The document outlines a keynote by Clemens Wan on pragmatic and systematic career development, discussing approaches to career planning, skill acquisition, and life decisions. It emphasizes the importance of recognizing personal drivers, creating a personalized system for productivity, and making informed choices in both professional and personal life. Additionally, it highlights various career paths with specific requirements and expectations while encouraging continuous learning and engagement in diverse interests.

1. Pragmatic & Systematic
Career Development
Carnegie Mellon University
Trading Summit: Keynote
CLEMENS WAN
APRIL 2015

2. Who am I?

3. What to Expect
1. Your Career Approach
2. Creating a System
3. Life Decisions

4. Your Career Approach
Planning your future and looking at
opportunity costs

5. Life as an RPG

6. Life as an RPG: Rules
○ Skills take time to
learn
○ You have a limited
amount of time
○ You can only learn
5 skills at a time
○ We’re all given
different
opportunities

7. Communications
Relevance: 10
Value: 10
How to Practice:
- Toastmasters
- Prepare speeches
- Mock interviews
- Mentorship
Effective Writing
Relevance: 10
Value: 10
How to Practice:
- Learn from concise
emails
- Read req docs
- Summarize
Diff Equations
Relevance: 0
Value: 0
How to Practice:
- Apply to real-world
problems
- Practice questions
- Ask for mentorship
Playing Piano
Relevance: 2
Value: 4
How to Practice:
- Practice fun songs
- Take a class
- Learn from a
professional
Finance
Relevance: 7
Value: 7
How to Practice:
- Read articles
- Take classes
- Learn from
coworkers
Coding
Relevance: 7
Value: 7
How to Practice:
- Write code
- Test libraries
- Take online classes
Project Mgmt
Relevance: 7
Value: 8
How to Practice:
- Take classes
- Use relevant tools
- PM your life
Table Tennis
Relevance: 3
Value: 6
How to Practice:
- Take a lesson
- Play every day
- Buy a robot to help
with different spin

8. Level of Knowing
Mastery

9. 1. You can only work on 5 skills at a time
2. Pick 2 strengths, 2 intermediate, 1 weakness
3. Look for improvement: weakness -> less weak;
intermediate -> strength; strength -> mastery
4. When you believe you’ve reached mastery, swap out
the skills)
My Rule of 5
Limit your Works in Progress (Tasks/Projects)

11. Read this book...

12. Things to Do
○ Work hard
○ Know your stuff
○ Understand your
environment
○ Take on new
challenges and tasks
○ Ask Questions!
Things to Avoid
○ Being stupid
○ Being a typical Gen-Y
○ ... (there are a million)

13. Drivers It’s important for you to...
Material Rewards Have possessions, wealth, and a high standard of living.
Power / Influence Be in control of people and resources.
Search for Meaning Do things which are believed to be valuable for their own sake.
Expertise Gain a high level of accomplishment in a specialized field.
Creativity Innovate and be identified with original output.
Affiliation Nourish relationships with others at work.
Autonomy Be independent and able to make your own decisions.
Security Have a solid and predictable future.
Status Be recognized, admired, and respected by the community at large.
Career Drivers

14. Drivers You enjoy...
Influencing Persuading and leading people.
Organizing
Tasks that monitor structure, procedures, and processes. You like staying organized and
looking for efficiencies.
Helping Working with other people and helping them.
Creating Innovating something new and expressing your own inner vision.
Analytics Researching and analyzing data. You develop models that solve problems.
Producing Making, maintaining, and repairing physical things.
Adventuring Taking risks (physically or financially).
Interests and Daily Tasks

15. Example: My Drivers and Interests
1. I don’t care about material rewards or security
2. I value creativity / engineering / design, building
relationships, and leading by example
3. I love contributing to a community
4. I love mentorship

17. Banking IT
Req:
- BS in Finance/IT/CS
- Communications
- Financial Knowledge
- IT Knowledge
Expectations:
- Decent hours (~45)
- Decent pay (~70k)
- SDLC
Trader
Req:
- Connections
- Trading experience
Expectations:
- Heavier hours (6AM)
- Great pay & Greater
bonus
- Rewarded based on
prediction skills
Banker
Req:
- Communications
- Hard working / Team
work
Expectations:
- Ridiculous hours (~80)
- Great pay (but not
enough for hours)
- Risk of burn-out
Research
Req:
- Written
Communication
- In depth analysis
Expectations:
- Ridiculous hours (~90)
- Travel conferences
- Always on-call and
always reading
Entrepreneurship
Req:
- Skillful diverse team in
business, law, software,
accounting, etc
- Initial Capital
- Clear vision (problem)
Expectations:
- However long it takes
- Basically 0 pay
- Wear many hats
- Refined pitching
- Constantly asking for $
Technology Companies
Req:
- BS in CS
- Tech knowledge
- Team work
Expectations:
- Decent hours (~55)
- Great pay (~90k)
- Jeans and perks
- Projects where you may
be the customer

18. Not listed?
1. Network effectively and ask about someone’s career
path
2. Before entering a job, know what skills are needed to
excel
3. Find out which skills are transferable
4. Ask for connects and follow-ups (people know people)
5. Know the thresholds of entering jobs
Write your ideal job description.

