments here, but what I value about Ben is his ability to make unconventional choices that adhere to a core philosophy unformed in most folks his age.

In a recent post, Ben asked a critical question about career choice prefaced with the notion that one often has to trade “stimulation” at a job for “stability” or vice versa:

In the end, most of us try to get to “stable/interesting”. Do you think it’s easier to go from an unstable/interesting activity to a stable/interesting activity or to go from a stable/uninteresting activity to a stable/interesting one? In other words, is it easier to turn a start-up into a stable business or to re-invent your law practice after 20 years to find new intellectual stimulation?

My response follows:

I’m a firm believer that one should never live “a life deferred.” In other words, don’t choose a stable/uninteresting/no control job thinking you’ll get a stable/interesting/lots of control job down the line. You’re far more likely to stand out to a potential employer (an increasingly difficult task) if you’ve done something of interest and you can talk about it with enthusiasm than if you’ve “paid your dues,” and you’re far more likely to generate your own stable/interesting/lots of control job if you’re used to thinking that way.

In other words, forget stability. Define your own path (which is bound to be interesting) and if you’re good, it’s going to be stable.

I’m highly risk tolerant so the above fits me well, but it probably doesn’t fit everyone. If you’d like to weigh in, do so at Ben’s well-commented post, or write in here.