/Tech1d ago

Tech Workers Urged to Resist Rushing Careers Over Opportunity Costs

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I've met many (often younger) people in tech recently who, while discussing their careers, reference their opportunity cost as to why they feel the need to rush into their next thing.

I am in some ways reminded of a conversation I had with my first boss who, after hearing how I thought about the next 5 years of my life, smiled and said "i hope you get what you want, but you know, you have all these plans for life and then it just kind of beats you down and you learn to enjoy survival."

And in many instances, I get it. This moment in time feels unique. A life you've imagined, in a future that feels inevitable and out of your control, feels like it could slip away at any point and you'll miss it and forever wonder about the sliding door you didn't walk through and the moments of what could have been while everyone around you does better than you.

Because all around you are examples of other people in your cohort who are "killing it" and why should you not be one of them? And why is that data point you have not as good a proof point as ever that you should do the thing as you see fit right now?

And how could one in the face of all of this absolute uncertainty and also total certainty possibly make the choice to wait, to let whatever feeling you've been sitting on, simmer and just be in the months or years between when you *think* time is slipping away and when it is actually slipping away.

Perhaps one could say a cliche like "life is long" and that to cite opportunity cost and measure it at the age of 20-something and on a time horizon that is 12-24 months feels off.

Perhaps one could say that to not know what you want your life's work to be at the age of 20-something (or even 30-something) is also okay.

Perhaps one could say that time doesn't really slip away if you truly approach your professional life as a craft for a long time.

At some point in the conversation, I often then hear about how people are quite certain that this is the most important thing for them to do or that it is eventually what they will want to do no matter what.

And I then repeat the point that if it is your life's work, why would you be in a hurry?

Michael Dempsey@mhdempsey

It’s my life’s work. I’m not in a hurry.

2:37 PM · Jun 23, 2026 · 71.8K Views

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Michael Dempsey@mhdempsey

This conversation also occurs time and time again when helping companies with recruiting, as people make decisions based on relative career positioning/earnings and time to liquidity more than I've ever seen in my time in tech.

When dealing with younger cohorts of talent you feel the need to nail the sequencing of a career perfectly. Navigating the various metas of logo-capture, equity capture, title/status capture, and more.

When dealing with the mid-career or the most experienced cohorts you feel the relativity seep through aggressively, perhaps from seeing prior bubbles and having the scar tissue from not maximally extracting value from them as others have, alongside just the normal dynamics of the social comparison effect.

The post-economic cohorts are an entirely different and varied beast, which are in some ways the most fun to deal with, but aren't worth discussing here.

In the former two instances, there are rationalities and irrationalities to the behavior, and they are at least in the short-term meaningfully changing the market structure of how people think about the time horizons they want to optimize for both if you are working at a company as well as if you are running one. Likely in ways that create some short-term optimizations that we all hope compound into long-term ones, and don't instead erode them into some dark existential crisis for a company and perhaps our entire industry.

Michael Dempsey@mhdempsey

I've met many (often younger) people in tech recently who, while discussing their careers, reference their opportunity cost as to why they feel the need to rush into their next thing.

Perhaps one could say a cliche like "life is long" and that to cite opportunity cost and measure it at the age of 20-something and on a time horizon that is 12-24 months feels off.

Perhaps one could say that to not know what you want your life's work to be at the age of 20-something (or even 30-something) is also okay.

Perhaps one could say that time doesn't really slip away if you truly approach your professional life as a craft for a long time.

And I then repeat the point that if it is your life's work, why would you be in a hurry?

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charli cohen@charlicohen

I think part of this is that (in social media / PR optics at least) age has become more and more of a measure of whether your success is meaningful or not. Even if you do believe it’s your life’s work, you feel you have to be 22 for it to matter to anyone. That mindset is very intense when you’re in it, I remember how hard I found it in the 2010s going through my 20s and feeling like my achievements became less relevant as time went on (which was exacerbated by how press covered it too). And I reckon it’s 1000x worse now.

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