Work and careers

Q: Why do people change careers more often now? A: A few things are pushing that. Job security in the old sense — staying with one employer for decades — has largely disappeared, so there's less to lose by moving, and people have internalised that loyalty isn't rewarded the way it used to be. The nature of industries also shifts faster now; whole fields can shrink or transform within a working lifetime, which forces people to adapt whether they want to or not. And I think there's a genuine cultural shift too — changing careers used to look like failure, whereas now it's often read as ambition or self-awareness, so the social cost of doing it has gone down considerably. Q: Is job security more important than high pay? A: It depends heavily on where someone is in life, so I wouldn't rank one above the other universally. Early on, when you've got fewer responsibilities, chasing pay and taking risks makes more sense, because you can absorb a bad outcome. Once you've got a mortgage or a family depending on your income, security starts to matter a lot more, even if it means earning less. My honest view is that people often overvalue pay in the abstract and only discover how much they value security once they've actually lost it. Q: Will remote work continue to grow? A: For office-based roles, I think yes, though probably not in the fully remote form that became common during the pandemic. Companies have realised that letting people work from anywhere saves on office costs and widens the talent pool, but they've also noticed that certain things — mentoring junior staff, spontaneous problem-solving — genuinely work better in person. So I'd expect growth to continue, but converging on some hybrid arrangement rather than full remote becoming the universal default. Q: Do you think traditional career paths are becoming less relevant? A: I think the linear version — join a company, climb one ladder, retire from the same industry — is becoming rarer, yes, though I'm not sure "less relevant" is quite right, because plenty of people still follow something close to that path. What's changed is that it's no longer the only respectable model; someone with a winding, unconventional career history isn't automatically viewed with suspicion the way they might have been a generation ago. I'd say the old path hasn't disappeared so much as lost its monopoly on what counts as a sensible career. Q: Is it better to specialise in one field or develop a broad range of skills? A: I don't think there's a single right answer, but I'd lean towards specialising early and broadening later, rather than the reverse. Deep expertise in one area tends to be what actually gets you hired and taken seriously at the start of a career, since generalists without a clear anchor can struggle to demonstrate real value. Once you've established that credibility, though, breadth becomes more useful, because it's what lets you connect ideas across areas and move into roles that pure specialists often can't reach. So it's less a choice between the two and more a question of sequencing.