Phyl Terry: belief

Transcript context

…So in this example, when you talk about candidate market fit, a big part of it is what the market wants from you. It's not like he's like, "I'm going to go IC." He just realized as he was going through the process, "This is where I'm actually going to succeed." He talked to people, and I helped him network with people in Silicon Valley. They were just honest with him. And that's what Justin was talking about, this can be hard and humiliating at times to figure out... We had another person who was a chief product officer in a startup, and she was great. She helped me with the book, she was an early reader, she's a member of your community, Lenny. And she realized that she wasn't getting the right product trend. She was the only product person, and she didn't really know what she was doing. Well, what was her candidate market fit? It was an IC. It was an IC role, an individual contributor role in a larger tech company. And to her credit, she realized that was the right path for her learning, and she did this before the shoot really hit the fan. I'm in the tech world, fortunately. Just not swear. I talk about this in the book. Sometimes you need a two-step strategy. Let's say you want to be a VP of product at a top streaming company or whatever it is, but you not a fit for that today. So the question is how do you step there? I tell a story in the book about a guy who'd been a VP of product. He wanted a COO role. He was not a fit. He was not a fit, Lenny. And it was very clear. The market was telling him, he did the listening tour, but he came back to me and said, "I don't care. I want a COO role." So he interviewed with 50 companies. Can you imagine? It took them a year and a half. The 50th company hired him. 10 days later, they were a public company, massive fraud, and they went bankrupt. I said, "Okay. The market is clear. The only COO role you're a fit for is a company that's about to go bankrupt." And he's like, "Okay," and he went back to the VP of product role. I said, "If you want to become a COO from that role, where you are today, one of the great paths is to do it from that job inside a company." Okay? And that's what he ended up doing. It was a two-step strategy. He couldn't go straight there. I'm not talking about people's innate worth, Lenny. I believe every human is worthwhile person, and I deeply believe in belonging and giving people support and spreading love and creating community. But I also believe in being practical and realistic. I didn't create this situation. I'm just trying to report to you what the situation is and how you can manage it so that you don't get stuck. How many people have you seen, Lenny, who get stuck? They get stuck in a bad job, they're not learning, and then they can't go from there? They get into their 40s and 50s, and it is tough. A number of people in the job search community who are in their 50s, 60s, whatever, they're dealing with ageism, they're dealing with... They're not close enough to the technology frontier. You got to get closer to the technology frontier, even if that means you're going to go from the EVP to an IC role. That's how creative destruction works. not close enough to the technology frontier. You got to get closer to the technology frontier, even if that means you're going to go from the EVP to an IC role. That's how creative destruction works. The closer you are to the technology frontier, the more new jobs and opportunities there are. The further you are from the technology frontier, the worse you're going to be over the long run. You might be able to get a better-sounding job in the short term, but you're going to find yourself stuck.…

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