Career

The most consequential decisions in a career are often the ones that look irrational in the moment. A common pattern in high-growth companies is that the most impactful roles are often the least defined at the outset. The title is unclear. The scope is fluid. By traditional metrics, it can look like a step down. That is the point. Early in your career, and often well into it, people optimize for position. They evaluate title, compensation, reporting lines. They try to map a linear path forward. This is a legacy framework from a more static economy. But in periods of technological acceleration, the variables that matter shift. High-growth companies compress time and push you beyond your prior experience. They push you to develop new skills quickly and operate beyond your prior experience. One year of work can feel like five. In those conditions, the job description becomes secondary. What matters is whether you are working on important problems alongside people who raise your standard. Careers tend to follow momentum. The environments you choose shape the trajectory more than the plans you start with. The challenge is that these opportunities rarely present themselves clearly. They look incomplete. Uneven. Risky. The question is whether you can recognize directional momentum early and commit before the outcome is fully defined. #schmidtsights

Does becoming a parent affect academic trajectories? Yes, and particularly so for women: 🔹University employment drops by almost 30 percent for women, much less so for men. 🔹Probability of being tenured is about 35 percent lower for women, no change for men. 🔹Number of publications is 31 to 35 percent lower for women, no change for men. These are among the key results of a new study by Sofie Cairo, Ria Ivandic, Anne Sophie Lassen, and Valentina Tartari using rich Danish admin data. Why do women’s and men’s career trajectories diverge sharply after parenthood? The paper studies a series of candidate explanations and finds that the gap in childcare load seems mainly responsible: "women academics do almost five times more childcare than their male academic counterparts. For example, 55% of female researchers get up at night to take care of the child most or all the time, in comparison to 11% of men". Read the full paper here: Sofie Cairo, Ria Ivandic, Anne Sophie Lassen, and Valentina Tartari (2026), Parenthood and the career ladder: evidence from academia, Centre for Economic Performance discussion paper: https://lnkd.in/eK2gWzSb

Your skills don't matter if people can't count on you. I've watched talented people get passed over for promotions, partnerships, and opportunities — not because they lacked ability, but because they were unpredictable. Meanwhile, the "average" person who just... showed up when they said they would? They kept winning. Here's what reliability actually looks like: You say you'll send the email → you send it that day You commit to a deadline → you hit it or communicate early You schedule a call for 2pm → you're there at 1:58 STOP saying "I'll try to make it" STOP giving yourself escape hatches STOP treating your word like a suggestion START treating every small commitment like a contract with your reputation. Because here's what nobody tells you: People don't remember your best work. They remember whether you made their life easier or harder to deal with. Become the person others never have to chase, remind, or double-check. That's not a soft skill. That's a competitive advantage hiding in plain sight. — I write a weekly newsletter where I unpack these ideas. → newsletter.scottdclary.com

The electronics industry is adding jobs faster than ever, yet we’re still facing a talent gap at every level. 💡 The challenge? There’s no one-size-fits-all pathway into our field. Some roles can be learned through hands-on experience. Others require advanced degrees. Most demand a combination of both, and a commitment to continuous learning. I shared with Alison Griffin at Forbes about how the Global Electronics Association is helping build flexible, resilient talent pipelines by: 🔹 Aligning training with real industry needs 🔹 Connecting employers, educators, and policymakers 🔹 Supporting skill-building from high school to corporate academies Colorado is proving what’s possible when these pieces come together. Their multi-pathway approach, apprenticeships, degree programs, and corporate training aren’t just filling jobs. It’s creating lasting careers and stronger communities. Better pathways mean better opportunities. And in $4.5 trillion electronics industry, that benefits us all. Read the full story: http://bit.ly/3UsTl37

