Artículo publicado en Linked In 2021
Today is easy to find people studying till their thirties in search of top professional opportunities. As an example, the average age for applicants to Stanford Graduate School of Business landed at 27 years in 2020. The effort we make to acquire what we consider the essential knowledge to kick off a successful professional career to top business jobs has constantly increased, in part driven by a need of exclusive certifications and titles that create differentiation with the rest of the pack, but also because our endless sense of never being fully prepared for a professional world that is in a permanent accelerated change. Investing our initial 30 years of life to get ready for a great job can be considered a lot, but for many is worthy if put in perspective of a growing life expectancy and working age. With an average expectation in North America and Western Europe in the range of 80-82, having most of our relatives or neighbours enjoying life beyond 95, and seeing retirement age as a moving ahead target, expanding our initial education for 3 decades looks like a good investment if opens the door for significant salaries. If we look back in history, for any XVIII - XIX century noble family in Western Europe, where lifespan, even if being among the highest around the world, was about 55, considering an investment of 30 years would be totally out of question. An obvious reason would be the share of life at stake, but also the amount of education one needed to generate differentiation and exclusivity over the rest of the population. The status of a highly educated person could be achieved with much less life dedication. We are trying to get as much runway as possible to get higher and scape from the gravity of mediocrity, like if the only available propulsion for our journey was from the launchpad, and the rest of the trip to our moon should leverage that inertia. Maybe that strategy was fine when reaching a professional distinctive position was equivalent to reaching the moon. The question however is whether this can still work when we have already targeted Mars and continuously are looking further away. Should we go for a one-off push or try to have multiple, even constant propulsion throughout the entire trip? An interesting alternative to the 30-year investment is what some startuppers do. They start really early with some basic knowledge, deep amateur expertise in some field and a ton of passion and put all this into practice with a tangible project. Their vision is never a life lasting project. Best of cases they see it as a ten-year shot that will take them to the next challenge, still to be dreamt. That model, in an era of exponencial change, looks like suitable for the uncertainty on what will be worth investing.
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