The Career Game Loop

4Gravitational Pull and Expecting the Unexpected

4.1 The Future

I wasn't supposed to work for Unity. I was supposed to work for the State Department.

I was born to a family of Midwesterners who, for generations, never moved more than a hundred miles from the place they were born. That streak went unbroken until the Vietnam War, when Uncle Sam drafted my dad into the military and shipped him out to Turkey. My mom and I went with him. And after a few years abroad, I knew: I was going to be the family globetrotter. I loved getting to see more of the world, and I wanted to see as much of it as I could.

When I enrolled in college, my plan was clear. Major in economics and international relations. Graduate. Join the Peace Corps. Then the State Department.

To get into the Peace Corps, I figured that I'd first need to establish my international bona fides. So when the summer of my junior year approached, I set my sites on flashy foreign policy internships. But I didn't have the grades to snag one. Instead, I landed at the FCC, the federal agency that regulates communications. And there was nothing foreign about it. A colossal bummer.

It was 1994, and the FCC hadn't quite figured out what to do about the internet. Was it just a fad? Was it here to stay? Would it need to be regulated? At the time, people were more concerned about phones and radio, TV and cable. Just give the internet to the intern, they figured. So there I sat all summer, in a little windowless room, reading about the ...