Why I chose a countercurrent career

My career started off in a relatively orthodox way. Coming from a family with modest means, I did not want to take risks early in my career. When I started my undergraduate degree at CMU¹ I made sure to learn as many technical and employable skills as possible, which led me to choose chemical engineering as a major at the end of my first year.² I had a simple career plan: prepare for a well-paying, secure job with the potential to transition into technical management.

As I approached graduation, I had above-average grades, but a poor economy meant much of my graduating class (myself included) was unemployed. A few months after graduation I received a job offer and went to work in vaccine manufacturing.³ It was a well-paying, secure job with a clear benefit to society, only a few hours’ distance from my parents and extended family. Over the next few years I planned my career out: continue in technical operations toward eventually being promoted into management, and on the side, accumulate investment properties to rent and flip.

Years into my relatively orthodox career plan I realized that, while profitable, it was not turning out to be fulfilling. I found the work in vaccine production both stressful and tedious — one mistake during another unexpected third shift and a batch could be lost, with severe financial and career consequences. There was very little opportunity to apply the engineering concepts I had learned in university. Pharmaceutical and biological product manufacturing is highly regulated, with an extreme restriction on changes to the process in any way.

The moment I decided to walk off that orthodox career path was when my true career began. I am not telling you to follow my path; your destination will be different from mine, but this new path has been fulfilling for me. In this new path, stability and financial security are the minimum, not the goal.⁴ Once you have those covered, the harder and more meaningful criteria are whether your work does any good for society, whether you actually like it, and whether it enables you to continue growing professionally.⁵

The name of this website, “countercurrent,” comes from a current that flows against the prevailing one. I am contrarian by nature, but I am not going to write contrarian things just for the sake of it. Not being difficult for its own sake, but choosing a direction that goes against the prevailing flow because that is where I think one’s career success and societal benefit intersect. I think this kind of career path is more fulfilling and does more good for society. I hope to make that case over time with the writings shared through this website, as I keep learning and walking the countercurrent career path myself.

We are faced with increasing challenges to sustaining and advancing human civilization, ranging from geopolitical to environmental.⁶ When I was young I thought I would live to see the days in which humans began to colonize the stars, but now I am not even sure I will live to see our quality of life improve compared to the 1990s.⁷ Things have to change if we want a sustainable future for all, and working towards that change might mean going against the flow.

Through this website I plan to write relatively short and concise notes mainly about technical and engineering education, different approaches to career paths, and occasionally unrelated topics that might be of interest to my target audience or the general public. The target audience is mainly younger individuals who are already undergoing or considering training to be engineers, technicians, and trades. While I have only trained to be an engineer, my professional and academic practice has naturally involved extensive interaction with technicians and tradespeople, and I think we are kindred practitioners. My goal is not the generation of content and engagement; it is to share what I have learned, as I learn it, in a way that might be useful to someone making their own decisions.

Occasionally I still think about my initial career path in the 2000s, the time and income that I gave up in order to pursue a new career path in academia. My promotions were on track, even though the Vioxx scandal had resulted in large lay-offs at Merck & Co. while I was employed there. I was making steady progress into property investment and potentially enrolling in a technology management-focused graduate degree program to further improve my chances of promotion. The orthodox career path was clear and safe and increasingly having positive outcomes. Walking away from it was the second most difficult and terrifying decision that I have made so far in my life, but it was absolutely the right one.

Footnotes and references compiled with an open-weight AI model.