Standard
career advice for high-achievers early in their careers is to seek out
jobs with “steep learning curves”. In other words, find a job where
you’ll be able to learn a lot, quickly.
I
know when I was in college looking for my first job, the possible
slopes of learning curves loomed large in my mind. I wanted a job where
the steeper the line the better. To me, the steepness of my curve was a
function of how quickly I could take on more responsibility. So I looked
for jobs that promised fast advancement, ultimately landing at a
strategy consulting firm that was itself a startup.
Looking
back, I realize now that the two-dimensionality of a learning curve
conflated two things: how quickly I could learn, and how quickly a job
could teach.
More
often than not, how quickly a job can teach is what slows down a
person’s learning curve, not the other way around. I think of this as
the “learning cycle” of a job.
Learning cycle (p.s. VC learning cycle would look like a flat line to the naked eye… :)At
a fast growing startup, your learning cycle is incredibly fast. For
example, at Pinterest, particularly early on, if I had a hypothesis I
wanted to test, I could ship an experiment fast, and because we already
had an incredibly engaged user base, learn from the results within a
week or two. Basically, my learning cycle was as fast as you could ask
for, which meant I was able to cram an incredible amount of learning
into a very short period of time.
On
the other hand, I’d often interview product manager candidates who
worked at big companies like Microsoft. I’d always be amazed at how
little product management they actually got to do over their many years
of experience. It’d take them years (literally!) to ship a feature,
despite many promotions along the way.
It’s
counter-intuitive, but a brand new startup might actually have a slower
learning cycle than a startup that is already a “rocketship”.
This is
because there is a lot of wandering in the desert before you find
product market fit.
So if you’re thinking of changing jobs, or taking your first, my advice: find a place with a fast learning cycle, and a steep learning curve.
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