Richard Pinter - Career Suggestions

Hey Richard,

I’ve put your message and some thoughts below.

Let me know if I can do anything else to help. I’m happy to have a chat via Zoom. Here is my Calendly .

Question

There are so many opportunities in tech, and so many are interconnected. It’s difficult to decide which field would yield the highest return for me. I’m not sure where to get advice from and have been thinking about looking out for a mentor.

Do you have any idea who to talk to what to read etc? Again really appreciate your help!

My Thoughts

There probably isn’t just one single career that you could choose that would “yield high returns”. As you said, tech is quite interconnected, so there are likely many paths to a high return. Perhaps one initial point is to be less concerned with which exact role or thing you end up doing, start with something you think is exciting and that you have some skills in.

One good quote to guide you with this is “Do what looks like play to you but feels like work to others”.

Another good exercise for life and career planning is to think about what you want your life to look like in the future.

This will help you to have a clear vision of your future, and from there, we can work back to decide which path is best for you right now.

Write down in detail things like:

How much control do I have over my schedule?
How much money do I make?
What’s the importance of what I do?
What type of work?
Where do I live?
What kind of how do I live in?
What hobbies do I have?
What’s my social life like?
What’s my work-life balance?
What’s my family like?
How do other people think of me?
What does my daily routine look like?

Get very clear on these.

Now you have this, think about which direction you’d like to go that would best match to what you want your life to be like in the future.

Is it a role in a certain industry? A certain kind of tech role? Is it a part-time or full-time role? Is it fully remote or in the office?

Once we have the end in mind, making choices about what you would like to do next becomes much easier.

Resources

Books I would read

People to reach out to:

people doing things you are thinking of doing, ask them questions about what they do daily and what tools they use. To do this, you can just dm people on Linkedin, people are usually very helpful!

As I mentioned, I’m happy to get on a call with you also if you’d like.

If you have any questions or thoughts about all this, please let me know!