How to Stop Feeling Behind in Your Career
Spring 2007. Prudhoe Bay, Alaska.
I'm sitting at my desk, staring at my inbox like it owes me money. Zero responses to the job applications I'd sent out. Singapore. Houston. Aberdeen. Nothing.
Six months earlier? We'd just wrapped up this massive pipeline project. 34-inch diameter. 200,000 barrels a day flowing across the tundra. Budget in the hundreds of millions. BP's global magazine ran a feature on it. I probably still have copies somewhere.
But that morning? Just me and an empty inbox.
Here's what kills me about this whole thing. When I started out, my goals were stupid simple. Get an engineering degree. Get a job. Make enough money for rent and groceries. That's it. No BMW dreams. Hell, I wouldn't even pay for home internet in my first apartment. Just me, a bed, a couch, and a DVD player.
My first job paid about $100k in today's money. Plenty, right? But I wasn't sure. So I saved everything. Invested. Lived like a college student with a salary.
Then I got to the office. Saw the corner offices. The BMWs (always BMWs) in the parking garage. The guys who'd casually mention their ski trips to Aspen.
And something shifted. Suddenly "pay rent" wasn't the goal anymore. Now it was "get promoted as fast as possible." Make the money. Get the title. Be THAT guy.
Why does that happen? Such a terrible thing. Every day, maybe every month, you start comparing. Your title. Your office. Your car. Your everything. And you inevitably feel behind. That was me in 2002.
By 2007? I should've been past all that. Pipeline project done. Global recognition. The whole nine yards.
Except... nothing was happening. No new projects. No calls from other regions. Just Alaska, ice melting outside my window, and me refreshing my email like a crazy person.
The Part Nobody Warns You About
You know what's worse than failing? Succeeding and then having nowhere to go.
The pipeline was done. My big thing. And suddenly there was just... nothing. No fires to put out. No impossible deadlines. For the first time since college, I had time to think.
So I went fishing. A lot.
Also became Chairman of Advancement for Boy Scouts of Alaska. Because apparently that's what you do when your career hits permafrost. You volunteer for things.
Was it fulfilling? Kind of. Was it terrifying? Absolutely.
At 28, I couldn't shake this thought: What if I've already peaked?
The Stupid Move That Saved Me
I could've waited it out. Should've, probably. Good career in projects, established reputation. But I was going crazy.
So I jumped. From surface projects to subsurface. From building pipelines to managing the wells that feed them. Complete career pivot.
Exciting, right?
It was brutal.
Went from a real office to basically the intern desk. From managing hundreds of millions to... I didn't even know how to monitor a basic well. A WELL. The thing that my whole previous job depended on.
First project? Millions over budget. In major construction, that's nothing. In subsurface? Career suicide.
Wells would go offline and I'd be googling solutions. Actually googling. Like some kid trying to fix his car with YouTube videos.
My manager finally pulled me aside. "You need to know these wells like they're your kids. Every quirk. Every pattern."
So that's what I did. CDN-14 ran hot. PTR-7 was high-maintenance. ADK-3 never gave me trouble. I memorized them all.
Slowly—painfully—I became useful again.
The Thing That Changed Everything
Fast forward. I'm at Yale for some executive program. This McKinsey partner is talking about careers, and he drops this bomb:
"Everyone builds careers like pyramids—broad base, then narrow. Wrong. The best careers are columns first. Deep expertise, then broad leadership."
I literally stopped breathing. Pulled out my Moleskine and wrote: "Depth before breadth."
All those years trying to collect experiences like Pokemon cards? Backwards. Your twenties aren't for titles. They're for going so deep in something that you become the person they call when it matters.
The broadening comes later. Built on expertise nobody can question.
So Yeah, You Feel Behind
Look, maybe you are behind. Maybe you're not. Here's what I know:
Careers don't go straight up. They go forward, backward, sideways, and sometimes completely off the rails. One day your manager's talking about your "leadership potential." Next day your company's being acquired and everything's uncertain. Oil goes from $8 to $100 to $50. You're golden until you're not.
That guy with the BMW at 26? On sabbatical number three.
The one who spent eight years on the same project? Running a division now.
Me? That plateau in Alaska taught me everything. Not the pipeline project. The nothing that came after.
Today—and this is going to sound worse—the comparison game is brutal. Back then, I only compared myself to maybe 20 people. Family. Immediate colleagues. That's it.
Now? You can compare yourself to everyone. LinkedIn. Instagram. Some 22-year-old founder on the cover of Forbes. It's everywhere.
But here's the thing: Stop. Just stop.
Your career isn't their career. Your timeline isn't their timeline. And trust me—half the people you think are ahead? They're googling "what to do with my life" at 2 AM just like everyone else.
Play the long game. Build deep. The rest sorts itself out.
Even if it takes a spring in Alaska to figure that out.
