How to have a fulfilling career
Whether it's in science or not.
Earlier this week, I gave a talk at the Inspiring Future Women in Science conference held at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.
The event was aimed at high school girls, but my talk was pretty general, and relevant to people of all genders and career stages, so I wanted to share it with readers of Aggie Inc.
Below, is a lightly-edited transcript1, or you can watch it on video here, and find the slides here.
Most of you are at a stage in your life where you’re trying to figure out what you want to do: what kind of career you’re going to have, and what path you need to follow to get there.
Maybe you’re thinking of being a professor, in which case you’ll do a bachelor’s degree, then a master’s, then a PhD, and then work your way through the ranks. Maybe you’re thinking of being a software developer, so you’ll do a computer science degree and follow the career steps.
Maybe you want to be a medical doctor, or an electrician, or a patent attorney. All of these have well-defined career paths.
You’ve got all of these options ahead of you, and it’s really tricky to figure out what you want to be for the rest of your life, especially at such an early stage.
You probably know people in your life who have had these kinds of careers. But it turns out that most people don’t follow these linear paths with predefined steps.
Most people follow nonlinear careers, careers that twist and turn and go back on themselves. They change jobs throughout their careers. They change industries. They change fields. They sometimes go back to school.
People follow nonlinear careers for many reasons. Some people started on a linear career but decided it wasn’t a good fit. Some people have nonlinear careers because they appreciate the variety, the breadth, and the flexibility. Others end up on a nonlinear path because it’s the only way to get a job at the forefront of innovation, jobs that didn’t even exist when they were first trying to figure out what to do.
Depending on your personality, you might find this scary or you might find it liberating. I hope to convince you that it’s actually liberating.
My nonlinear career
I started my career in Australia. I did a Bachelor of Science majoring in physics at the University of Queensland, and then stayed there for my PhD, also in physics, in a field called quantum optics. Then I moved to Canada (to the University of Toronto) where I did a postdoc in a field called quantum biology.
In 2013, I moved to Waterloo to join the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in a position called PSI Fellow. I taught in the master’s program, various courses related to quantum theory, and brought my research back to quantum optics. So far, this looks like a pretty linear academic career.
But in 2020, I decided that academia wasn’t where I wanted to spend the rest of my life, and I made the jump to industry. I joined IBM Quantum, the division of IBM that develops quantum computers, where I held several positions ranging from technical roles to leadership positions.
Then in 2024, I decided I really wanted to venture out on my own. I left IBM and started Quantum Salon, which is what I’ve been working on for the last year and a half.
Quantum Salon
Quantum Salon is a strategic communication studio working within the quantum tech ecosystem. Our mission is to help people in the quantum ecosystem understand each other better (scientists, policymakers, investors, etc.) people who come from very different backgrounds and often speak different languages.
There are three pillars.
Communication: working with quantum tech startups and organizations to help them explain what they do and why it matters.
Insights: studying the ecosystem, writing about it, and sharing what we learn with the community.
Exploration: a newer effort to build an interactive platform to map the entire quantum tech ecosystem so people can understand how it all fits together.
I would say that this period of my career, building and working within Quantum Salon, has been the most rewarding part of my career so far.
But I couldn’t have planned this 10 years ago. It evolved from my interests along the way.
You can’t plan a nonlinear career, but you can prepare for one
In a linear career, you internalize what success looks like from the people around you, from the people doing the same job. That’s useful because it tells you how to judge progress and what you need to do to get to the next step.
In a nonlinear career, you still need something to guide you, but you’re going to have to define success for yourself. When you’re changing fields, those definitions change too, so it helps to have something internalized.
A definition I like is: to do fulfilling work. But what makes work fulfilling?
There’s a great book by Cal Newport called So Good They Can’t Ignore You (I really recommend everyone reads it). He dives into what makes a career fulfilling, interviewing people and researching the question.
The traits he identifies are: creativity (figuring things out your own way, rather than just doing what you’re told), impact (working on things that actually make a difference to other people), control (having a say in what you work on and how you do it), and relatedness (feeling like you belong, and that the people you work with actually matter to you).
These are wonderful traits, but the sad part is that most jobs don’t have them. Jobs with these traits are rare and valuable. And supply and demand tells us that if you want a job with traits like this, you need something rare and valuable to offer in return. Newport calls this “career capital”.
What is career capital?
The obvious one is skills: what are you able to do well that other people find useful? Newport emphasizes having rare and valuable skills, but I’d add that especially in a nonlinear career and in a rapidly changing world, you also want to focus on rare and valuable combinations of skills. Different things that most people can’t do together.
There’s also reputation: what people believe about your ability and your reliability. And there’s your network: people who know you, trust you, and can open doors. A network isn’t just valuable because a friend might get you a job. It’s an actual asset. If you have a strong network, that’s something people want to hire you for, because it means you’ll be able to achieve things that someone without a network simply can’t.
You might be wondering about grades, degrees, or certificates: is that career capital? It is, to the extent that it represents the other things. Grades are a representation of your skills. A degree might represent your skills and your network. But on their own, those credentials don’t mean much if you don’t have the underlying skills.
In high school, good grades get you into university. In university, good grades might get you a co-op. So they are career capital in some sense, but if they don’t represent the real things underneath, they’ll stop being valuable as your career progresses.
Now, depending on what kind of career you follow, whether it's linear or non-linear, or specifically which types of industries or fields you touch, they're going to prioritize different kinds of skills or different kinds of combinations of skills. So how do you figure out which kinds of skills you should acquire?
