In April, I went to Brooklyn to talk with a crew of early-career technologists. Y’all, it’s a rough time to be trying to start your career. I wanted to give them a real acknowledgement of that, and also some optimism about how it will work out in the long run.
The key takeaway is that the ups and downs of the employment market are usually cyclical, and although they are emerging at a down part of the cycle, there will be other parts. I also told them that whatever they are doing, even if it’s not what they trained for, can be helpful and useful in their future careers, if they pay attention and stay curious. The people who know the most about point-of-sale terminals are often the people who spend all day babying them. No experience is wasted time, even if it wasn’t the plan.
Your career is long, and it has a lot of fluctuations, but you’ll never regret being curious about your industry, your role, and how people interact with computers.