A former student sent me this email last week:
“I followed your advice. I turned down the Big Tech offer. Everyone thought I was crazy. I took the smaller role at a company where I could actually work how I work. Six months in, I’ve shipped more, learned more, and sleep better than any of my friends at FAANG companies who are drowning. Turns out the ‘better opportunity’ was the one that fit, not the one that looked better.”
This isn’t luck. This isn’t one person making an unconventional choice that happened to work out. This is what happens when someone uses the right decision framework instead of the one we’re accidentally teaching everyone else to use.
This is the problem: we train students to make career decisions like they’re comparing products on Amazon. Build a spreadsheet. List the features. Compare salary, prestige, benefits, location. Pick the one with the highest score. Then we wonder why so many people end up miserable in jobs that looked perfect on paper.
The standard framework optimizes for what looks good. It doesn’t predict what feels sustainable. It can’t tell you whether you’ll thrive or drown because it’s measuring the wrong variables entirely.
The Broken Framework
Walk into any career services office, and you’ll see some version of this advice: research the company, compare salaries, evaluate growth potential, consider the brand name on your resume. Make a pros and cons list. Talk to people in the industry. Look at advancement timelines.
None of this is wrong, exactly. It’s just incomplete. These questions help you evaluate an opportunity, but they don’t help you evaluate fit. And fit is what determines whether you’re still there, still growing, and still sane two years later.
The hidden assumption in the standard framework is that opportunities have objective value. That some jobs are simply better than others. That if you’re smart and ambitious, you should obviously take the Big Tech offer over the startup role. The higher salary. The recognizable name. The “better” opportunity.
But opportunities don’t have objective value. They have contextual value. A job that’s perfect for someone who thrives in structured environments with clear expectations will be suffocating for someone who needs autonomy and ambiguity. A role that’s ideal for someone who processes information slowly and deeply will overwhelm someone who thinks quickly across multiple streams.
The framework we teach students ignores this completely. It optimizes for external markers while ignoring internal operating systems. Then we’re surprised when talented people burn out in prestigious roles.
What We Should Be Teaching Instead
Career decisions aren’t consumer choices. They’re infrastructure decisions. When you take a job, you’re not buying a product. You’re selecting the environment where you’ll operate for the next chunk of your life. And your performance, your learning, your satisfaction, and your trajectory all depend on whether that environment matches your operating system.
The question isn’t “which opportunity is better?” The question is “which environment matches how I naturally work?”
That requires a completely different framework. Instead of comparing features, you need to understand three things:
First, how do you naturally process information and solve problems? Do you need structure or do you create it? Do you think linearly or systemically? Do you need to see the whole picture before you start, or do you learn by doing? Some people thrive when given clear direction and defined processes. Others feel constrained by the same conditions. Neither is better. But one will determine whether a given role feels energizing or draining.
Second, what conditions do you need to do your best work? How much autonomy do you need versus guidance? What pace suits you? What kind of feedback loops help you learn? Some environments offer lots of mentorship and structured onboarding. Others throw you in and expect you to figure it out. Again, neither is wrong. But if you need guidance and you land somewhere that expects immediate autonomy, you’ll struggle. And if you need autonomy and you land somewhere that micromanages, you’ll feel suffocated.
Third, where does this specific role require you to operate? What’s the actual day-to-day workflow? What kind of problems will you solve? What pace does the team move at? How much ambiguity is involved? You’re not evaluating whether these things are good or bad. You’re evaluating whether they match your answers to the first two questions.
When those three things align, you get what my student described: velocity, learning, sustainable energy. When they don’t align, you get what his friends are experiencing: grinding, drowning, burning out despite having all the “right” opportunities.
Why This Student’s Story Matters
Look at what happened in his case. He had two offers. One checked all the conventional boxes: prestigious company, higher salary, recognizable brand. The other was smaller, less known, lower paying. The standard framework would have made this an easy decision.
But he asked different questions. He looked at how each company actually operated. He thought about how he works best. He recognized that he needs some structure but thrives when given room to ship quickly and see impact. The Big Tech role would have put him in a massive organization with slow-moving processes and layers of approval. The smaller company would let him move fast, own projects, and see direct results.
