How to navigate a lasting career (Episode 8 break-aways)

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. - Winston Churchill

Today’s newsletter serves up some highlights and personal reflections from Episode 8, in which award-winning author and long-time Google executive Alana Karen and I discuss how to play the "long game" in your career.

The second edition of Alana's book The Adventures of Women in Tech just came out, and it's packed with dry humor, wit, and insights from someone who has navigated a long and successful career in tech. She offers up the collective wisdom of 80 women on finding career success, and this new version also reflects on the shifts in the tech industry since we were unceremoniously launched into the 'Hard Tech' era. The book is one part group therapy, one part part guide, and earned every one of the five stars I gave in a recent Amazon review.

In this post, I share why I thought the episode was worth making, and some of the key break-aways from our conversation. 🔊 Listen in for more. Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website Player

👉 What is “Career Endurance” - and why does it matter?

The “average career” is generally considered to last 90,000 hours, or 42 years.

That is a very, very long time. And it's why you should think about endurance in the context of your career.

Endurance is the ability to tolerate something difficult or unpleasant over an extended period.

One of the most common goals for anyone who goes to the gym regularly is to develop physical endurance. You do this by sustaining long intervals of cardio or strength exercises (rather than short bursts or sprints) and you repeat this form of workout regularly. To measure gains, you occasionally benchmark your performance, as improvements in endurance tend to be slow.

It never fails to surprise me when I look at trend lines of my workouts across months and years. I finally started going to the gym again 3 years ago, but between one session and the next it's hard to see much progress. It's only over a longer period of time that I can see how much my physical endurance has improved.

The same concept can also be applied in a work context.

Career endurance is the ability to sustain a long and successful professional life. It encompasses the elements that help you get up when you fall down or realize your boss sucks - and also the strategies that lead to achievement and fulfillment on the other end of the continuum. It's inevitable you'll encounter difficulties and pitfalls in your career journey, but if you're not also pursuing satisfaction and purpose, it's unlikely you'll be able to stick it out for those 42 years of your career.

Don't forget, the reason most of us drag ourselves to the gym on the regular isn't to feel the pain of a workout - it's the endorphin rush on the other side, and the slow but steady gains you get with time.

Thinking about the “long haul” of your career requires a different lens than the one you'd use to get through whatever issue is plaguing you today. Making your way through a hard moment involves resilience. But bringing your 5-year plan to fruition - let alone navigating the 42 years of your working life - that’s endurance. The timescale is different, which means the very problem you are solving for is different.

The people you know who "made it" have all weathered seasons of change. Many found success because they were willing to wait out challenging storms; some reinvented themselves entirely along the way. The idea of endurance takes into account how we evolve over time in our careers, and the common themes involved in finding long-term success. They're things that can only be seen when you zoom out and look at the bigger picture.

It’s seeing the forest, and finding the pathway through the trees.

The very, very long pathway.

👉 The 5 tools you need for career success

In the episode, Alana describes the 5 tools she believes you need to succeed in your career. They are the common themes that emerged across the 80+ interviews she conducted.

She had stories connecting to every one of them. I do, too.

1. Resilience: building the grit and the power to withstand adversity​ This is the core to enduring the hardest parts of your career. To me, resilience is learning to stop taking every failed attempt or professional setback as a personal defeat; it's the grit to keep showing up even after you are disrespected or ignored. Resilience isn't being invincible, but knowing how to heal and get back up after something - or someone - knocks you down.

2. Marketing 101: speaking up and promoting your talents and accomplishments​ Oh, the struggle! As a kid, I was taught not to brag, but in the workplace, not promoting yourself is a barrier to success. I included this as the 3rd stage in my own talk about career advancement ("Make others notice"); this tool is all about overcoming the discomfort of self-promotion. It's the critical link between doing "amazing work" and getting the recognition you deserve.

3. Ask!: having the confidence to network, reach out, and ask for help ​I spent years believing that asking for help was a sign of weakness or a risk to how others perceived me. But the truth is, vulnerability is a strength. Asking for help, a connection, a mentor's time - or demanding the salary you know you deserve - are all acts of agency. This is a tool that moves you beyond fear or resentment, to coming up with a plan that moves you forward - and taking action.

