Career Growth Roadmap - De-risking Your Career By Understanding Your Vulnerabilities

Hey everyone and welcome to today's episode of Developer T. My name is Jonathan Catrell and my goal on the show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective, and purpose in their careers. And in today's episode, I want to talk about ways of de-risking your career on your career growth roadmap. And interestingly, uh the flip side of de-risking also tends to align with career growth. We're going to talk a little bit about how that works.

The first thing I want you to do, if you're listening to this episode, is to either pause it or uh, you know, uh take take a minute after the episode to run through this exercise. It's not very complicated. Uh the exercise is very simple. I want you to think about the uh things in your life, the people, uh, you know, maybe the situations, maybe the uh the literal physical things that drive your decision making. Right. So for most people, of course, one of the things on this list is money.

Uh but it usually shows um shows up in different ways. Uh specifically how would you use the money that you make? How do you currently use it? You can look back and see how you have uh made decisions around money. What kinds of things are on this list? But secondly, I want you to think about what kinds of things would change your decisions.

What situation could occur that would shift your decision making, that would shift your behavior, uh, that would change how you spend your time, maybe it would change how you spend your money. uh and you know develop this list of of things that are uh are very powerful and have a lot of uh um kind of leverage over your decision making.

Now this list is very important for you to be aware of, because While this list is ultimately probably fairly well aligned with things that you value, there are also things on this list that could hold you hostage. Right. Now I don't necessarily mean in a hostile way. Um more what I mean is that you could end up making decisions that you otherwise would not have made.

had it not been for some uh aspect, something on this list that kind of pushed you that direction. So basic examples of this might be large amounts of debt, right? Um, you know, the kind of the positive versions of this might be relationships that you care deeply about, whether that's family or friends or or whatever uh is on that uh you know uh on that vertical for you as well. Your personal health. uh you know at some point your personal health you wouldn't have a choice.

Right, but to be h held uh you know essentially hostage. But you could also look at uh maximizing your personal health. Maybe that's something that you value very, very much. Um, and so that's not necessarily a bad thing to have on this list. Um, but the important thing that you need to recognize here is that when we care very deeply about something. Or uh, you know, when we care um, you know, about not losing something, right? Like

For example, if you didn't pay your debts, you may uh d your credit score may drop. You may lose out on future potential of owning things. You may have something repossessed, your car, your home. These are all nightmare scenarios that are probably for most people on this show or listening to the show rather, it's it's unlikely for you, right? Um but they're not uh things that could never happen.

In other words, that was kind of a double negative, wasn't it? So it it's these these are situations that could theoretically, if you didn't pay your bills, you could lose your home. You could lose your car.

So what this list highlights for you. Are things that are powerful in your life to you. And as a general rule, these are the things that you're going to make most of your large decisions around. Whether that's managing your debt or Maybe it's aligning your time so that you can spend it with friends. Maybe on this list is. uh something as c as simple or as critical as the domain that you want to work in. You care very much about working

in some kind of domain. And so if your organization, uh, let's say you join um, you know, a company and you find out that they're moving away from a particular domain. that may have enough leverage over you that you decide that you're going to leave that job. Right. So what you want to understand here is that this list, the, the power that it that these things have, the the values kind of cut both ways. And so uh it makes sense to de-risk yourself.

in as many of these areas as possible. How can you gain enough agency over your own decision making so that these areas have less leverage? What would have to be true, for example, for you to not go uh you know uh into the red on your mortgage? And this is the basic de-risking process, right? You're, you know, everybody makes different decisions with their money, everybody makes different decisions with their time, with their careers.

And what we're really trying to do is kick off kind of a pre-mortem of career failure. That's really what this exercise is. But it starts with trying to recognize the sources of power in your life. When I say sources of power, I don't mean anything mystical or magical or new age. I mean very simply the things that would have the power to change your decisions. situational, relational, whatever it is.

These are things that have power over your decisions. And so these matter because in order for you to gain as much autonomy as possible, in order to make decisions about your career that you want to make. You need to have a clear awareness of the things that have power over you. Right. And identify the ones that you are you accept. Right. So for example, um, you know, in some of those relationships, part of what keeps the relationship um in a in a positive place, right? Part of

Kind of the definition of that relationship is vulnerability. And so you're vulnerable because that person has some power over you to change your decision making. Right, if I de risked my uh you know, reliant on my relationship with my wife or my children, that would probably uh create some some distance because it would eliminate some of the vulnerability that we have with each other. And that's not something that I want to elect to do.

But I don't need to be vulnerable with my creditor, right? Uh I don't really want to have that vulnerability. In fact, as soon as I can close out that relationship. uh that's what I want to do. So um, you know, ways of de-risking those situations. create more autonomy and create more opportunity for me uh to to make decisions in my career that may otherwise feel too risky.

