The Career Tree

Intro

Since the beginning of science, careers have popped up based on demand, earlier days required more research and discovery within the basic sciences. Today there are many layers that sit on top of the basic sciences, and those layers create new paths, to find the perfect path its advised to be honest with yourself, consider your basic strengths, cognitive ability and geographic location. For students and new grads, Its important to see your initial career as a portfolio, and not necessarily what you will be doing in the next 10 years, It is of my personal opinion to have 3 fields in mind, two directly connected to your passion and one that is a safety net.

A career is not linear, we are in times when everything moves fast, and the only constant is change, so be ready to adapt and pivot.

The Career Tree

Read it like a family tree, the root is knowledge, each layer builds on the one above it, and you can follow a branch from a science you like down to the jobs it turns into.

How To Find Your Branch

Ignore titles and look at the content of the work, research on what they do all day, and how much control you have. but before that consider how it connects to your university major.

The degree trap

People act like your degree is supposed to decide your whole life, and I think that screws a lot of people up. That said, if you did not start with some advantages, the right degree can help a lot. If you went to a non-target school or do not already have a network, a good program or a highly ranked school can open doors for you. Nowadays, you can move from physics into software, from biology into data, from mechanical engineering into materials science, or from philosophy into product management, as long as you can connect the dots and do the work.

A degree does not decide what you can do. It mostly shapes your first instinct when you face a problem. lets take a problem: “cooling buildings in hot cities without raising rent”. Physics starts by finding the mechanism causing the problem, then reduces it to forces, energy, and cause and effect. Biology & Chemistry starts from the natural properties of the existing material, then changes composition to get better performance at lower cost. Engineering starts from constraints, then designs a system that can work safely, repeatedly, and under failure. Math removes the story and turns the problem into variables, limits, and tradeoffs. Economics studies the incentives around the solution and asks whether people have a reason to adopt it. Social sciences ask what habits or trust issues stop people from adopting a cheaper solution if it already exists.

• Your personality

Personality will not pick a career for you, but it tells you what will start annoying you. If you hate uncertainty, try to avoid constant chaos like startups, and if you hate routine, avoid big tech or enterprise roles.

Where you work

Where you work changes the job way more than people admit.

• Enterprise companies (e.g., Salesforce, SAP, IBM)

  Stable, clear, and a little bit allergic to moving fast, good if you like predictability and structure.

• Big Tech (e.g., Apple, Google, Microsoft)

  Huge scale, strong systems, smart people, and enough process to make you question a few things, great if you like reliability and prestige.

• Frontier labs (e.g., OpenAI, DeepMind, Anthropic)

  High stakes, fast research, lots of ambiguity, and not much calm, great if you like deep work and uncertainty, and you don’t mind the stress.

• Corporate companies (e.g., Procter & Gamble, JPMorgan Chase, Coca-Cola)

  Usually the best balance, you can have real ownership of projects, and a normal life, but get ready to smile to on monday mornings.

• Small companies (e.g., boutique design studios, regional distributors, specialized law firms)

  More ownership, faster feedback, and usually less drama than a startup, you still have lots of responsibilities.

• Startups (e.g., YC companies, newly funded ventures)

  Everything changes fast and half the plan is fake by next month, great if you want responsibility early, sometimes you get an incredible return on investment.

Born to do

You build this over time, you get good at something, people trust you, you get more control, and the work starts to feel truly yours. Dont wait around for passion to arrive fully formed, spoiler: it doesn’t. You have to build it, then see if it holds up when times get hard.

Sources

• Oh Guay Kim Harold Lee Heo Shin 2014 fit happens globally meta analytic comparison Personnel Psychology
• Lewis Rivkin 1999 development of the ONET Interest Profiler National Center for ONET Development
• OKeefe Dweck Walton 2018 implicit theories of interest Psychological Science
• Hagger McAnally Star 2026 self determination theory and workplace outcomes meta analysis Stress and Health
• World Economic Forum 2025 Future of Jobs Report