I am no daredevil, but I have taken risks in my career. The types of risks I am referring to here are the job / role moves I have made to explore opportunities and/or interests. Over my career I have made some moves that have paid off and others that have not. I have learned from both, but that is a different post. In retrospect the timing of some of those moves was important. Sometimes that timing was related to business / market timing. For instance, I have started two companies; the second one was, in large part, the victim of the the early 2000's tech bubble pop. More recently in AWS, the product I transferred onto was absorbed into another product with a different charter. It was a risk when I transferred - I knew that the product had challenges. In each case, the timing was factor.
Timing is not something we can always do something about. But it's worth considering, especially if you have a low risk tolerance. Flipping it around, if you have a low career risk tolerance you're probably considering the timing. A lot. Me? I would say that I have a relatively low risk tolerance, but looking back at my career - I have made a lot of leaps.
No matter how much consideration I have given to the viability of a career change, there are simply things outside of my control. If I could have predicted the first tech bubble crash, I could have made a ton of money and I probably would not be writing this. Sure I was crushed at the time when something didn't go my way. That promotion I didn't get after the reorg because the people evaluating me didn't "know me". The timing was wrong and entirely out of my control. Reorgs happen.
In the end, my career is more about the experience than the career. I have always had this notion that the money is less important that what I am doing and who I am doing it with. So the timing is something that I see in retrospect, but not the top of my considerations.
