Optima & Outliers Podcast

I chat with Substacker and business nerd Charles Rubenfeld on quite a few topics of mutual interest. Charles started his career in macro research at Morgan Stanley and his since worked at Uber, startups such as Valon and Mindstrong, and most recently ran Generative AI Analytics at Scale AI. I highly recommend checking out his newsletter - Charles is a rare combination of "plugged in"-ness and intellectual honesty.We discuss:- Why most career advice is terrible (and how to think about it differently)?

- The trade-offs between working at startups and big tech

- Why people problems are often process problems?

- The value of writing and thinking in public

This is the first of my series of conversation on careers and talent with AI researcher and career coach Kathleen Finlinson and Andreas Pashos from the New Orleans Business Alliance.

We discussed:

* Passion vs fit: Is it possible to be passionate about a problem or an industry?

* The feedback loop between competence and enjoyment

* The downsides of optimizing for impact in the short-term

* How the people around you shape you - geography ,social capital, and organizational culture

* The non-linearity of career paths

* Tips on networking

* Career advice to a reddit poster

If you’d like to send in a career related question for us to discuss on the next episode, please join the subscriber chat and post your questions in the thread.