Six months later, the difference is obvious. Same person, same skills, same work ethic. Completely different experiences. Not because one company is objectively better than the other, but because one environment matched his operating system and the other didn’t.
His friends at FAANG companies aren’t struggling because they’re not talented enough or because those companies are bad places to work. They’re struggling because the environment doesn’t match how they naturally work. And no amount of prestige compensates for that mismatch.
What This Means for Career Readiness
Career readiness programs measure the wrong outcomes. They track placement rates, starting salaries, and company prestige. They celebrate when students land at recognizable firms. They measure success at the point of hire.
But hire is the beginning, not the end. What we should measure is: are students still there a year later? Are they growing? Are they thriving? Do they understand themselves well enough to recognize when they’re in the right environment versus when they need to move?
The student who thrives five years out isn’t the one who got the best first job. It’s the one who understood themselves well enough to choose the right one. And “right” doesn’t mean prestigious or high-paying. It means aligned with how they naturally work.
We don’t need better career readiness. We need different career readiness. One that starts with helping students understand their work identity before they start comparing offers. One that teaches them to evaluate environments, not just opportunities. One that gives them the language to articulate how they work so they can recognize fit when they see it.
Because when you build career decisions on self-knowledge instead of status, you don’t just make better choices in the moment. You build a foundation for sustainable growth. You learn faster because you’re working with your natural patterns, not against them. You build confidence because you’re succeeding in ways that actually fit you.
That’s what career readiness should look like. Not helping students get jobs. Teaching them to evaluate environments. Because the right environment turns potential into performance. The wrong one turns talent into burnout, no matter how good it looks on paper.
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Frequently Asked Questions:
A career decision framework is the set of criteria you use to evaluate job opportunities. The traditional framework focuses on external factors like salary, company prestige, and job title. A work identity framework focuses on internal factors like how you naturally process information, what conditions you need to thrive, and whether the role’s daily requirements match your operating system. The framework you use determines whether you optimize for what looks good or what actually fits.
Job fit comes down to three questions: How do you naturally work? What conditions do you need to do your best work? And where does this specific role require you to operate? If you thrive with structure and the role offers clear processes, that’s alignment. If you need autonomy and the role involves constant oversight, that’s misalignment. Fit isn’t about whether a company is “good” or “bad.” It’s about whether the environment matches how your brain naturally operates.
Choose fit. Prestige might open doors, but it won’t determine whether you thrive once you’re inside. A prestigious company where you’re constantly struggling won’t advance your career as effectively as a lesser-known company where you’re shipping work, building skills, and gaining confidence. Prestige looks good on a resume for six months. Fit determines your trajectory for six years. The most successful people aren’t the ones who started with the best brand names. They’re the ones who understood themselves well enough to choose environments where they could actually perform.
A good career decision for new graduates starts with self-knowledge, not market research. Before you compare offers, understand how you work: Do you need structure or do you create it? Do you learn by doing or by observing? What pace suits you? Then evaluate opportunities based on whether they match your answers. The “best” first job isn’t the highest-paying or most prestigious one. It’s the one that lets you build skills in an environment that fits how you naturally operate, because that’s where learning compounds fastest.
Talent doesn’t prevent burnout when there’s a fundamental mismatch between how you work and how the environment requires you to work. Someone brilliant who needs autonomy will struggle in a highly structured environment, no matter how prestigious the company. Someone who thrives with clear direction will feel lost in an ambiguous startup, regardless of the opportunity. Burnout isn’t about working too hard. It’s about working against your natural patterns for too long. Prestigious companies aren’t immune to this. If anything, people stay longer in mismatched prestigious roles because they think they “should” make it work, which makes the burnout worse.
Career readiness programs should teach students to evaluate environments, not just compare opportunities. This means helping students understand their work identity first: how they process information, what conditions they need to thrive, and where they create value. Then teach them to ask different questions during the job search: What’s the actual day-to-day workflow? How much autonomy versus structure? What’s the pace and feedback culture? Programs that only focus on resume writing and interview skills prepare students to get jobs, but not to choose the right ones. The goal should be sustainable success, not just placement rates.
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