Two people trace how wandering through different jobs shaped their careers. Speaker A didn't know about finance until junior year, then tried Goldman Sachs on a friend's suggestion, which opened doors to roles in product, marketing, and investing. Both learned that each job builds skills and connections that let you find work you actually want to do.
Chapters
I don't even think I knew what.
Venture capital was when I was in college.
And to be honest, I only feel like I finally figured out my career.
A couple years ago.
In between everything was this meandering path and just figuring out where I could.
Learn the most what my friends were doing. But I have learned since then how important it is to be intentional about some of these decisions. But to give you a sense of.
What I was like as an undergrad, I did economics because it was the easiest, smallest major at the time was like 70 units or something ridiculously small. I did Ms. And E because a.
Lot of my friends were doing the co term, but it wasn't something I.
Had intentionally been thinking about enough. Even my Goldman Sachs interviews and my.
Internship there was largely because my friends were inspiring me to go interview for that. I think in life though, post graduation.
Is when I started realizing I need to find something that I truly like.
And that truly makes me fulfilled, that.
I'm actually good at, that I find fun. And that was what led me to.
This different path of trying out finance.
Then product management, marketing, business development, and.
Then early stage investing where I finally.
Feel like okay, I'm doing something really fun that I'm actually good at. Because you need both.
You can't just do things that are.
Fun you're not good at and you also can't just do things you're good.
At that are not fun.
But long winded answer of saying When I was young I had no clue what I wanted to do. When I was older I had never.
Even heard the word Goldman Sachs until.
My junior year in college. I didn't grow up on the east coast. My parents are engineer biochemists. And because Goldman Sachs doesn't have a physical retail bank next to my parents house where they do banking, I had.
Never heard of it. I heard of bank of America, I heard of Citibank and that was it.
My understanding of how the world worked.
How finance worked, how the economy worked.
Was very very non existent back then. So a lot of this you learn throughout various jobs and various experiences. And the main message I think the story of my career is the more experiences you gather, the more different types of people you meet. One day when you look back, they will all piece together and make you more capable to do whatever it is.
That you finally end up deciding to do.
And that's definitely true in my case.
Every single part of my career, previous jobs, previous classes, previous random extracurriculars I did, they have all come back to make me who I am today. And so the idea that you need.
To graduate knowing exactly what's the perfect major, what's the perfect job, that job you're very unlikely to do for the next 10 years. It's not likely to be the job you do for the rest of your career.
You don't have to worry so much.
About making these one way door bets because they're not one way door bets. And life will take you to many different experiences.
