| Tuesday, 23 September 2025 |
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Good morning [%first_name |Dear Reader%],
You’ve heard us say this on 90,000 Hours before: the traditional 40-year career path is fading. In its place are shorter stints, and career journeys that require plenty of self-improvement and reinvention.
The Ken ran a career longevity survey last year, and more than 80% of respondents between the ages of 40 and 60 said their job prospects had started to shrink drastically after working for two decades. Then, in April this year, we made career disruption the focus of our first live event, where our guests spoke about the demise of the conventional career and how to plan ahead in times of uncertainty.
Few people embody that shift as clearly as Kirthiga Reddy. When I met her this June, she joked that her career looked “more like a jungle gym than a ladder”.
“I feel like I’ve lived through at least six careers in one lifetime,” she told me.
| Kirthiga (R) with Rahel (L) during the recording session |
I had originally reached out to her to try and find out how the nature of careers was changing, and how successful people had found their own way through those shifts.
One look at Kirthiga’s Linkedin profile told me that she had reinvented herself over and over again. She seems almost wired for disruption, with a sixth sense for spotting what’s next, or a knack for being in the right place at the right time. She was Facebook’s first hire in India, where she led the company as its first managing director for India and South Asia. Later, she became the first woman investing partner at Softbank. And now, she’s in the founder’s seat as CEO of Verix, a blockchain-powered credentialing platform.
In the latest episode of 90,000 Hours, Kirthiga joins me for the show’s first full-length interview. It’s an hour-long conversation on risk, reinvention, and culture through the lens of her career.
Here are three key takeaways.
On hiring
Kirthiga’s first order of business after she became Facebook’s managing director was to hire a team. But this was in 2010. Back then, the challenge wasn’t just finding talent. It was also convincing them that Facebook was a “real company”.
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