Choosing a Job — How NOT to screwup

Staying away from bullshit jobs is hard. Use this simple guideline to choose the right job early in your career.

4 min readJul 1, 2017

Enough and more has been said about the importance of choosing the right job, where you get learning, satisfaction and growth. Yet, time after time after time, people screw up on this. I’m not a veteran with 40 years of experience, but I think this simple framework I figured out back in college really clicked for me — and I hope this helps you too.

If I could go back in time, I would make the exact same choices again.

This mostly applies to Indian engineering grads, particularly in the high-tech field, but I’m betting that the essence would apply elsewhere too. So, here it goes, three guidelines to choose a job, in that order:

1. Love for the idea

If you really really love an idea, if you feel that you are ready to do it at any cost; if you feel doing it will help you sleep satisfied every night, irrespective of your success— then you should pick it and work for it 100%. Don’t listen to any other BS, early in your career.

This was the driving force for me in my college startups — benchmate, illuminati, and most of the other college projects I took up.

I can’t be more thankful to all the mistakes I got to commit at a near-zero cost in benchmate and illuminati. Intentionally using lower-case names was one of them.

Yeah, I thought it was cool.

2. All-star Team

If you’re not able to find an idea like that, you should try to find a team where you’re the dumbest person. Everyone else should be at least 5–10 times smarter than you, and most importantly, be good people.

Whether you like the idea or not, working with that team will definitely help you learn and grow really, really fast. Here again, the success or failure of the project does not matter, and the money you make does not matter, only the learning you get matters. Frilp was like this for me.

I worked for the first 6 months, almost for free. But till date, those 2 years, has probably been my best learning experience.

Even in a 1000 member company that we’re a part of now, I can see many of them stand out in their respective domains.

3. A “LOT” of Money

Now, if you’re in a situation where neither the idea nor the team is inspiring, then you can go, work for money. But, here’s the catch — because the only thing you’re getting in this job is money, you should try to make A LOT of it.

A LOT of money is, many a time, a close proxy to good, impactful work.

But, let this be the last option. Early in your career, you should try for the other two.

If all you’re getting from your job is money, and if you’re not making enough money, then it means that you’re not being smart enough or you’re not yet good enough at what you’re doing. Go — find a way to improve yourself, and then look for a job. That might involve working for free for 6 months.

Choosing a job that’s average on all 3 is not of much use. That’s generally the sign of a Bullshit Job.

Rather, choose a job that is close to 100% on at least one of the 3 things mentioned above, even if it’s less than 20% on the other two. If you choose a bullshit job that’s average on all 3 — I can more or less assure you that your growth will be slow. Like, dead slow. On all fronts — learning, money and impact.

But hey, what about the company’s brand?

Don’t get me started on that, that’s probably the biggest reason why people make stupid choices. Simply put, it really does NOT matter early in your career. A genuinely good job in a good company will usually qualify through one of the three criteria.

For Example,

Google + engineering role = credible brand —but directly qualifies under a “LOT” of Money and good chances of “all-star” team due to their stringent hiring process.

Don’t go for the damn name!