The Ladder is Broken

Your parents had a career path: entry level, manager, director, VP, retire with pension. Linear. Predictable. Safe. That ladder does not exist anymore. Companies restructure constantly. Industries disappear. Skills become obsolete in five years.

The idea that you pick one thing at twenty-two and do it until sixty-five is not just unrealistic โ€” it is undesirable. Who wants to do the same thing for forty years? Not us.

The Career Lattice

Welcome to the career lattice: moving sideways, diagonally, starting over, combining skills in weird ways. Marketing to coding. Teaching to UX design. Finance to content creation. The boundaries between fields are dissolving.

This is scary for people who wanted certainty. But for the rest of us, it is liberation. Your career is not a straight line โ€” it is a series of experiments. Try something. Learn from it. Pivot when it stops working.

Skills Over Titles

The new currency is not your job title โ€” it is your skill stack. Can you write? Can you analyze data? Can you manage projects? Can you code a little? Can you speak to humans without being weird? Combine enough skills and you become irreplaceable.

Companies do not know how to categorize people with weird skill combinations. That is good. It means you do not fit in their boxes. You create your own role.

Embracing the Chaos

The career lattice requires comfort with uncertainty. You will not know what you are doing in five years. You might not know in one year. That used to be terrifying. Now it is just realistic.

Stop asking kids what they want to be when they grow up. Ask them what they want to try next. The question is not 'what is my career?' anymore. It is 'what is my next move?'