career.ts ⎇ main ▶ run // your tech career, compiled while (curious) { ship('one milestone at a time') } ✓ 27 milestones  ·  9 companies  ·  1 career

Reputation is three numbers

• 🛠️ Craft How good you actually are. Grows from doing the work. Big Tech screens on this.
• 🧭 Leadership Grows from scope, hiring and seniority. Gates every senior title — no leadership, no VP, no matter how famous you are.
• 🌐 Network Grows from moving, talks, exits and people. Drives warm intros, negotiation odds and founder mode.

The big number is a weighted blend, tilted toward craft for builder disciplines and toward leadership for go-to-market ones. It grows fastest when you're slightly out of your depth — a company above your level, in a role with real responsibility.

• Being the best person in a weak room plateaus you. Growth halves once you're well above your company.
• Age curve. Fastest before 29, solid to 38, slowing to 44, declining after 48.
• Seniority never drops. Titles ratchet up even when the numbers fade.

Pace & energy ⚡

• 🔥 Sprint +30% growth, burns energy fast.
• ⚖️ Steady The sustainable default.
• 🌴 Coast Growth drops by a third, energy comes back.

Below 60 energy you grow more slowly; below 35 it really bites, and burnout stretches get likely. Changing jobs gives you a small boost. Sprinting for a whole career is a losing strategy — sprint into a promotion window, then coast to recover.

The offer call 📞

Accepting opens a call where you can push on salary (+18% cash), equity (×1.6 on any future exit) or title (a full rung, immediately — the hardest ask). Or sign as offered and take zero risk.

• Your odds come from network, the market cycle and your current standing.
• Fail and they hold firm — and about 7% of the time they pull the offer entirely.
• Equity is the sleeper: it does nothing until an acquisition, then it does everything.

Your network 🤝

Hire and mentor enough people and they start appearing in your profile. Years later they resurface as VPs, CTOs and founders — and then:

• Warm intros — a green InMail from someone who already vouched for you: better seat, better pay.
• Co-founder calls — a founder friend pulls you into a company with double the runway and a bigger starting valuation.
• Every move you make widens the network on its own.

The interview loop 🎲

Offers marked 3-round interview put you through a screening call, a technical or strategy round, and a final round — each a visible dice roll against a different blend of your tracks.

• You see your number, their bar and your exact odds before rolling.
• One strike is survivable. Two and they pass on you — costing energy and the offer for that cycle.
• A warm intro adds 10 points of odds and buys you one free re-roll.
• The final round leans on leadership and network, so a pure craft career can stall at the last hurdle.

Streaks & deadlines 🔥

• On a roll — every milestone that moves reputation by 2+ builds a streak, up to +30% growth and money. Layoffs, burnout and flat milestones reset it to zero.
• Expiring offers — some InMails carry a live countdown. Let the timer run out and the company moves on, right there in front of you.

Dilemmas ⚖️

Layoff lists, stolen credit, a growth hack that lies a little, a security hole nobody knows about, an early acquisition offer. Two or three options, no obviously right answer, and the choice is written into your CV either way.

Most trade one track against another — leadership for network, cash for reputation, energy for output. Some end your job on the spot.

Daily challenge 🎲

The date seeds everything: your discipline, your city, the companies, the luck. Everyone in the world gets the identical start, you get one attempt, and the result is a spoiler-free score you can copy and share. New seed at midnight.

Your seat at the table

• Founding team Most growth, most equity, most risk.
• Core team The healthy default — you matter and you're safe.
• Supporting role You joined above your level; growth is slower until you catch up.
• On a PIP You're the first name on the layoff list. Move.

Your seat is set by the gap between your reputation and the company's strength — and it can change with a reorg.

Companies & ecosystems

• Garage stage — pre-seed, weak, cheap, occasionally lottery tickets.
• Funded startup — Series A/B, where most careers live.
• Scaleup — Series C+, real money, real politics.
• Big Tech — public, the highest bar and the highest pay.

Ecosystems change the ceiling: the Bay Area, New York and London have the strongest companies; Lisbon and São Paulo are gentler. Every company you work at is saved to your collection forever.

Founder mode 🌱

A dashed violet card appears at decision points. Take it and the rules change: your title becomes Founder, your salary drops to about half of market, and you get a runway clock.

• Every milestone burns runway. Under 8 months it turns red.
• Raising a round refills runway and multiplies your valuation.
• Hit zero and the company dies — you're back on the job market.
• Survive to Scaleup or Big Tech and an acquisition pays 10–30% of valuation.

Roughly a third of startups fail. The upside is far bigger than any salary.

Market cycles

• 📈 Bull market More offers, better pay, more exits.
• 〰️ Steady market Business as usual.
• 📉 Funding winter Double the layoffs, thinner inbox, lower pay, fewer exits.

Cycles last two to five milestones. Moving during a winter is harder — sometimes the smart play is to sit still.

Honors, achievements, endings

• Honors — earned inside one career: exits, IPOs, patents, 30 Under 30, Operator of the Year.
• Achievements — twelve cross-career challenges, from Global Nomad to Never Working Again.
• Endings — ten named finishes decided by how your career actually ended: Bought the Island, Unicorn Founder, The Legend, Burned Out, The Lifer, The Quiet Life. Collect them all.
• Collection — every company you've ever worked at, across every run.