Why I'm writing this post
This is primarily me thinking out loud and forcing myself to make my swirling thoughts concrete, but I would also love to hear any insights and wisdoms from anyone with similar thoughts or experiences.
The Context
I graduated in 2018 with a bachelors in a STEM degree, spent my 2019 working at a quantitative trading firm on a six figure salary and have begun 2020 by leaving my job to clear my head and realign my life trajectory. I am currently 24.
The Vision
The toughest part about optimally planning for the future is my awareness that what I consider 'optimal' is always changing. Even in a single year, I feel like I learn so much that the goal post keeps moving. Given this, this is my best guess (as of Jan 2020) as to how I want to manifest my future:
Be financially independent (ie. have the means to spontaneously switch careers, start a business, go on a holiday etc.)
Start/lead a business or startup
Have strong networks/friendships with high quality human beings, who are world class in areas/skills that I admire and value
Have the skills/network to make meaningful impact on the world (the kinds of ideas that the guys from 80000hours.org talk about)
At a glance, it seems like achieving 1 will give me the confidence to start 2, and having 3 in conjunction with 2 will be the ideal setup for achieving 4. The idea behind these goals is that they provide good optionality should things change in any event.
I've intentionally left the type of business, and the nature of my impact on the world as ambiguous for the time being, as I'm not 100% sure at this point what it would look like. The type of business/impact I make would depend on what I am capable of, what the economic landscape looks like, and what unattended problems exists in 10 or so years.
The Career
Whether it be a game, a business or your life, the quality of the outcome is strongly correlated with the quality of the decisions.
In the realm of quantitative decision making, I think that the data scientist's toolkit is king. Knowing how to parse copious amounts of data to build predictive and analytics models is an absolute boon to empirically driven decision making. Consider:
Bill Benter's eventual 120 parameter model that helped him win nearly $1B on horse betting
DeepMind's AlphaGo defeating a world champion at a game which has combinatorics greater than the number of atoms in the universe
The efficacy of YouTube, Neflix and Amazon's suggestion algorithms which optimize customer retention at insane economy of scale
However, there are still scenarios where data science is not (yet) fully equipped to handle such as leadership/organizational/management matters and other situations where it is not possible to collect enough data for modelling. There will be plenty of situations where decisions must be made in the absence of data and your decision making heuristic would have to come from first principles. To cover these scenarios, I think an effective skill-set to cultivate would be that of a management consultant.
As businesses are constantly trying new things and have invariably unique setups, the art of being a management consultant is quickly learning about a particular company's industry and helping upper management make key decisions that optimally drives that business forward.
The Path
There are a few routes I could do down:
Work as a data scientist at a consulting firm (eg. Quantium, Accenture, BCG)
Spend a few years as a dedicated data scientist at a tech firm, then spend a few years as a dedicated consultant at a consulting firm
And of course, there are more minor subvariants within either route.
Either route should offer a relatively above average salary that will (in conjunction with being frugal a la FIRE movement) move me towards Vision 1. The line of work and nature of the job should give me the skillset to optimize likely success at Vision 2 and the time spent at quality companies with quality employees may grant me access to Vision 3. Having sufficiently fulfilled Vision 1, 2 and 3 would be the ideal recipe to start cooking with Vision 4 (but I must remember not to let perfect being the enemy of good enough).
Questions to the Audience (if you happen to give a shit)
What ideas do you agree with, and more importantly, what do you disagree with?
Do you see any traps or dead-ends I may be leading myself toward?
Am I being too hyper-focused on career and what are some non-career areas of life that I must remember to also cultivate?
Am I romanticizing data science/consulting and what are some things I should be wary of?