19. Creating a System
Something that works for you

24. Your System
○ Routines - being productive, destressing
○ Setting Long Term Goals
○ Making difficult decisions - Weighing choices
○ Approaching problems / analysis
○ Your Accompanying Tools
○ Learning how to Learn (and from mistakes)
○ Staying in Touch - Meaningful Follow-up

25. Example: My Routines
○ Hygiene
○ Picking clothes
○ Morning commute
○ First task in the office
○ Follow-up on a meeting
○ Method of stress relief
○ Catching up with friends
○ Working on side projects
○ Meditation
○ Cooking dinner
○ Reflecting on progress
Defined Processes with
specific end states

26. Example: Weighing Choices
○ Pro vs Con list
○ Adding weights to
categories with more value
○ Adding risks to each pro
and con
○ Adding emotional factors to
each (gut feeling)
Quantitative Method of
Choosing
Confidence of Decisions
○ Remove buyer’s remorse
○ Understand that there is no
“right” answer

27. Example: Approaching Problems
○ Pay attention to the right details
○ Who benefits?
○ Source reliable?
○ Obvious Statements?
○ Keep your Objective/Scope clear
○ Ask questions to clarify unknowns
○ Keep an open mind from any biases
○ Provide advice from your strengths and
expertise
○ Provide multiple solutions
Defined Thought
Process for
Seeing the Full
Picture

28. Example: My Tools
○ Productivity
○ Email - Inbox (0)
○ Calendar
○ Lists / Notes
○ Social Media
○ Staying in Touch
○ Creating content
○ News
○ RSS Feeds
○ News related to your expertise
○ Unwind
○ Writing
Optimized
Applications with
Clear purposes

29. Example: How I Learn
○ Reading multiple sources (seeing it
written in different ways)
○ Formulating a story
○ Connecting new concepts to multiple
known facts
○ Repetition with different use cases
○ Summarizing existing notes with lists
○ Teaching similar concepts to others
Matching
Interesting Things
to Known
Constants &
Practicing

30. Example: How I Stay In Touch
○ Setting reminders to contact people
○ Remembering people’s brands and
contacting them if I learned something
relevant or read something relevant
○ Sending cards or messages during given
holidays
○ Meeting people physically to places of
common interest
○ Remembering people’s latest status of
important things (e.g. asking them if
certain things happen)
Treating people as
people

31. Life Decisions
It’s not a work-life balance. It’s just life.

32. Early Career
- Extra pocket money
- Networking events
- Lots of Coffee Chats
- Steep learning curve
Dating Scene
- Spending pocket
money
- Improvement on small
talk
- Some nights of
loneliness
Relationship
- Comfortable chats
- Learning more about
one person
- Sharing similar goals
- Building awesome
memories
Renting in City
- Finding a place to rent
- Getting a roommate
- Furniture buying and
home improvement
Golden Age of Fun
- Out of debt (finally!)
- Getting promotions /
recognition at work
- Group vacations
- Spontaneous
awesomeness
- Time for hobbies
Commitment
- Living together
- Sharing bank
accounts
- Buying wedding ring
($$$)
- Fewer group
vacations
Adolescent Career
- More responsibility at
work
- Opportunities to move
around
- Growth of network of
peers, mentors, and
sponsors
Family
- Marriage planning
- Kids
- Bigger house
- Important
neighborhood
- Crazy costs
- Generally scary stuff

33. Quarter-life Crisis
1. So... now what?
2. Keep learning random things that interest you
3. Don’t compare yourself to others
4. Get involved with a community
5. Live in the moment and have fun!

34. Trading
- Start of investing
- Applies knowledge
about the market and
trends
- Gambling addiction
Blogging
- Love for writing
- Creates an online
presence and brand
- Keeps me excited with
projects
Photography
- Love for my DSLR
- Great networking tool
- Links well with
blogging
Tech Philosophy
- Start Up advice
- Meeting great minds
- Love the topic and
would chat about it for
free
Coding
- Extend knowledge of
libraries and upcoming
technologies
- Do it myself (instead of
waiting on others)
- It’s fun
Traveling
- Seeing new cultures
- Once in a lifetime
opportunities
- Doing it while I still can
30 Day Challenges
- Making better habits
- Keeping things
interesting
- Continuously
challenging myself
Cooking
- Makes everyone
happy
- Great stress reliever
- Increases my dating
stock
- Excellent skill to know
Example: My Hobbies

35. My Final Advice
1. Keep Yourself a Valuable Asset
2. Be transparent with your manager
3. Know how to maintain relationships
4. Ask questions

36. … ? Clemens.wan@gmail.com
seelemonslive.com