New-Age Career: “I Write, Teach, Invest And Do A Wide Range Of Jobs”
Blockchain startup 5ire’s CMO Utkarsh Amitabh on Wednesday said the traditional way of how people pursued careers is gone for good. He said that the paradigm of ‘how to pursue a career’ has changed and there isn’t any pressure today to follow a script in the ‘pursuit of excellence’ during one’s career.
Speaking at the Gurugram chapter of the 4th Edition of the India Business Literature Festival (IBLF), Amitabh talked about the underlying principle highlighted in his book ‘Passion Economy and the Side hustle revolution’. He said passion thrives when people experiment and explore, which includes one's career.
Quoting the example of present-day Millennials and Gen Z, he said that the way careers are looked at today has changed as Internet has helped create new types of careers that allow experimentation and foster passion and curiosity. He said that curiosity can be interwoven later into a career that is economically viable “but experimentation is important”.
“If a job provides autonomy and purpose. It creates meaningful living,” he added.
He said that 10-20 years back, life needed to be in stages and people had to complete one stage to move on to another. But he predicts that in the years ahead, people would have multiple jobs or a “portfolio of professions”.
“People in the years to come will not have just one job. They'll have a portfolio of professions, a portfolio of careers – a writer, a DJ, an academic and investor – all bundled into a combination of jobs. And I see that in my life. As of today, I am the CEO of Network Capital and CMO of 5ire. Also, I write, teach, invest and do a wide range of professions,” he added.
The 5ire CMO said a person’s career would entail multiple jobs in the times to come. “This is going to become mainstream,” Amitabh said.
This statement comes at a time when much has already been said about the practice of ‘moonlighting’ – the act of taking up multiple jobs/assignments apart from one's full-time job.
A recent report by job portal Indeed revealed that 43 per cent of employees in the Indian IT sector prefer moonlighting. Multiple tech companies, including Wipro, Infosys and TCS, have taken a strong stance against moonlighting.
