Nobody Cares About Your Career

Nobody Cares About Your Career Plot Summary

Introduction

The coffee shop buzzed with the usual morning energy as Sarah slumped in her chair, staring blankly at her laptop. "I just don't know what's wrong with me," she confessed, her voice barely audible over the espresso machine's hiss. "I've done everything right—good school, stable job, decent salary—but I feel stuck, like I'm just going through the motions." Her story echoed a sentiment I've heard countless times from professionals at every career stage: the gnawing feeling that there must be more than just climbing predetermined ladders and checking conventional boxes. This tension between security and fulfillment, between following established paths and creating our own, lies at the heart of our professional journeys. We're taught to seek stability and minimize risk, yet the most rewarding careers often emerge from defying expectations and venturing beyond comfort zones. Through intimate stories of career pivots, productive failures, and relationship navigation, this exploration reveals how our approach to work—our attitude—ultimately determines our success more than any credential or connection. By reframing how we view risk, failure, and purpose, we discover that meaningful work isn't just about what we do, but how we show up, learn, and grow through every challenge and opportunity we encounter.

Chapter 1: The Defiant Path: When Taking Risks Redefines Your Career

When I first graduated from college, I took a job as a legal assistant at Fidelity Investments. The office was brown, dusty, and filled with file cabinets. I felt trapped in a role that offered little challenge or growth. Despite making a decent salary of $50,000, I found myself drawn to a marketing position that paid only $17,500. Everyone told me I'd be crazy to take such a massive pay cut, especially moving from the prestigious legal department to the unpedigreed advertising team. But something inside me knew this was the right move. I wanted to be creative, to learn, to be exposed to a world that was dynamic and full of opportunity. So against all advice, I took the marketing job. Yes, I racked up more debt. Yes, I had to share a room with roommates. But this decision launched my career in digital marketing during its early stages, at a time when few people were doing it. The senior people in the advertising department weren't interested in the internet, which gave me space to experiment and take risks without anyone throwing up roadblocks. I gained access to an emerging advertising platform in its nascent stage and invested time learning about it when no one else around me was willing to go there. This experience taught me one of the most valuable career lessons: your professional path doesn't have to work for anyone but you. It's okay to try things and figure out what's right and wrong as part of the process. When you outsource your dream or vision or potential for happiness to others, what's the point? You are not the vehicle to making other people happy, and the same holds true for you—other people do not hold the keys to your fulfillment. You do. The journey taught me that a little defiance never hurt anyone. Not doing what someone wants or expects of you can be a great self-actualizing exercise. Being defiant means being quietly or loudly loyal to who you are and what you need, even when it means going against the grain. If you can exert yourself early and often with healthy defiance, you'll feel better about yourself and develop the confidence to run down your own path.

Chapter 2: Embracing Chaos: Finding Opportunity in Disruption

When it comes to finding a job, especially one of your first ones, do not go for the safe bet. I cannot stress this enough. Disruption + Chaos = Opportunity + Growth. Disruption is chaos, and chaos is an opportunity for growth. I've had a real mutt of a career. The jobs I've had in the last two decades have been all over the place—big companies, small companies, international companies, unsuccessful companies, successful companies. My shortest job was at a fashion start-up that lasted six months, and my longest was at Barstool—almost a decade. I moved around a lot, mostly following one person from whom I had an insatiable appetite to learn. When I was interviewing at AOL for the CMO job, I met with a senior executive who couldn't get over how much I had jumped around. He was concerned about my short tenures at various companies. I didn't have very good answers then, but now I know that all that jumping around had led me to the right destination with all the right pieces and parts packed within me. People who stay at the same company, in the same jobs, and with the same basic responsibilities for five, ten, fifteen years make me nervous. I once hired a guy from a big sports TV network who had been there twenty years. He was a pro at what he did, but he didn't know how to use Google Docs and didn't really understand the internet. He had spent twenty years without developing eyes for anything beyond what happened at his last gig. When you stay in the same place too long, you can get calcified and only know how to work in that place or a place just like it. That's very limiting, and it will put pressure on you to keep the job you have today—even if you hate it or are bored in it—and not push yourself toward the job you could have tomorrow. If your job responsibilities involve doing the exact same thing you did six months ago, you're probably not evolving, and you're definitely not growing. So ask yourself: What am I doing differently today? Is who I am any different today? Has what I want changed today? Is what I am capable of beyond what it was yesterday? Is the way I am helping people any different or better than it was yesterday? Run toward what scares you. People spend a lot of time worrying about making a wrong move. What if this decision isn't perfect? What if I'm not starting in the right place? That's just fear talking. While some people are stuck worrying about all the stuff they can't control, someone else is busy working and making the most of what they've got, knowing it will help them later as they figure out the rest.

