Career Changing in your 20s

Very excited to share this episode with my college friend Jake Schwartz who knows a ton about AR/VR and has worked on both the technical product development side and commercial/business side of VR companies. He talks all about what is trending in AR/VR and hot takes ranging from which xReality is going to win and how trendy AI is influencing the space right now. 5:05 - What is AR vs VR vs MR? 7:55 - What did you do in your B2C role in VR and how did that transition to B2B? Do you focus more on technical aspects of developing VR or more business / commercial? 11:30 - How did you learn how to program in Unity or Visual Studios; did you already have skills from your CS degree or have to learn completely new through some training? 14:20 - Who / what functions do you work with in a product development cycle? 18:30 - Do you like the technical / product development side more or the commercial / business development side more in the VR/AR space? 20:20 - What is your take on B2C, consumer VR/AR like Meta, Snap, Apple compared to commercial, B2B space for VR/AR penetration? Where are people focusing right now and in the future? 26:50 - Why is VR more for consumer, immersive experiences and AR for pro-consumer and commercial experiences?  31:40 - Are Meta and these companies looking into commercial / B2B spaces? Or are they building the foundation and startups will come to start fill the nuanced / specific B2B gaps? 33:40 - The most likely path to profitability when starting a company in VR/AR space is in B2B 34:40 - Meta was a vacuum for talent 35:50 - What does technology and innovation in VR/AR spaces look like recently and moving forward? 37:55 - Does AI relate to AR/VR? How popular will value-added contextual augmentation of your reality be? 42:40 - Recommendation on how to get familiar with the space? Do you need a CS background to play around in Unreal Engine? 

Listen in to Jackson, a carbon data analyst at a cleantech startup, describe his journey into cleantech, how today's startups and industry companies view sustainability, and tips on how to break into cleantech! 1:36 - Why did you transition to cleantech from consulting? 3:52 - What do you do at your cleantech startup? 5:55 - How a typical company would use carbon data management and their “climate journey” 8:15 - Why can’t companies measure and report carbon emissions easily themselves? Why do they need “carbon accounting” help? 10:00 - Pros and cons for working at a startup or a large industry firm with cleantech  13:25 - Why people go into cleantech and Jackson's passion for sustainability 16:23 - What is driving companies to invest in cleantech and how seriously are they taking it? Where is pressure coming from? 21:38 - What is next for you Jackson in the short/medium vs. long term? 23:36 - Tips/advice for breaking into cleantech, including podcast and book recommendations Book recs: Speed and Scale by ​​John Doerr Ministry of the Future The Ministry for the Future by Kate Robinson Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist Hardcover by Kate Raworth Newsletter rec:  Climate Tech VC newsletter Podcast recs: How to Save a Planet The Carbon Copy The Big Switch Watt It Takes Catalyst

Excited to share this really insightful episode with Lexi, a former process engineer at one of the top US oil & gas producers and now an R&D engineer at a cleantech startup. Listen as she shares the skills she learned in oil & gas and key lessons learned along the way. 1:20 - What it is like working in oil & gas in today's environment that is so focused on cleantech and the green energy transition 5:45 - Hard skills learned in oil & gas 9:05 - Soft skills learned in oil & gas 12:20 - How can you successfully be in a direct leadership position out of undergrad? And how do you navigate that 17:20 - Time where people were not cooperative and how did you compromise as the main project leader? 19:42 - Typical hours in a week and day in the life 22:26 - Transition to cleantech 24:57 - Pros and cons of a cleantech startup job 26:48 - Reflection on her path so far and advice for a new chemical engineer from undergrad Please rate and follow us on Spotify and Apple podcasts and you can contact us at careerchanginginyour20s@gmail.com

Listen to hear all about the life of Fred, a net winning professional poker player based in LA who chose to play poker as his full-time job out of undergrad instead of a traditional, salaried corporate job. 1:40 Why did you choose poker over a traditional job out of undergrad? 4:15 What does a week in the life look like? 10:47 What does a day in the life look like? 13:30 When did you realize you could play poker professionally and how did you weigh the pros and cons? 18:20 What kind of mindset do you need to have as a successful poker player? 23:55 What are common traits among professional poker players? Whether similar personality traits or a certain level of risk tolerance 29:25 What are your future career decisions and how long are you going to stick with poker?

Grace Ling is a current Product UX Designer at Electronic Arts while also being the founder of Design Buddies, an online design community housed in Discord with over 50k members. She also draws and creates lifestyle content on TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. 1:30 What is product UX design? How do you work with other functions? What is different about product UX in gaming vs. other industries? 7:55 How did you go from bioengineering and computer science in undergrad to self studying UX design and doing your own independent projects? 14:15 How did you found Design Buddies and what were your lessons learned when scaling it? 24:10 How do you keep generating content consistently across all your platforms? Follow her and join Design Buddies below: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/graceling Instagram (lifestyle): @irungracepace https://www.instagram.com/irungracepace/ Instagram (art): @candyleaf https://www.instagram.com/candyleaf_/ TikTok (art/lifestyle): @candyleaf https://www.tiktok.com/@candyleaf Twitter: @graceleaf https://twitter.com/graceleaf_ Discord (jobs + free resources + networking if anyone is into design): https://discord.gg/designbuddies Grace's views are her own and are not representative of any of her current or past employers.

Excited to share this insightful episode with my friend Yunnie who had a recent tough career transition decision on whether to stay in management consulting or exit into a private equity firm in their operations group. She walks through her decision making process and the pros/cons of each factor she considered. In the end she gives really great life advice on how she has or is overcoming her "quarter life crisis" and how her view of "success" and "happiness" has changed from reflecting on this life/career decision.

How do you weigh choosing between a management consulting vs. industry role out of undergrad or post MBA? What hard vs. soft skills do you learn in consulting vs. industry roles? How does the type of collaboration or the type of pressure differ between the two? Do you really experience more direct ownership in industry or more breadth of industry / functions in consulting? We dive into answering these questions and more!

Our first guest Minh, former management consultant and now product manager at a late stage startup, discusses how he overcame a layoff from a startup in mid 2022: how he overcame the initial shock, his strategy for searching for a new role and prioritizing different criteria, and his mindset in interviews, negotiations, and the overall process.

Our guest Minh, former management consultant and now product manager at a late stage startup, and I talk about our take on recent mass US tech layoffs and COVID layoffs, and how such large-scale layoffs early on in our careers have affected the mindset of today's young professionals compared to older generations. We also talk about why companies are laying off in mass, our own experiences with seeing layoffs, and what is the aftermath of layoffs in consulting firms, tech companies, and other types of companies.

This podcast is about the ups and downs of career changing in the growth-filled decade of our 20’s. The amount of uncertainty and job instability from recent mass layoffs as well as increasingly more career choices to choose from can cause young professionals to feel “behind” or unsure of what their true passion is or if the path that they are on is the right one for them. But in these tough environments comes a lot of opportunities, flexibility, and the potential to take our careers and our lives in any direction we want. We talk about different philosophies and mindsets around careers and professional topics, such as how to overcome a recent layoff and how to choose a job based on your own definition of “success” and “happiness” rather than based on money, external validation, and/or purported prestige. Lastly, we will focus on guest speakers to talk about their own experiences navigating career discovery in their 20’s to hear a wide variety of perspectives and lessons learned.