If you're feeling overwhelmed with how fast AI is evolving, you're not alone. Every day there’s a new paper, a new framework, a new agent loop, and it’s easy to feel like you’re falling behind. But the good news is that you don’t need to learn everything all at once. What you need is structure. So I put together a 10-level AI Agents Learning Roadmap that takes you from foundations to production, layering your learning in a way that’s actually doable. 💡My recommendation: spend 2–3 weeks on each level. Learn the concepts, implement small projects, and build your intuition. If you're moving faster or slower based on time or experience, that’s okay too. And when something new drops? That can be your Level 11. Don’t let “newness” derail your plan. Just start here. 👇 Here’s the roadmap: 🔖 Level 1: GenAI & Transformer Foundations Tokens, embeddings, transformers, decoding, and inference with open-weight models. 🔖 Level 2: Prompting & Language Model Behavior Prompt types (CoT, ReAct, ToT), decoding strategies, context design, and adversarial prompting. 🔖 Level 3: Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) Chunking, embeddings, vector DBs, RAG pipelines, and RAG evaluation. 🔖 Level 4: LLMOps & Tools LangChain, LangGraph, Dust, CrewAI, tool use, function calling, and synthetic data. 🔖 Level 5: Agents & Agent Frameworks Agent types, memory, planning, LangChain agents, LangGraph loops, and evaluation. 🔖 Level 6: Memory, State & Orchestration Vector and symbolic memory, episodic vs persistent state, memory compression. 🔖 Level 7: Multi-Agent Systems Hub-and-spoke vs decentralized, message passing, collaborative agents, agent teams. 🔖 Level 8: Evaluation & Reinforcement Learning LLM-as-a-Judge, RLHF, RLVR, reward modeling, and self-correcting loops. 🔖 Level 9: Protocols & Safety MCP, A2A, safety alignment, guardrails, traceability, and autonomous policy updates. 🔖 Level 10: Build & Deploy FastAPI, Streamlit, GGUF, QLoRA, caching, monitoring with LangSmith, Arize, Trulens. 📌 Bookmark this. 🛠️ Build something after every level. And if you're wondering what tools to explore along the way → Start with Hugging Face (to explore LLMs and SLMs), you can use Ollama (to run SLMs on your laptop, like Phi-4, TinyLlama), or Fireworks AI (to run LLMs via endpoint, like Qwen 3, Kimi K2, DeepSeek R1), then explore LangChain & LangGraph (these two tools will teach you a lot), then you can move into learning Agentic frameworks like CrewAI, AutoGen. 💻 Pro-tip: Start with cookbooks! 〰️〰️〰️ Follow me (Aishwarya Srinivasan for more AI insight and subscribe to my Substack to find more in-depth blogs and weekly updates in AI: https://lnkd.in/dpBNr6Jg

Efficiency is the result of mastery, not luck. When someone completes a task quickly and skillfully, it’s not just the moment you’re paying for—it’s the decade of learning, failure, repetition, and refinement behind it. Speed is not cheap. It's earned. Respect expertise, value experience, and recognize that great work isn’t about how long it takes. It's about what went into being able to do something so well and so fast. After all, you're not paying for 30 minutes of work; you're paying for the 10 years it took to make it look effortless. ✅ Here's what it looks like in practice: 1. Design & Creative Work Example: A graphic designer creates a logo in under an hour. Why it matters: That logo represents years of learning typography, color theory, brand psychology, and countless hours refining their creative process. Fast doesn't mean easy—it means refined. 2. Software Development Example: A developer fixes a critical bug in 15 minutes. Why it matters: They’re not lucky—they’ve spent years learning systems, syntax, and patterns that allow them to instantly identify and solve issues others would spend hours on. You're not paying for keystrokes. You're paying for insight. 3. Legal & Consulting Services Example: A lawyer offers life-changing advice in a short meeting. Why it matters: Behind that advice are years of study, precedent analysis, and experience in negotiation or litigation. Their clarity is a product of complexity they've already mastered. 4. Trades & Craftsmanship Example: An experienced electrician diagnoses and repairs a problem in 20 minutes. Why it matters: They’ve done it hundreds of times. That precision comes from practice, not guesswork. Quick work is the dividend of deep knowledge. 5. Medical Field Example: A doctor makes a correct diagnosis in one visit. Why it matters: That moment of accuracy reflects years of education, clinical experience, and refined intuition. You're paying for judgment, not just time. ✅ Bottom line: If it looks easy, it’s because someone made it so—through effort, not shortcuts. ✅ Respect the craft. Honor the journey. Pay for the years, not the minutes. ♻️ Repost if this resonates. ➕ Follow Travis Bradberry for more and sign up for my weekly LinkedIn newsletter. Do you want more like this? 👇 📖 My new book, "The New Emotional Intelligence" is now available for preorder on Amazon. Order now and it'll be on your doorstep on Tuesday May 13th.

