Traditional careers are dead.

Aki has led talent teams in the US, SG and all over the world for companies like Netflix, Uber, and Google.

His biggest mistake?

Read until the end of this edition to find out.

Today in 10 minutes or less, you’ll learn:

• 🛣️ How Aki Went from Silicon Valley Talent Director to Building Teams in APAC to Launching TalentStories

• ⚖️ Key Difference Between Successful Careers in APAC vs US

• 💼 What is a Portfolio Career, When Aki Chooses to Double Down in His Career vs Diversify His Bets

• 👨‍👩‍👧 How to Balance Careers as a High-Achieving Couple

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💼 Building a Portfolio Tech Career | Aki Taha

Aki Taha led recruiting in Asia at Netflix, Uber, and Google. Worked for Dropbox and Greylock Partners in the US. He’s passionate about injecting business savvy into talent people, and people-savvy into business leaders.

He’s a long-suffering NY Met fan and Arsenal supporter, born in Nigeria 🇳🇬 , raised in New York 🗽, lived and worked in Palestine 🇵🇸, Guatemala 🇬🇹 and China 🇨🇳, and has called Singapore 🇸🇬 home for the past 10 years.

In 2021, he left Netflix to start TalentStories, a talent content, advisory and learning company.

🛣️ Tell us about your career journey from Silicon Valley Talent Director to building talent teams in Singapore to launching TalentStories.

Early on, I was (literally!) all over the map!

I dabbled in different roles, industries and countries, and within 3 years of graduating college I’d interned and worked in marketing, HR, finance, operations and recruiting roles:

• At a big bank in NY

• At a car company in Beijing

• At a software startup software in Austin, Texas

• At a medical non-profit in Guatemala City

• At a recruiting agency in San Francisco

The experimentation eventually led me to hone in on the People function.

To go deep on recruiting and talent, and on tech as an industry. It led to roles at Google in the US and China, to working at Dropbox and a venture capital firm in Silicon Valley. And to moving to Singapore 10 years ago, where I worked first for Uber and then for Netflix, getting to set up their earliest teams in the region.

Finally, two years ago I started my own company, TalentStories: I now write a weekly newsletter that explores the changing world of work, and how we respond and adapt to it, and I consult and advise organizations that need to build and lead world-class teams.

🇸🇬 You’ve led hiring teams for well-known tech companies like Netflix, Uber, and Google in APAC and the US. What have been the similarities and differences you’ve observed between successful careers in APAC vs the US?

I’ll caveat that I’ve mostly worked for US-based companies in APAC, but the ingredients for career success in the US and Asia share a ton in common.

The people I’ve seen thrive in both regions—regardless of where they’re from, where they’re based, or the type of org they work for—tend to be:

• Deeply driven

• Adept at building networks internally, and externally

• Willing and able to take healthy risks

• Often have a diversity of experience, broadly-defined

One thing I learned to index on in APAC (less relevant in the US):

Experience living, working or studying in places other than the one you were originally from.

Having hired in Asia for Google, Uber and Netflix, that trait consistently led to great hires at each of those companies, despite their different cultures and business models.

That’s not to say we didn’t hire amazing talent who had only lived in one country!

But time and again, people who had experienced different places, cultures and contexts, who had been forced into the discomfort of a new place and forced to adapt, did well at the companies I worked at.

💼 You’ve built a portfolio career. Explain what is a portfolio career, pros and cons, and why you decided to pursue this path?

A portfolio career embraces the reality of modern careers as open-ended, complex, and unpredictable pursuits.

It recognizes that we will be making many, many bets over the course of our careers, so it prizes awareness and intent as key levers for making increasingly smart, compounding bets that are more likely to lead to outsized career success.

The moment you begin to appreciate that our careers are creative, open-ended “hit making” businesses, all the investment concepts kick right in:

• How do I build a “thesis” -- i.e. a belief or an awareness of what I will be good at, and enjoy doing?

• What career capital can I acquire that compounds to outsized effect? (Network, reputation, technical and/or soft skills, etc.)

• How and when do I bet “big”, or double down via a job or career move?

• When do I need to toss in the cards (i.e. move on) from a career move or investment?

• How do I manage risk over time, or at any given moment of time in my career?

💪 How would you answer the question: when do I bet “big”, or double down via a job or career move?