Dimensional Fund Advisors
So, I started my job today at Dimensional Fund Advisors. The first day was both overwhelming and exciting, and I had a nice coffee break tonight thinking about what I intend to accomplish while i’m there.
My last position at Sequoia Broadband gave me the space to fully develop my work ethic and work a great deal on practical solution building. Not ’solution’ in the BigTime Consulting way of speech; instead, ’solution’ meaning engineering working systems that actually do what the client needs them to do. I explored and got heavily involved in the core technology at Sequoia, and lent contributions to the software and process based upon direct experience using and operating it. It was a valuable, mutually beneficial experience.
At Dimensional, I intend to take the development of my personal services a step beyond solid work ethic and the ‘practical solutions’ attitude, and truly develop a stateable career philosophy of personal service. As a standalone phrase, it sounds like a freshly pinched loaf, but let me elaborate.
A strong work ethic does not necessarily indicate a strong sense of direction. As a Horse in the Chinese zodiac, i’m supposedly inclined towards hard work, inner strength, and dedication. That’s part of my nature anyway. What’s not so easy is for me to make business, career, and even life decisions based upon a defined core philosophy. By identifying and stating the axioms of my own personal philosophy in words, I aim to begin the process of tackling this problem and thereby increase the value of my personal services.
Rhetoric aside, it’s an aggressive move for me. I believe that the value of being able to honestly state my own philosophy and then build my career around its principles is tremendous. The opportunity to accelerate that process is what drew me strongly to Dimensional. The rhetoric leads me to believe that its founders began the company from a philosophical premise, and built the company and its products around that philosophy. This is the effect I desire to learn and replicate for myself.
I find that it’s better to proactively set the expectations on oneself and then rise to meet them, than to wait for someone else to “set the bar” for oneself based on some myth of an industry average. Being of an entrepreneurial mindset, it’s the closest mental model that I can build to the thrill and potential of starting my own company.
Although I most certainly won’t discuss my new job directly, I hope to use this blog as a professional journal of the abovementioned process. It goes without saying that all opinions on this website are my own only, and do not reflect in any way the opinions of any of my employers, current or past (Note to self, it might be time for a disclaimer footer). It would be interesting to see how it could be a tool to accumulate and refine my philosophy. I’ve tried journals before, but you don’t get a search engine on a steno pad.