Daily Endeavor Blog

Over at her blog, Princess Polymath, software engineer extraordinaire Kirsten Jones thinks aloud about her work life and the one her daughter will discover. Kirsten has built some amazing software magic (I had the pleasure I working alongside her at Socialtext), and now helps engineers extend the Linkedin platform. Early on she learned, by happenstance, that she likes to make information more clear and unnecessary manual tasks go away. But will her daughter like the same?

I’ve been having a lot of discussions with my daughter about what she wants to do for her “job” when she “grows up”. She’s 14 now, at that age where she needs to start putting some focus and attention on how she’ll feed herself once she’s no longer a kid. She’s an amazing person, who loves to do many things at a time (marching band, professional Shakespeare, venture scouts, role playing games, art…) and I know there are lots of jobs she’d just love – and many that she would really detest. I, of course, think she would love my job because it is perfect for me in every way and she shares my genetic code, but really… no.

As an awesome parent, Kirsten already shows she doesn’t get trapped where many do — believing there’s just one thing a person might love doing. There are so many each of us will fall for. Fortunately for her daughter, she’s also not holding out for the offspring to be replicas. Go Mom.

She currently thinks she really wants to be an animator at Pixar. The girl is an amazing artist, don’t get me wrong, but she gets frustrated by the indirectness of computer art – and I’m not sure she’d really enjoy the demanding precision of such an endeavor.

Everyone starts with an inkling. Some spark. Usually many sparks. Then they’re faced with the challenge of learning more about each, and deciding which ones to pursue more (this is where Daily Endeavor is working to help).

But really, I don’t care what she does. I just don’t want her to do a job she hates. I’ve done that, even things I was particular fantastic at (typing title policies at an insurance company) and the entirety of your life is really dragged down when you do a job you dislike.

Amen, sister.

So, how to help my daughter? I’m glad she doesn’t have the mindset I had in high school where you were supposed to breathlessly rush through all 16 years of el-hi-university and then off you go to work without stopping to consider where you were going. I’d love her to take a year or a few after high school to wander around and just be young. She’s studying Japanese, and while I know that at just-about-6-feet she’ll stick out there, I would love her to spend a year in Japan learning about their culture. I envy her this freedom, but can’t wait to see what she does with it.

From where I’m sitting, this is one fortunate daughter. Here’s a Mom who understands there’s no more direct path to discovering what her daughter wants from her work life than iterating. In getting started, her daughter could use inputs on the kinds of jobs that exist and social proof around what to believe, so that’s one of the places we hope to help out.

Since December you’ve been able to sign up on Daily Endeavor using your Linkedin account, but I’m excited to share a new feature that takes the integration even deeper — Related People I Know.

Now when you connect with Linkedin on Daily Endeavor you can see who in your network is into what you’re into. When you pull up a Daily Endeavor job profile, first and second degree contacts in your network instantly appear.

When would this be useful? To start, it’s a whole new way to browse your professional network. Now you can leaf through jobs you may be interested in, and the related people you know automatically display inside the job guide.

If you’re doing informational interviews, it just got a whole lot easier. Let’s say you have a dream job in mind — or any type of job you happen to want to learn about — but the hard part is compiling the list of who you could meet. All you need to do is lookup a Daily Endeavor job profile, and instantly find contacts, and friends of friends, who can tell you more about the job you’re eyeing.

This is just the first of many applications in pairing up the social graph with the job graph. We’re really excited to be continue creating more. If there’s ones you want to see, let us know!

By the way, to make this mashup goodness happen our team worked closely with the team at Linkedin, using both their Profile Widget and the hot-out-of-the-oven JSAPI. The developer relations and api teams are great. Thank you gals and guys!