Marc Andreesen on Career Planning

Marc Andreesen has written a very good series of articles on career planning that is worth a read, regardless of whether you are just starting college or have been working for decades. Marc has a lot of good thoughts on how to choose a career, a college, and a job. He then goes on to explain his ideas around what skills you need to develop to be succesfull.

The series so far contains three articles:

The Pmarca Guide to Career Planning, part 1: Opportunity

“Instead of planning your career, focus on developing skills and pursuing opportunities.”

That quote pretty much sums up this article.

The Pmarca Guide to Career Planning, part 2: Skills and education This one has some good advice on choosing colleges and majors, but the real wisdom is in his advice on which skills you need to have, regardless of your chosen field. I won’t spoil it for you (seriously, go read it), but Marc really nails the key skills and why they are important.

The Pmarca Guide to Career Planning, part 3: Where to go and why The final article in the series discusses how to choose the place to work, not only in the sense of which company, but where (domestic vs. international). Marc discusses the different types of companies you can work for and why you would want to work there. Marc has a bias towards small high-tech startups (surprise!), but does discuss other types of companies, as well as starting your own.

That’s all he has written (for now). All in all, there is a lot of good advice in these articles. Read them yourself and then pass them along.