So Jeff, when are you leaving Google?

Last month, I bragged about meeting Ali Abdaal and his team in Dublin.

What left an equally deep impression on me was my 1:1 chat with Johanna Schmidt (Jo), a Director at Google covering the EMEA market.

“When are you leaving Google?”

That was one of the first questions Jo asked as I sat down in her office.

“Well, I’m not sure. I like my manager, my work, and I also like making Youtube videos. A few years maybe?” I stuttered.

Jo smiled, “Apologies, but as you probably know we Germans are pretty direct. Why don’t we talk about your career plans for a bit.”

And over the next 25 minutes, Jo asked me some tough questions and shared even tougher decisions she’s had to make over the course of her career.

Two (surprising) questions

I won’t bore you all with the nitty gritty details but two questions Jo asked that stood out were:

1. What problem do you want to solve?
2. Where do you want to live?

What problem do I want to solve

I literally had to think about this for ~30 seconds (it felt like I was in an interview), and in the end I answered “how to consistently be the best-in-class in execution."

Not the sexiest answer, I know 😅.

And I felt all the more stupid when Jo shared her answer (I don’t remember it word-for-word but it was something along the lines of empowering customers to grow sustainably).

This part of the conversation made me realize that (1) I was still thinking too small, and (2) I needed to identify the purpose of my work - both at Google and with Youtube.

Jo asked me to have an answer by our next 1:1 PDP chat (PDP = Personal Development Plan), scheduled for the end of November.

Where do I want to live

It was slightly easier to answer this question, because I really resonated with this quote from Derek Sivers (author of bestsellers like Anything You Want, Hell Yeah or No, How to Live):

In my case, those options would be:

• Hong Kong (where I was born and raised)
• Mainland China (where I’ve spent the majority of my adult life)
• North America (where I studied + worked my first job)

(by the way I’m seriously considering immigrating to Canada in the next 5 years so if you’ve immigrated to Canada, hit me up 😂)

According to Jo, this second consideration is extremely underrated because most ambitious people don’t consider how much they’re impacted by their physical location.

Put another way, even if you landed a “dream role” (which doesn’t exist by the way), if you can’t stand the city you relocate to, your lifestyle and career wouldn’t be sustainable.

Next steps

This post is already too long so I’ll just wrap up by saying clearly I didn’t have all the answers during our chat, but I have another conversation scheduled with Jo so I’ll report back with more learnings soon!

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