This is one of the most important steps anyone can take to put their career — and life in general — on the right trajectory.
My six-month stay in Singapore — I wrote about how I got there 👉 here — opened my eyes to the fact that almost anything is possible.
My academic supervisor earned his PhD at Cambridge and spent several years working at Microsoft’s Speech and Language Processing lab. He would often tell me: “Just apply to Cambridge or the University of Edinburgh. They have strong AI programs, and I know some of the faculty there.”
At first, my provincial brain responded: “Vlad, Cambridge? You are a country boy from Kuban. Go walk around Marina Bay and stare at the skyline — they have not built anything like that in Armavir yet.” But over time, studying at a top-ten university such as NUS or Cambridge stopped feeling surreal and became just another option.
Once your brain normalizes that option and it becomes another possible fork in your life, your perception of the world changes completely.
Your thinking shifts from “I could never do that” to “perhaps I could, but do I actually want to?” I do not regret leaving academia and declining the well-trodden PhD path. I spoke with many people in that world. To become genuinely successful there, you have to be wired differently; otherwise, you may spend your life producing endless papers that nobody needs simply to meet a publication quota.
I left academia, ChatGPT appeared soon afterward, and instead of pursuing a research career I joined a startup that integrated the newest technology into a product people genuinely used. At the time, I did not yet understand how interesting the work in front of me really was.
Looking back, I see that the jump gave me a level of freedom and quality of life — including financial freedom — that academia could never have offered me.
If there is a conclusion here, it is that luck and the people you choose to surround yourself with matter enormously. At university, seek out professors with strong networks and a genuine desire to teach. At work, maximize either money or network. Sitting indefinitely in the same comfortable chair, doing uninteresting work for an average salary alongside colleagues who gave up years ago, leads nowhere. I suspect, however, that few readers here fall into that category.
Never mock someone whose ambitions seem excessive to you. Ask instead: “How are you planning to achieve that?” You will almost certainly learn something and help them clarify their thinking.
Have you ever been one of the crabs in the bucket? 🦀
