I’m at a point in my career where younger professionals are starting to seek out my advice. Whether it’s preparing for a difficult conversation or helping them weigh new opportunities, it’s incredibly humbling to have the privilege of supporting others, especially when the situations before them can have such a profound impact on their lives.
One of the most frequently asked questions I receive is how to successfully navigate a career. The specific question might look different:
How do I evaluate if a new opportunity is right for me?
What should my first job entail?
Should I prioritize money or learning?
But at their core, they’re all reaching for the same answer: a mental model to help guide the decision-making process.
Reflecting on my own career, I’ve developed a framework I cheekily refer to as the Four P’s (a fun play on the 4Ps of marketing because, you know, I’m a marketer). It surfaces what I believe are the most critical aspects to evaluate in any opportunity.
P #1: People
There’s a reason parents tell their kids to choose their friends wisely. Your behaviours, habits, attitudes, and mindset are directly influenced by who you spend your time with. As adults, since we spend most of our waking hours at work, we’re most susceptible to the social contagion of the teams and leaders around us. And it’s exactly why evaluating the calibre of people you’ll be around is a crucial factor in any career decision. Surround yourself with the smartest, most ambitious, and humble people, and you will naturally gravitate to their standards. Conversely, if you’re around B-team players, you will fall to their level; don’t make the mistake of assuming that they will rise to yours.
Early in my career, I joined a martech firm called Vidyard because I was motivated to learn from the people at the company. It wasn’t the right role or a problem space I was deeply passionate about, but the leaders were exceptional. Empathetic but also technically strong. The team was ambitious, supportive, and fun. It created the perfect environment to help shape my thinking on business at a time when I was at my most malleable. To this day, I continue to draw on the lessons I learned from my leaders and peers at Vidyard. Unsolicited advice: put a premium on opportunities where you can surround yourself with great people.
P #2:Position
When we think about what we want to do when we grow up, we’re often thinking about the position we want to hold. Hardware Engineer, Occupational Therapist, Product Manager (or the much more fun Product Marketer), the list goes on. The goal is to find a position where the responsibilities align with your strengths, creating a win-win situation for you and the organization. Careers are rarely linear, and it’s uncommon to land your dream position on day one. That’s okay. Position isn’t just about the title; it’s about the trajectory. The seat you choose shapes the skills you build and, importantly, the opportunities that open up next. A role might look great on paper, but if it doesn’t move you closer to where you ultimately want to go, it may not be the right position for you. This is where people often get stuck: evaluating a job based on the company’s brand, the team, or the problem being solved, without asking whether the position actually creates forward momentum.
Let’s revisit my personal example at Vidyard, where I held an entry-level sales position. It wasn’t my dream role, but it helped me achieve my ultimate goal of working in Product. Talking to customers every day gave me a deep understanding of their challenges, a clear sense of the product’s capabilities and limitations, and a pulse on where the market was headed. So while sales wasn’t the right position for me long-term, it was exactly the training ground I needed to catapult into Product Marketing. I credit my time in sales for helping me land my first PMM gig at Miovision.
P #3:Problem
My old business school professor used to ask a simple yet revealing question: What problem are you solving? Every role is built around a business, technical or customer problem, and the degree to which it resonates with you can influence how motivated you feel day-to-day. This is why the problem you’re solving is often the emotional centre of a career. It’s the part that shines a light on an individual’s passion. When the problem aligns with what you genuinely care about—whether that’s security, climate change, healthcare, robotics, etc.—the work stops feeling like work. Younger generations, in particular, seem to place a greater importance on this, often vying for roles at organizations with just causes or meaningful missions. Their sense of “doing good” is admirable and worth preserving.
