Career and Risk Management

Posted in life by pedro | Monday, December 31st, 2012 at 1:19 pm

Inspired by Embracing Risk in Career Decisions by Harvard Business Review plus it is New Year’s resolutions time :) . I decided to write this post.

Intro

Article suggest that risk management in career decisions should be different then risk management in business decisions. In business we have to minimize risk but it will bring more harm in career decision. Of course we shouldn’t read that as “stop thinking”.

So You Want To Be a Hero?

In our quest for glory we should take care about:

  1. Happiness: all factors which make us happy.
  2. Attitude Factor: all factors which develop us.
  3. and not so important but anyway: Threats: all factors which make us shiver.

CareerDecisionMM

How we should keep balance? I will cite HBR here:

This means that career decisions need to start not with risks, but creating a prioritized list of “happiness criteria,” or aspects that will critically determine your long-term satisfaction. The second step is to think through which of these criteria are non-negotiable and — if compromised — would force you to make a trade-off that could increase your risk in some other area.

Looking into past, I were brave enough or just stupid :) to not debate about threats. I do not regret any job changing I’ve made. Every new job learnt me new things, gave me new opportunities, and most important I’ve met new friends.

Anyway as New Year is coming, consider what is truly important for you.

What’s your future? Are you happy in current job?

Happy New Year!

about me

My name is Sebastian Pietrowski. I've finished Warsaw University as Master degree. During my studies I started work for merlin.pl. The primary language I use is Java but I have also programmed in Python, Ruby and Scala. I worked as a technical solution architect at merlin.pl. infrastructure when we were moving from PL/SQL to J2EE. I engineering a great performance optimized solution that made the application 10 times faster than requirements and 85 times faster as original solution.

Currently, I am working as a Senior Expert at F.Hoffmann-La Roche to help define future roadmap in design and development of Enterprise software at Roche and Genentech and build adoption for new technologies. I'm continuously mentoring new developers, helping them understand how important test driven development is and empowering them to get better at their daily job. I'm involved in many activities which brings new technologies for better and faster development. You can find more details on my LinkedIn profile.

But don’t get me wrong, I am not your typical nerd. I'm a pleasant guy that you can drink a glass of wine with me and talk about a range of topics with. My leisure activities include playing basketball, soccer and listening to music. I try to be pragmatic while staying focused on application performance and tuning with success in my daily work.

My favorite quote from Yoda's and my life’s motto is: Do, or do not. There is no try.