The leading newsletter for people who want to build a career that holds up in the age of AI
Every Thursday, I publish a deep dive on the strategies, frameworks, and decisions that actually move careers forward, and every Sunday I send a quick briefing on the business and tech news that will matter at work this week.
Why Most Career Advice Fails You
There are two kinds of career advice on the internet, and neither one is very useful.
The first kind comes from people whose primary career is selling career advice. They built a course or a coaching business, and the content exists to funnel you into it. They have often never managed a team, never sat in a boardroom, never had to make a decision that affected thousands of people or millions of dollars. They are good at marketing, but not at careers.
The second kind comes from people who are so far ahead of you that their advice, while inspiring, is not practical. When Scott Galloway or Mark Cuban tells you to “follow your talent” or “bet on yourself,” that’s great but that doesn’t help you in the next 1:1 with your boss or how position yourself for a promotion.
I write from the middle. I have led teams at Amazon, Microsoft, and Starbucks. I now advise Fortune 500 COOs and Chief Supply Chain Officers on how to build the teams, technology, and operations to compete in an AI-first world. I sit in rooms across the US and Europe every week where executives are making decisions about which roles to automate, which skills to invest in, and what the workforce looks like in five years.
And I translate what I learn in those rooms into career advice you can actually use.
What You Are Up Against
Most career challenges come down to three forces, and they are all hitting at the same time.
The Gap Nobody Filled. Most young people I’ve mentored say their parents, schools, and career centers did not prepare them to make sound career decisions. The standard advice was “work hard, get good grades, and things will work out.” That approach was incomplete twenty years ago and is now risky. For first-generation professionals the risk is even greater because the unwritten corporate rules were never explained.
AI Uncertainty. AI is not replacing jobs in the way headlines suggest, but it is changing what strong performance looks like. The executives I work with are not planning to replace all humans, but they are prioritizing people who can use AI and recognize that there will be labor impacts. Most career advice does not account for this new job-market reality.
The Loyalty Trap. Companies lay off thousands via text while reporting record earnings, so relying on a single employer is not a stable plan. At the same time, the internet pushes side hustles, passive income, and creator work. No matter what you’re building you still need a paycheck and options, and few people explain how to balance building inside a company with building outside of one.
Career Field Guide exists because these three forces deserve better answers than “update your resume” and “network more.”
What You Get
Thursday Deep Dives.
Every week, I take what I am learning from advising COOs and studying how the best companies in the world are building their teams, and I translate it into career moves you can make before your role is disrupted. I focus on practical frameworks, strategies, and honest assessments of what is working and what is not in the modern career landscape.
Recent articles readers have shared the most:
The Best Performer Doesn’t Get Promoted — Inside the invisible system that decides who moves up and who stays stuck
Interviews are Won Before You Walk In — the three questions you need to prepare for before your next interview
Your Resume Is a Lottery Ticket — Three doors into every job, and why everyone is crowding the wrong one
The Full Stack Worker — The three skills you need to develop to be valued in the AI economy.
The Sunday Roundup
Every Sunday, I send a short rundown of the biggest stories in business, technology, and the economy that are going to matter at work this week. Think of it as a cheat sheet for staying sharp and having something worth saying when the conversation turns to what is happening in the world. It takes five minutes to read and saves you an hour of scrolling.
Who Career Field Guide Is For
You are in the first ten years of your career and you are starting to wonder whether the path you are on is the right one, or whether there even is a path anymore.
You are a first-generation professional who never had someone explain the unwritten rules of how corporate life actually works, how decisions really get made, and what the people above you are actually evaluating when they think about your future.
You are smart and ambitious but feeling stuck, and the gap between how hard you are working and how fast you are progressing does not make sense to you.
You want career advice grounded in what is actually happening in business, not motivational platitudes from people who have not sat in your seat.
Career Field Guide is probably not for you if you are a senior executive looking for C-suite coaching, or if you are looking for get-rich-quick side hustle content. I am not going to try to upsell you into a $997 program. I write because I spent fifteen years wishing someone would give me the honest, tactical, experience-backed career advice I am now in a position to give.
About Me
In 2012, I was loading trucks at UPS earning minimum wage and wondering if this was going to be it. I was married, had one kid with a second on the way, and was back in school with no clear plan beyond finishing a degree while keeping the lights on.
By 2017, I had made it to Starbucks corporate and learned that where you work matters more than how hard you work. By 2019, I had jumped to Microsoft during the cloud boom and watched my career compound in ways that had nothing to do with being smarter and everything to do with being in the right industry at the right time. By 2021, I was at Amazon, first building data center supply chains for AWS and then helping launch Project Kuiper, Amazon’s low-earth orbit satellite constellation. By 2023, I was leading supply chain operations at a PE-backed renewable energy developer.
Today, I am a Principal Researcher at Zero100, a research and advisory firm based in London where I work with COOs and Chief Supply Chain Officers at some of the largest companies in the world on AI adoption, planning, and operations strategy. I also speak at universities and conferences, and I mentor supply chain graduate students at the University of Washington.
I built my career without connections, ivy league prestige, or insider knowledge. I was a first-generation college student who finished his bachelor’s degree while working full-time with a growing family, then earned an MS and an MBA while continuing to work and raise kids. Everything I know about building a career I learned by doing it the hard way and paying attention to what actually worked.
The pattern I learned: your industry matters more than your company, your optionality matters more than your performance reviews, and nobody is coming to manage your career for you.
I write Career Field Guide to give you the field guide I never had.
Want More Personalized Help?
I work with a small number of people one-on-one as a career coach on MentorCruise, either in ongoing sessions or for specific moments like interview preparation, resume and LinkedIn reviews, and building your career strategy. You can learn more below.
Rooting for you,
Justin
