Work someplace where you’ll be the main event
This is the career advice that I wish someone gave me when I was younger: Do not work at places where your job function doesn’t matter.
I don’t mean you personally or the caliber of work you do, but rather the actual function and how it fits into your company. Some jobs are much more important to the success and failures of a company than others. Being aligned from job function and company perspective is a key way to be happy with your career.
Being a designer at Arby’s is not where it’s at. Being a designer at a product-focused tech company like FiscalNote (or Apple, Netflix, etc.) is where it is at.
Quarterback for the Cleveland Browns? You are a main eventer. Social media specialist for the Cleveland Browns? Absolutely not a main eventer. Might be a fun job, but there are other places where social media is critical to the company’s success. No one sits around, saying, “if only the Browns had a better social media strategy the last 20 years, they wouldn’t have been embarrassing.”
I head up user experience and design at FiscalNote. The work we do is mission-critical to this company succeeding. A hard to use product that doesn’t meet user needs isn’t going to make much money.
I have had some previous jobs where the work I did was not part of the main event. Those experiences were frustrating, even if I liked my coworkers and the mission of the company. Working someplace where you aren’t the main event almost assuredly means you won’t push yourself to your limits and do great work.
I have a lot of product designers and UX people reaching out to me for advice. Honestly, the kind of company you work for and the environment they are able to put you in will make a huge difference in your career and life happiness.
For tech workers in general, there is a very binary difference between working for a company that relies on your tech skills to make the company relevant and a company that views your tech skills as a necessary evil and cost center. I realize that we all can’t work for great places, but I would encourage you to keep pushing for better and don’t settle for bad fits.
What happens when you’re not the main event at your company?
Your work will not be valued by senior management
Senior management at well-run companies is either filled with people who lead teams of main eventers or who are just good at management. They are not going to ascribe a lot of value to your work and your profession, because it’s not something they are involved with or something that got them where they are.
You will probably rarely talk to senior management and not get a lot of opportunities to shine to the larger company.
You will have a limited career path and growth and learning opportunities
The places that I worked where I was not a main eventer, not only did I not get promoted (there often was no actual job ladder setup for these roles to get promoted into), but they also did not help my career outside of that company.
Non-main event jobs get less training opportunities. Why pay money to send someone to class, training, or a conference when their work isn’t that critical to the company and could easily be outsourced anyway?
You will be at the top of the list for layoffs
When I worked at an international conservation organization, where do you think it made the most sense to layoff people off during the Great Recession? The teams working on conservation policy and fundraising or the Web and social media team I was on? When you’re not a main eventer, you’re viewed as a nice to have, and sometimes times are so tight that nice to haves have to go.
Main event jobs are also hard to outsource. Only a management team that wasn’t interested in long-term success (or that was just really incompetent) would outsource main event job functions. That’s a red flag for the kind of company that you wouldn’t want to work for on several levels.
If you work in tech — UX, design, product management, engineering, QA, etc. — drop me a note on Twitter. I am always looking for new people who want to be main eventers.