This 20-minute exercise from Stanford could change your life. It’s called The Odyssey Plan. It reveals 3 possible futures—and forces you to confront what you really want. Here’s how it works (and why you should try it): 🧵 The Odyssey Plan was developed by Stanford’s design lab—the same minds behind the bestselling book Designing Your Life. It’s simple. But powerful. You imagine 3 completely different versions of your next 5 years. And it will challenge everything you think you know. First: Map out your life if you stayed on your current path. Same job. Same routine. Same direction. Where are you in 5 years? How do you feel? Second: Design a life that’s totally different. What if you took a risk? Switched careers? Moved to a new place? No wrong answers—just explore. Where does that version of you end up? Third: Build a future where money and other people’s opinions don’t matter. Forget what's “realistic.” If nothing was stopping you—what life would you create? That’s your third path. Most people live on autopilot. The Odyssey Plan forces you to zoom out, ask bigger questions, and imagine other routes. Not to fantasize—but to choose intentionally. The biggest trap in life? Thinking your current path is the only path. The Odyssey Plan shows you how many options you actually have. And which ones are worth pursuing. Want clarity? Do the Odyssey Plan. 3 futures. 1 decision. Endless insight. Your next chapter starts by imagining more than one.

We don’t need to apologize for having children. After all, we didn’t make a mistake. We didn’t mess up a project. We brought life into this world - and that’s extraordinary. ❤️ Children are the future of our society. What I find much more questionable? Parents who don’t pick up their kids from kindergarten. Who never show up at football practice or piano lessons. That, too, says something. So instead of rushing out of a meeting with guilt in our voice to pick up our children or drive them to their hobbies, we should reshape the culture itself. Block pick-up times and kids' activities into your calendar like you would a board meeting - with clarity and zero apology. Label it not just “Personal,” but “CEO Duty: Future Generation” or “Leadership at Home.” Yes, it sounds bold. That’s the point. Even better: 💡 Bring it up in team stand-ups. Normalize it. 💡 Create a shared “Parent Hours” visibility board within your team, so others can align around it 💡 Rotate critical meeting times to avoid consistently disadvantaging caregivers. 💡 Don’t ask for permission. Model it so others stop feeling they need to either. Make your responsibilities visible, not hidden. There’s no shame in parenting. Only power in presence. Have you ever caught yourself apologizing for being a parent? I have. It took me a long time to rewire that guilt. But now I choose visibility. And so can you. #WorkingParents #Leadership #WorkLifeIntegration #NoMoreApologies #RewriteTheNarrative

Consistency isn’t boring. It’s branding. This BIC pen has looked the same since 1955. Same design. Same transparent barrel. Same blue cap. Bic knew it didn’t need to evolve the design of the product. By sticking to what worked, it has become iconic. Most brands don’t have that kind of discipline. They get bored to easily and change too much. If you change too much, you lose consistency and lose recognition. Great branding isn’t about changing everything all the time. And knowing what not to change is equally as important. A solid brand strategy should do two things: 1. Tell you where to stay consistent. 2. Show you where to evolve to stay relevant. Every brand has core brand assets (or codes)… distinctive elements that drive recognition. KFC has the bucket, the Colonel, the colour red and chicken. the LEGO Group has the brick, the yellow minifigure, the red square logo, and imagination. Bic has this pen shape, the blue cap, the orange packaging and the Bic Boy. When you protect those core assets, show up consistently, and then find relevant, creative ways to show up in culture that’s how you win. Not everything needs to change. Know what to keep. That’s the work.