After Miovision, I took a short detour in my career at Unbounce, a company that helps marketers generate more leads through intelligent landing pages. The team was fantastic, I was earning more, and the role itself was the right position, but I struggled to find motivation. While I was well equipped to solve the technical problem at hand (launching a zero-to-one product), the market problem Unbounce was solving didn’t resonate with me. Six months into my tenure, I resigned to pursue an opportunity in cybersecurity where I found more meaning. In cyber, you wake up every day knowing the work you do—whether it’s coding or selling—protects real people and real businesses from real threats. That sense of purpose gave me a level of motivation and focus I hadn’t felt before. I haven’t looked back since.
P #4:Pay
Money matters; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It might feel taboo or uncomfortable, but when you choose to work for an organization, you are entering a business agreement with them. Your time and knowledge are provided in exchange for compensation—straight up Benjamins. It’s money that helps you pay down student loans, buy groceries, and save for your future. If you don’t value your time, no one will. It’s often difficult to demand a premium early on in your career. But, as you grow in your discipline, carve out a specialization, and amass experience, so too will your earning potential. What is equally true is that money has diminishing returns. Once your financial needs and responsibilities are met, pay becomes one factor among many, not the primary driver of fulfillment. At that point, the other Ps start to matter more: the people you work with, the problems you get to solve, and the position you are growing into. Do not be greedy, but do not let people take advantage of you.
The colloquial advice to learn in your twenties and earn in your thirties holds true for me. I’ve never been overly motivated by money. It matters, but I’ve always prioritized opportunities with massive learning potential because I believe they will better position me for future financial success. When I finished University, I had $120,000 (Canadian) of student debt hanging over me. My first job paid $55,000 (again, Canadian), barely enough to cover rent and living expenses in the bougie Kitchener neighbourhood of Victoria Park. If you’ve never heard of it, that should tell you everything about how bougie it really was. It wasn’t until I transitioned into cybersecurity at a publicly traded company that my financial wellness really began to improve—Registered Stock Units (RSUs) really are golden handcuffs in the best possible way. And then again, as I developed a specialization working at the intersection of security and developer products. Invest in your learning, and eventually, your learning will invest back in you.
Secret P #5: Priorities
Until now, we’ve focused on factors that could be classified as professional. However, your life isn’t a function of isolated systems, independent of one another. Both your professional and personal lives intertwine to shape your identity. Therefore, evaluating an opportunity solely on professional factors would be naive. Considering the impact a role has on your personal life isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s a sign of maturity. A job may pay you an exorbitant salary, but if it demands fourteen-hour days, seven days a week, how does it align with your priorities? If you’re a caregiver, in a relationship, or simply value time for things like working out, cooking, and reading, your personal commitments may outweigh the professional opportunity. Or they may not. The point is to understand the tradeoff.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned my professional ambition cannot be fulfilled unless my personal priorities are met. When something truly significant happens in your personal life, the rest of your world rearranges itself around it. Work, ambition, and goals all shrink in importance compared to what matters most.
I learned this firsthand when my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer over a year ago. In an instant, my professional ambition could not stretch far enough to compensate for what my personal life needed from me. It became clear that no role—regardless of pay, title, or prestige—could be considered in isolation from my new role as a caregiver.
My wife was and remains my number one priority. Everything else in my life is arranged with that single truth in mind.
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For most of my career, I never optimized all Ps at the same time. Every move required tradeoffs, and that’s normal early on. But as you grow in your career, so too should your optionality. Today, I’m fortunate to work in an organization where all my Ps are met; this is actually the second time in my career that I’ve experienced this. The goal isn’t to start at that point, but to keep making choices that gradually move you toward it.
Know your priorities and optimize your career accordingly. If your only priority is to achieve financial freedom, pursue opportunities that pay you the most amount of money, irrespective of the role, people, or problem. If you’re passionate about solving a specific challenge, launch a startup and forget about earning (at least initially).
It’s worth noting that several frameworks exist to help people make career decisions. My 4Ps model is just another addition to the mix that may or may not be useful to you. Ultimately, the “best” framework is the one that resonates with you.
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