How do you figure out which skills to build?
Developing rare and valuable skills takes a lot of work. I do believe most people can achieve most things if they work hard, and that if you work hard at something, you’ll get good at it and probably enjoy it eventually. But that takes time, and on the way, the experience matters.
Hard work can be agony or it can be pure joy, and that really depends on how that work matches who you are as a person. So I think you should do work that is joyful and that motivates you.
There’s a great article by Paul Graham (one of the founders of Y Combinator) called How to Do Great Work. He says the things that motivate people to work hard are curiosity, delight, and the desire to do something impressive.
So if you want to stay motivated on the path of acquiring the skills that you need to get a fulfilling job, start by following your curiosity. And then listen to what delights you. Listen to what kind of work gives you energy versus what drains you.
For me personally, writing gives me a lot of energy. Programming gives me a lot of energy. Giving presentations or lecturing actually drains my energy, even though I find it fulfilling, it’s tiring. I have to pay attention to those signals when I decide what kind of work to pursue.
Does the work feel like you’re swimming against a current? Maybe you’re making progress, but it just feels so hard? Or does it feel like you’re riding a wave, and it’s all going really well? Choose work that gives you energy and carries you along.
I’m not advocating being lazy, or avoiding hard things, or being fickle and changing direction all the time. But I do want to point out: if you work hard on work you like, you’ll get good at work you like, and you’ll be rewarded with more work you like. If you work hard on work you don’t like, you’ll get good at work you don’t like, and you’ll be rewarded with more work you don’t like.
How do you know which skills are valuable?
Here I really can’t overstate the importance of talking to people. You can find a lot of information on the internet and in books and other media, but that doesn’t give you the whole picture of how the world works. There are important things people won’t say in public but will say one-on-one, face-to-face. There are things people just don’t have time to write up or record, but they’ll tell you in passing if you’re having a conversation. And being able to talk in real time means you can dig in, ask questions, and always have the latest knowledge of what’s going on.
Talking to people will give you the best sense of what others consider valuable. And there’s a bonus side effect: as you talk to more people, you’ll build a reputation and grow your network, which is itself another form of career capital.
A homework assignment
It can be nerve-racking to reach out to people you don’t know. To make it easier, you can attend events like conferences or career days where people expect you to come up to them. You can ask your parents or teachers to introduce you to people with different careers so you can talk to them.
Or, if you find someone interesting online, connect with them on LinkedIn or send them an email and say:
I attended a career event and the speaker gave me homework to interview three people whose careers I found interesting. I would like to learn about your career. Would you have time for a short chat?
So the point of this “homework” is to give you an excuse to reach out to people and have something concrete to put in that first message.
I’ve had high school students reach out to me this way, and it’s not weird at all.
But just a safety notice: ask your parents if they are ok with you doing this. They they might want to hang out in the room off-camera during the video call.
What about science?
Most people think a career in science means becoming a professor. But if you look at the numbers, something like 3% of Bachelor of Science graduates complete a PhD, and of those, only 15% become professors. So if most people who study science don’t become professors, what does a science degree actually lead to?
The answer, which might not be entirely satisfying, is almost anywhere.
A couple of years ago I ran a podcast called Physicists in the Wild, where I interviewed people who had completed PhDs in physics and then gone off into very different careers outside academia. The guests went from physics PhDs to becoming venture capitalists, founding AI startups, directing propulsion at aerospace companies, and leading strategic partnerships, and more. There are a ton of different jobs out there that you might not even know exist, jobs people find their way to through nonlinear careers.
Should you do science?
If you have curiosity and an aptitude for science, I think a science degree is a great next step, even if you don’t know where it will lead. It’s a wonderful experience. I absolutely loved mine.
It will teach you rare and valuable skills that will be useful whether you become a professor or not: writing, research skills, critical thinking, scientific literacy, the ability to learn anything, and more. These skills will be useful in many different types of careers.
Wrapping up
Choosing a career path is stressful, and I really think that you shouldn’t feel like you have to have the next 30 years mapped out. Especially now, since the world is changing so fast. Existing career paths are being rewritten, and new jobs will exist in five or ten years that don’t exist today. There are already jobs now, like prompt engineer, that I couldn’t have imagined five years ago.
So instead of planning a career, prepare yourself for a fulfilling one, whatever that ends up being:
Follow your curiosity to decide on the next step, just the next one.
Work hard to acquire rare and valuable skills, or rare and valuable combinations of skills, while building your reputation and network.
Listen to how the work makes you feel. Is it joy or agony? Does it drain your energy or give you energy? Focus on the work that motivates you to steer yourself in the right direction.
Talk to people, in and outside your field, to learn what they do and what they consider valuable.
And keep acquiring career capital and exchanging it for increasingly more fulfilling work, whether that means climbing the next rung of a linear career, or for a change of course.
About Aggie Inc.
After my PhD, I spent 10 years in academia doing quantum research, then 4 years in quantum tech (things move ~2.5x faster in industry, so let’s call it even!).
Now I’m building Quantum Salon, a strategic communication studio working within the quantum tech ecosystem. Our mission is to help people in the quantum ecosystem understand each other better.
In the Aggie Inc. Substack, I share my behind-the-scenes journey building the company. If you’re interested in creating a life and work that feels right for you, or if you’re just curious to see how this experiment unfolds, subscribe below.
By Claude and then by me.