Developer Tea
Developer Tea
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Developer Tea exists to help driven developers connect to their ultimate purpose and excel at their work so that they can positively impact the people they influence. With over 13 million downloads to date, Developer Tea is a short podcast hosted by Jonathan Cutrell (@jcutrell), co-founder of Spec and Director of Engineering at PBS. We hope you'll take the topics from this podcast and continue the conversation, either online or in person with your peers. Twitter: @developertea :: Email: developertea@gmail.com

Career Growth Roadmap - De-risking Your Career By Understanding Your Vulnerabilities

January 20, 2026 00:15:19 2.55 MB ( 12.15 MB less) Downloads: 0

In this episode, we explore how to de-risk your career roadmap by identifying the hidden vulnerabilities that hold your decision-making hostage.

🎧 Episode Notes: De-risking Your Career By Understanding Your Vulnerabilities

True career growth requires gaining autonomy over your choices. This episode provides a framework for performing a "pre-mortem" of career failure by identifying the sources of power that currently influence your life and limiting their leverage over your future.

  • Identify Your Sources of Power: Perform an exercise to list the people, situations, and physical things (like money or debt) that drive your current decision-making and could shift your behavior if they changed.
  • Conduct a Career "Pre-mortem": Use this diagnostic approach to recognize what has the power to change your decisions, helping you prepare for potential failures before they occur.
  • Understand the "Hostage" Dynamic: Realize that while some leverage is aligned with your values, other factors—like large amounts of debt—can hold your career hostage, forcing you to make decisions you otherwise wouldn't.
  • Balance Vulnerability and Autonomy: Distinguish between healthy vulnerability (such as in relationships with family) and unhealthy vulnerability (such as with creditors), and work to de-risk the latter to reclaim your agency.
  • The Link Between Debt and Career Risk: Learn how eliminating financial vulnerabilities, like credit card debt, increases your autonomy, potentially allowing you to take "principled" career risks you previously couldn't afford.
  • Re-evaluate Your Non-Negotiables: Use introspection to determine which parts of your job are truly essential and which "imagined" risks are preventing you from seeking better alignment with your personal purpose.
  • Shift Your Control Systems: Understand that growth often requires giving up control in one area (like spending habits) to gain control and autonomy in your professional path.

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