Sunday, December 2, 2012

How To Build An Antifragile Career




According to Fast Company’s Drake Baer: Some people, and their jobs, are fragile, while others benefit from the madness of the world. General Petraeus' scandalous fall evidences fragility; while Lady Gaga grows stronger with scandal--the pop monster is antifragile...

….To get a picture of how randomness plays a role in professional life, Taleb compares two brothers: one an office worker, the other a taxi driver. Volatility is present in the career of each: while the office worker has randomness “smoothed away” by the regularity of salary and employment, he is like a turkey in mid-November, fragile to risk presently out of view. On the other hand, the taxi driver--who Taleb describes as being of the class of artisan, much like a carpenter or plumber--experiences a natural randomness in his daily fluctuations of fares, but is less prone to large shocks. Indeed, Taleb writes, the self-employed artisan can be antifragile: a weeklong earnings decline tells the taxi driver to try a new part of town, while a mistake made in the cubicle farm will be kept on the permanent record. As well, the office worker has one main employer and thus rigidity, while the taxi driver has many--giving him more options, greater flexibility to adapt to his environment……

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