The other day, I was chatting with a guy who works at a restaurant down the street in the South End of Boston. He was telling me it was his last couple of months at the restaurant as he had just graduated from college. He said he wanted to get his money's worth for all the money he spent on college, so he was going to get a higher-paying job in residential property management. He seemed like a sharp guy, so I had this impulse to tell him to get into tech. But I hesitated and decided not to.

I sometimes forget that tech requires a certain personality. A high tolerance for risk. And I didn't really know the guy, so it didn't feel right to try to direct him one way or the other.

With the relatively high salaries in tech, flashy products, and nice perks, it's easy to forget how volatile and risky the space actually is. It's definitely not for everybody. And if you're not the type of person who can handle booms and busts, stay away. There are plenty of other less lucrative but far more stable jobs to get into.

It's worth remembering why this is. Tech companies, by definition, are investing in high growth that comes from new ideas. Investing in new ideas is risky. They often don't work. The greater the risk, the greater the potential reward. In boom markets, working in tech is great. In busts, it's not. I’ve been through 4 of these downturns in my career — the 2000 dot-com bust, the 2008 Great Financial Crisis, Covid in 2020, and the end of the low interest rate period in 2022. None of these were fun, and all of them came with a great deal of professional stress and anxiety.

Because of things outside of your control, such as interest rate changes, investor sentiment changes, geopolitical events, new technologies, government policies, etc., tech markets are inherently cyclical. And the risk takers that are putting capital into new ideas always feel downturns first, because that's the capital that investors will pull out and put into safer, less risky investments.

Before embarking on a new career in tech, make sure you understand this reality and are up for the dramatic ebbs and flows in your day-to-day life that are a natural, unavoidable part of working in this field.