Right. I may go and join a company. This is this is how this ultimately ends up playing out. Right. So so let's take uh let's take credit card debt, for example. Okay. Uh, I could either choose to continue on with credit card debt hanging over my head and build that bill up, increase my debt.

And ultimately I'm beholden to paying that debt off. And so therefore, you know, I need to have a job that allows me that that I have enough income to pay that debt off. Okay. So that's the basic calculus, right? And so with that debt, I'm unlikely to take a pay cut to go and work for a company that I may really want to work for, but they just can't quite pay me enough. to deal with this other vulnerability.

And so my credit card debt has power over my decision making about where I work. Right? So, and this can even be, you know, jobs that pay decently well. So, and that's that's a very common example, right? So, so instead, uh, what can I do in order to improve my autonomy and ultimately uh give me more agency in my career? and potentially allow me to take more risks in my life, I eliminate other risks. So I may buckle down,

you know, save what I need to save in the higher paying job in order to pay the credit card off entirely. And now that vulnerability is reduced in my life. Um, you know, money isn't always the answer. Sometimes it's as simple as uh you know, trying to square with uh the risk of not paying that debt off. You know, how can I uh what what happens in my life and am I okay with that?

You know, very similarly, uh, we may need to uh, you know, do some introspection and and figure out how we can relate differently to our to our job, some of the parts of our job. uh that we previously may have called non-negotiables. Now we adjust our, you know, we we uh do again that introspective work to figure out, okay, what is actually important to me here.

Uh, you know, what are the real risks that I'm trying to mitigate, for example, um, versus the ones that I'm imagining? Am I creating a problem where there doesn't need to be one? And so if that's the case, then I might be uh you know, less likely to leave a job, right? Less likely to leave a company. um just because of some small failure or some small misalignment. Maybe the the leadership at the company, I don't have perfect alignment with their personal values.

Can I relate to that situation differently so that I'm not constantly seeking a company where everybody in the company has exactly the same values that I have, exactly the same belief system that I have? Um if I can find a way to relate to that differently, then I'm de-risking that, right? I'm taking some power out of that.

uh some power that it otherwise would have had over me. I'm kind of reclaiming that, right? And and now I have a little bit more agency to make my own decisions about those situations. So really what you're doing here is you're trying to figure out, okay, what are the things that uh would change the way I make decisions and

Uh, you know, do I wanna keep that vulnerable relationship? Do I really want to be beholden to that particular value set? You know, that do I want that thing to have that power over me? Or do I want to shift it? And if so

What way would I like to shift it? How should I change my relationship to that thing so that I have more agency autonomy? What this ultimately uh tends to look like and why it usually leads to growth. This usually means that we're trying to take control of certain uh aspects of our life in a different way. So we give up control in one area and we take control in another area.

Right. So uh in the example of uh uh uh of the credit card debt instead of um you know continuing on having debt that I'm gonna take control of my current finances uh so that I can pay that debt off. Uh, you know, I'm gonna try to change how my pin spinning habits for some amount of time. I'm adding control in one area.

And I'm potentially r uh releasing control in another area. So uh in in that example, you know, we might be releasing control um over uh the things that you were able to buy with the credit card. Right, so no no longer are you going to have, you know

that much purchasing power. Maybe that behavior has to change. And so you're you're it's a control system and you only have so much of that agency. But if you route it to the correct things, then you can de-risk your your situation. So um you're less likely to uh to feel constrained in your decision making. And as a general rule, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're gonna be t feel totally free to make any decision.

It also doesn't mean that you're going to end up in a financially better off position. All this really means is that you have more autonomy over your decision making without violating any of your relational vulnerabilities. Right. And so with that autonomy, you may be able to make a more kind of principled decision that aligns with your personal values, uh, your clarity, perspective, and purpose.

You're able to get a little bit clearer, right, on on what you care about and how you want to operate about what you care about. Um you're able to have certainly, this is the biggest one, a different perspective. Right. Uh if you have a bunch of things that are clouding your decision making that you feel like you have to uh you know respect.

or that are that are kind of influencing your decision making and your perspective is probably lacking, right? Um and finally because of that, because of these this change in your c clarity and perspective. um you're able to more directly align with what you have we you hopefully have identified as a purpose driven Uh approach to your career.

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Developer T. It's kind of a different um a different discussion about values, really uh looking at how you you know, w what level of freedom do you have based on how your values uh shift your, you know, in not just your values, but how different kind of uh responsibilities or burdens. um how they change your decision making. So hopefully this gives you some idea and I hope this exercise gives you some value yourself.

Uh if you enjoyed this discussion, please uh subscribe and whatever podcasting app you're listening to. Of course, this is also on YouTube now. We're continuing to invest in the quality of our YouTube. So uh you can expect that to get better and better. Thank you so much for listening and until next time. Enjoy your tea.