Getting good at what I am good at

I blogged earlier about a decision I had to make yesterday on whether I would accept the mobile MBA internship (that’s the actual name of the position) that I interviewed for in Atlanta. Yesterday morning, I came across an article about the CEO of AOL speaking at a media industry event where he predicted the internet eclipsing the television as the primary method by which consumers receive their information and entertainment. He talked about a “massive change” taking place led with products such as video on demand and more and more content being deployed to portable devices.

Reading the article reminded me of what excited me about my job at AOL. Three years of working as a software engineer began to get boring, which led me to consider other options such as business school, but what continued to excite me was knowing that my projects played a role (albeit an extremely small one) in this unfolding media revolution. After reading the article, I asked the person I know to make the phone call to the connection he has with the company to help me get the offer.

Earlier today I talked to a professor in his office. The conversation turned to other schools and he talked about all the professors who have left over the past twenty years to teach at Darden. He said Darden is renown for excellent teaching but has never been known as a research school. At one point it spent a lot of resources into turning it into a research school but abandoned the efforts when it realized it made more sense “to get good at what you’re good at.” A similar logic may apply to my situation. Instead of trying so hard to get into a field I have no experience in, I might be better off concentrating on improving on what I am good at, even if it means getting into a field where jobs opportunities are limited.

Note: I can't take credit for the above picture. I did a Google search to find a picture of the AOL MISSION plague thatdisplays on the lobby of AOL's headquarters. I found it on a web page written by a former AOL intern. Ironically this former intern worked on my team at one point.