Hats

Last week I was on a call with a new grad. They were looking for advice on if they should work at a startup or a bigger, more established company after graduation.

Honestly, you can’t go wrong with either.

I did tell them about hats though.

At a big™ company with thousands or tens of thousands of employees, you’ll likely be given a hat or, sometimes, just part of a hat (like this). That hat might be a product designer hat or a software engineer hat, or whatever the type of hat you studied at Hat University.

A startup on the other hand head is hat surplus. They have so many hats and not enough people to wear them. You might have been hired to wear the email marketing hat, but then quickly find out you’ve also been given the copywriter hat, the researcher hat, and the analytics hat.

For some, including myself, wearing multiple hats is the best part. It’s an opportunity to go beyond a specific skillset and try other things. Things I might actually enjoy more than my first hat. And conversely, learn about the hats I don’t like wearing — I really don’t like the, “Create slide decks for out-of-touch executives” hat.

All of that being said, ALL THE HATS is not for everyone. There is a path of going all-in on one hat and knocking it out of the park (baseball hat). Specialization is just as valuable, and if you can find that niche hat that very few others have, you’ll be set for a while.

What type of hat person are you?

Onward,

Loren Morris

P.S. - Check out Climate Draft for climate-related tech jobs. Pretty cool idea!

P.P.S - I have a cold, so apologies for the hats thing. I’m not of sound mind.

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