Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

22 Nov 2009, 21:29 p.m.

Career Analysis Stuff

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2009 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

You might be interested in my analysis of my career history in a longish Crooked Timber comment.

I'm very glad that I had so many different work experiences before making irrevocable choices, and that I delayed grad school till I had a specific purpose.

Tonight I thought a little about loyalty to one's workplace in a comment on Venkatesh Rao's thought-provoking business management post.

Loyalty to an organization? Identifying with an organization? For a fairly smart hard worker, who actually believes in the stated goals of the organization, it's fairly seductive, especially if they conflate their specific subcommunity with the institution as a whole.

I learned via Mel Chua that Gerald Weinberg, whose work has influenced my industry and my career profoundly, is very ill. My thoughts are with him.