What Shape Is Your Career? 8 Ladder Alternatives
When many of us were growing up, we were taught a familiar model: go to a good school, study hard, get a good job, and climb the ranks there until you finally retire at the pinnacle of your success. It’s a nice model, and it worked for a few generations. But if you’re a freelancer (and, if you’re reading this right now, I’m guessing you are), the old model doesn’t quite match up to your current career reality. Sure, you might have a primary job where you are still climbing the ranks, but then is freelancing your second career? And if you don’t have an employer, how do you think about progress over time? Growing as a freelancer won’t necessarily come along with fancy titles or an ever-increasing team for you to manage—though it might. We need a new model, a new metaphor to describe our new careers that are nonlinear, multilinear, and frankly, just downright confusing. Fortunately, there are a number of future of work specialists tackling this exact problem. Let’s take a look at the different shapes and solutions they propose.
The Ladder
The dominant career shape of the past, but possibly not for the present or future. This metaphor describes a linear path upward without any detours, departures, offshoots, or switchbacks. An example of this would be joining a law firm perhaps as a summer associate, then working through the ranks first as a junior associate, then as a midlevel, next as a senior associate, before finally making partner, where you would stay for the remainder of your legal career.
The Jungle Gym
Also known as a career lattice, or even an infinite set of pipes, the jungle gym metaphor was most famously described by Sheryl Sandberg in her book, Lean In, though the concept had been in circulation for several years. The idea is that, to grow your career, you might sometimes have to move diagonally or even sideways. The jungle gym metaphor adds a touch of whimsy—which can be on point or slightly sinister, depending on your perspective—and remains most relevant for folks who have one primary career at a time.
The Squiggly Career
Coined by Helen Tupper and Sarah Ellis in their book of the same name, the squiggly career takes the jungle gym and lattice a step further and acknowledges that, in addition to growing sideways and diagonally, your career might have multiple offshoots and even seem to take u-turns as you start fresh by changing roles or industries and juggle side hustles. The career path you chart might not look tidy to an outside observer, but is filled with continuous growth, and far more common than most “Squigglies” think.
The Kaleidoscope Career
The kaleidoscope career model describes making the puzzle pieces of roles and relationships fit together in new arrangements when your priorities shift or an experience causes you to view your life in a new light. Admittedly, this beautiful term started out gendered. The concept gained popularity in the early 2000s as a theory to explain the so-called “opt out revolution” where some women experienced a personal turning point and decided not to pursue the highest rungs of the corporate ladder anymore. In the 15 years since this paper was published, I think the world has changed sufficiently that this career shape might appeal to people of other genders, but I’ll refrain from woman-splaining to you on that.
The Portfolio Career
The idea of the portfolio career has been in circulation since at least 1989 when Charles Handy wrote about it in his management book, The Age of Unreason, but it seems to be gaining popularity now, and is the fastest growing segment of workers in the US and the UK. Like in the world of investing, diversification is desirable for career portfolios. Somebody with a portfolio career might have multiple careers and multiple income streams at the same time. Advantages of the portfolio include: being resilient to economic downturns or industry shifts, as well as cross-pollination and creativity from working in multiple silos simultaneously.
The portfolio career spawned a legion of other career metaphors that give shape and structure to multicareer lives. Futurist April Rinne has described several of these, including:
Bento box - In the bento box career, different components live side-by-side to create a single, nourishing meal. Unlike the three-course meal which is experienced sequentially, the bento box career can have multiple career components of varying sizes all at the same time
Flower - Careers resemble a flower when you sprout a new petal every few years by taking on a new role or skill that blooms alongside your existing petals to create a beautiful flower and—eventually—a whole garden of careers and skills
Other variations of the portfolio career include punctuation-based methods of answering the dinner party question, “What do you do?” with multiple job titles. These career types include:
Slashie - Originally described as “slasher” careers in 2007 by Marci Alboher, the author of One Person/Multiple Careers, later popularized as “Slashies” by news outlets such as The Guardian and Brown Girl Magazine
Multi-Hyphen - Used informally since the 1970s to describe celebrities with multiple professions, the term was popularized and brought to the mainstream by Emma Gannon in her book, The Multi-Hyphen Life
Like with the jungle gym metaphor, the issue of whether the portfolio career and its variations are empowering or exploitative remains. At their worst, they lead to fragmentation, stagnant earnings, the loss of both hobbies and benefits. But, at their best, compartmentalized careers can give agency back to workers and be a useful tool on the quest for self actualization.
Which career model do you prefer?