4. Find Support: seeking out those who will help you navigate your career and provide a sense of belonging​ This is what makes the journey sustainable. As a woman in tech, I often felt like I was on an island. Building a circle of trust, or even just a buddy you can lean on at work, is vital. Having people who reflect back the best version of you is incredibly powerful - it provides the emotional infrastructure that allows you to feel less lonely and more confident in taking risks.

5. Own Your Awesome: knowing you are enough, and you are worthy​ This is the heart of it all. 25 years into my career, I can finally look back and see how much time I wasted doubting myself, trying to fit a mold that wasn't mine, or believing the voice inside me that said I wasn't "ready." This is the self-compassion and confidence that underpins all the other tools. It fuels your ability to speak up and ask, and it's the foundation of resilience because intrinsically, you know you belong in the room.

This is but a tiny fraction of the wisdom Alana shares in her book, and it skips over the multitude of stories within that breathe life into these high-level concepts. If you find her ideas compelling, I encourage you to grab a copy of her book and dig in - it's worth the read.

👉 How to Endure in Your Career

Alana and I end the episode reflecting on what it takes to navigate a long career as a woman in tech. She distilled her advice down to finding a balance between patience and agency. Her thoughts resonated so deeply with my own experience, I decided to include her full answer below.

Early on in my career, I was all about taking urgent action, diving in headfirst and taking care of business. I’d push and push until something broke. Sometimes it was me, sometimes it was whatever I was trying to fix.

As I learned with time, patience is key. A rewarding career is a marathon, not a sprint, and true growth usually happens on a longer timeline than we want - as do promotions or landing your next gig. The path forward is often messy, and you need patience to stick with a challenging situation long enough to see how it will pan out, or if there is anything for you to learn from it.

On the flip side, agency is also essential - especially as a woman in tech. If you wait too long, opportunities will pass you by. Agency means knowing your value, communicating it clearly, and not waiting for permission to forge your own path. It also involves asking for what you need - as well as what you want.

👉 Some Final thoughts

The “why” behind this episode seems more urgent than ever; we are living in a time of extreme professional pressures. Sticking it out at work feels especially hard for everyone I know right now. Burnout is rampant, and AI is coming to either save or destroy us all. Meanwhile, layoffs are the new normal, and women are leaving the workforce at an alarming rate.

These are not easy times.

And also? This is just one season in your journey.

You've made it this far. If this moment feels especially hard for you, I believe in your ability to find your way through the forest of your career.

Even if you don't see the path just yet.

You’ve got this.

💥 Break Out!

🔊 Check out the full episode: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website

Alana's reflections as we closed out the episode... ​There’s an interesting combination of patience and agency that I think you are going to have to figure out, if you want a long career in tech. You are going to have amazing days, you’re going to have bad days. You’re going to be on teams that you feel a lot of alignment with and teams you feel almost none. You’re going to be in situations where you are learning a ton and situations where that seems to dry up. You’re going to be told you’re valuable, and then you’re going to get reorged and somehow same exact stuff you’re going to be told isn’t valuable. So there is going to be a lot of years in time and exercising some amount of patience. A bit of - this, too, shall pass. A bit of noticing the patterns and being patient with them, knowing that when you get a new boss you’re gonna have to do some retraining, yada, yada. But at the same time, balancing that out with a sense of agency. The tip that I started to give a lot of folks is, set a timeline. If you notice that something isn’t great, think about a couple things you can try to change that, and set a timeline. I’m going to try these X things and if that doesn’t work, in six months I’m going to decide what to do next. If you can do that, I think it’ll both give you the patience to get over some hurdles so that you continue, you don’t overreact. You don’t get disengaged too early, you don’t start distracting yourself and looking for a job when really all you need to do is double down and get through this period. It’ll get you over some of those humps, but at the same time it won’t make you too patient. It won’t make you complacent, it won’t make you accept things for the long run that you shouldn’t in your career, because you’ve given yourself a timeline and you can go back to it. So endurance, I think, is going to be the name of the game. How are you going to endure through some of the bad times but also take advantage of the great times? Hurdle through them, enjoy them, love them, but have a plan B when times get rough. I think that’s the thing.

🔊 Listen in to hear the full story. Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Website