Chapter 3: Vision as Your North Star: Creating Purpose Beyond Today

Okay, pay attention. This chapter is actually important. I ask people all the time, "What's your vision?" People mostly look at me like I'm batshit crazy, but I'm serious. If you know what your vision is, you have an idea of something bigger for yourself and something beyond yourself. A vision will take you far, and people will likely want to go there with you—or they'll just think you're crazy, and you won't want them along for the ride anyway. Most people are either self-interested, self-absorbed, or insecure. Many are all three. A vision can help you create possibility beyond these limitations, which will help you make the most of where you are and set a point you want to get to. A vision doesn't need to be grand. It just needs to be yours, with the intention of getting you beyond where and who you are today. When you're busy tripping and falling and learning and experiencing things, it's easy to get lost and forget where you are and where you're going, or to feel down and be disappointed. Learning is hard. It requires humility and a lack of defensiveness while people tell you that you suck, either to your face or behind your back. This can be a lot to slog through. A vision keeps your head up, keeps your eyes on the prize, and puts all those little wins and losses into the context of something bigger. A vision can give you courage. A vision can give you something positive to strive for. A vision can give you the motivation to get somewhere beyond where you are today, even if you don't know where that somewhere is. A vision can keep you centered and focused even when you get lost, overwhelmed, or distracted. A vision can give you a feeling of purpose, which will turn into action and eventually into traction. It shocks me how few people have a vision for themselves. The worst is when uninspired people try to claim someone else's vision as their own. That's lazy and unoriginal and won't end well. It's fake. Parroting someone else's vision usually turns into you either failing to stick with it or being unable to deliver on it. A vision, like your career and your life, has to start and end with you.

Chapter 4: The Art of Productive Failure: Learning to Fall and Rise

When I'm interviewing job candidates, I look for how willing the applicant is to fail, because failing gracefully is one of the most admirable qualities you can have. Without risk and failure, there's no real success. The more failures you have and the more you're willing to take risks, the more likely you are to learn things and get some stuff right. There is a direct correlation between the number of successes you have and the number of times you've failed along the way. Being scared to fail is debilitating, and being worried about what people think about you is even worse. It is insanely limiting. Why put your stock, the definition of your worth and the height of your potential, in someone else's hands? Seriously, why would you do that to yourself? Every day, I feel like I'm failing, if not at everything, then definitely at one thing or another. I don't think this is a bad thing. Usually, I find it stimulating and motivating. Sometimes, I feel like total shit about it. The important thing is to not let feeling like shit keep you down and to continue working to be productive, especially when you fall short. The biggest thing I like about messing up is that it forces me to answer questions like: What could I have done differently? Who here does this better than me? What would have made that better? Where did I go wrong? How do I make it right? Who could I watch and learn from to do a better job at this? I really appreciate people who talk about what they've tried to do and are honest about the areas where they've had success, as well as where they've failed. Being able to speak to your failures does not make you smaller, less smart, or less desirable. Quite the opposite. Being able to talk about your failures shows that you have perspective and that you are intellectually honest with yourself and with others. It also shows an ability to learn, to assess, and to adapt. Long story short, if you haven't fucked up, you haven't tried. You haven't pushed yourself enough or stretched yourself anywhere near the edge of where you can go. You probably haven't ever wandered past your comfort zone and likely never will. And I'm sorry, but that's just lame, and sad. And a waste! Why not be all in? What else do you have to do? Go for it all! See where your limits are, and push through them to find new ones.

Chapter 5: Workplace Relationships: Navigating the Human Ecosystem

Relationships make work fun. They help get the work done. Since we spend so much of our time at the office, relationships can morph into friendships. A work friend can be a source of comfort, allegiance, and a healthy way to blow off steam. We all need them. Sometimes great work friends turn into great life friends. Sometimes your work friends are your roommates. Sometimes, they can become even more. While a lot of great things can come out of having a good friend at work, those relationships can get in the way of you reaching your true and full potential. One of the drawbacks of work friendships is that you default into bitching and gossiping about—or just hashing over—work 24–7. This can make work feel omnipresent. Another drawback is having others see you more as part of a group, rather than as an individual with your own merits. Like most things, work friendships are healthy in moderation. When your work friends become your only friendships or are the people you hang out with most of the time outside the office, that's a red flag and an indicator that it may be time to pull back. Investing in friendships outside of work helps offer healthy perspectives and a way to create an identity that is wholly separate from who you are at work. Being dependent on work for your friendships and your income can be dangerous and can exacerbate the challenges that come with both. Is it fine to go out once or twice a week after work with your office crew? Absolutely. But when that starts to bleed into every night or most nights, you may realize that your work friends have become your real friends and that your whole world revolves around your job and work. Friendships at work can sometimes turn into physical or romantic relationships. This will always and forever be true. There's no stopping it. I always have a small laugh when companies try to regulate or create stipulations around relationships at work. No matter how much your bosses or peers or management want you not to hook up with people at work, most of you will. As with anything else, if you're going to hook up with people at work, own it, be conscious of it, and be intentional with it. If you care what people say about you at work, hooking up with a lot of people from the office doesn't seem like a great idea. Hooking up is a driver for office gossip. Sleeping with several people in the office will become what you are known for, rather than the work you do.

Chapter 6: Defining Success: What You're Really Being Paid to Do

What does your company pay you to do? The answer should be obvious but isn't always. More often than not, we get so bogged down in the volume of our day-to-day tasks (and in the bullshit that accompanies them) that we lose sight of why we took the job in the first place and what part of all the things we are doing actually matters—and to whom. How you feel about work and what you do at work is often defined by small, limited daily interactions. When you're grinding it out, when you've lost motivation, when you've become consumed by workplace drama, and especially when you're mad, it's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. Good workplaces can allow for latitude, which gives you plenty of room to maneuver, but also a lot of space to get lost. When you consider a new job, or even at the job you have now, you should have some concrete and tangible reason for why you want to take it or why you have it. Answering questions like "Why did my boss hire me for this job?" or "What am I trying to achieve in this job?" can help nail down why you're considering or in a job. To truly understand, in a quantifiable way, what you're being paid to do and how you can become fully viable and essential to your company in that capacity, you must clearly answer: What does success look like for my company, my team, my boss, and me? It's like a pyramid. The view will be different depending on where you sit (in your CEO's seat or yours), but it should be consistent top to bottom and bottom to top. Your definition of success may be more internal (Are you getting access to learning? Are you able to take risks? Are you growing skills?), while your boss's and the company's may be more external (Is your division meeting its sales goals? Is your company's revenue increasing? Is your company's market share growing? Is this group managing to budget?). Putting the work in helps define success for you, your boss, your team, and your company. It is the opposite of looking good in an Instagram post. It's not pretty, it's not glamorous, and it's likely not that remarkable or noteworthy. It's rolling up your sleeves and doing the thing. Maybe it's crunching the numbers, maybe it's writing a deck, maybe it's laying out a roadmap or spelling out a bunch of product specifications, or maybe it's making a bunch of phone calls. Whatever it is, just do it.

Chapter 7: The Stay-or-Leave Dilemma: Making Career Transitions Count

Throughout your career, you will likely have a range of bosses, including everything from great ones to really shitty ones. You can learn from all of them—the good ones and, especially, the bad ones. Even if your working relationship with your boss is nonexistent or utterly lacking, this in and of itself is an opportunity and a chance for growth. Whether your boss is an inspiration, absent, or just an arrogant prick, you need to accept that you are both on the same team, even if your approach, philosophy, roles, and responsibilities are totally different. Your boss is the conduit that connects you to your boss's boss and to the rest of the company's leadership structure. At the end of the day, as much as anyone hates to admit it, when your boss looks good, you look good. If you think your boss is a useless, arrogant, inept, self-absorbed, and utterly unhelpful twit, you have a choice. You can sit around and complain, or you can put your skills to work to make both of you look good. I know this sounds backward, but think about it this way: How can you use their idiocy, laziness, and ineptitude to get you more opportunity and more experience? Great bosses are usually better than you and do things faster/better/smarter than you, so you will have a greater chance to learn but a lesser chance to do. Bad bosses are the opposite. They are great opportunities to do a lot, even when you may be learning only a little. Different people like different types of bosses. I'm the type of boss who likes to push people. My favorite bosses were the ones who pushed me. Sometimes it's not so easy to just up and quit. What if you have a really great job or you're at a highly sought-after place? What if, except for your boss, you really love it? Does that outweigh having to deal with a bad boss? Maybe. If the job stinks too, well then, that's a no-brainer—find a new job. If the job or company is great or you're making progress on your vision or you've only been there a short amount of time, you may want to try an alternate approach. Start by getting clear about what the issues are. Second, imagine the most boring, analytical, unemotional person you know, and pretend they're organizing the facts. Keep that tone in mind when you think and talk about the situation. Be clinical. Keep it tight. Document the facts. Do yourself the favor of sitting in your boss's shoes for a second. What would they say if they were writing this? Where's their head? Where do you think they're coming from? If your boss is truly insufferable (not just inept or an asshole), if you're stuck in misalignment, if you're unable to learn or do from them, if you're unable to accomplish your vision in any way, and the company where you work is not the absolute be-all and end-all, it may be time to peace out.

Summary

The journey through professional life is rarely a straight path. It's a series of choices, risks, failures, and relationships that collectively shape not just what we do, but who we become. The stories shared throughout these chapters reveal a fundamental truth: success doesn't come from following prescribed routes or avoiding discomfort—it emerges from embracing uncertainty, learning from setbacks, and maintaining unwavering loyalty to your authentic self. Whether deciding to take a pay cut for growth, navigating complex workplace dynamics, or determining when to stay or leave a position, the common thread is taking ownership of your choices rather than surrendering them to external expectations. Perhaps the most powerful insight is that your attitude toward work—how you approach challenges, relationships, and opportunities—ultimately matters more than your technical skills or credentials. By viewing your career as a continuous journey of growth rather than a destination to reach, you transform even the most difficult experiences into valuable lessons. When you combine this growth mindset with a clear personal vision and the courage to occasionally defy conventional wisdom, you create not just a career but a professional life that reflects your deepest values and aspirations. The path may not always be comfortable or predictable, but it will be authentically yours—and that makes all the difference.

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Erika Ayers Badan

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