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Journalism of Courage
Rajan Singh, a former IPS officer and IIT Kanpur alumnus, recently went viral on LinkedIn after sharing his incredibly diverse career journey. In a post, he shared how he’s already explored eight professions. “Till now, I have experienced almost eight different career tracks—each very different from the other,” he wrote.
Singh’s journey began in electrical engineering, where he spent four years as a student before joining the Indian Police Service, serving as an officer for eight years. He then transitioned into strategy consulting with McKinsey, followed by a role as an investor at a private equity fund. Along the way, he briefly taught finance to investment bankers with a friend. His path later led him into entrepreneurship—first in edtech, where he built learning products, then as a physics teacher and entrepreneur, and eventually into designing psychology and neuroscience-based training programmes focused on productivity, focus, and digital de-addiction.
Despite the varied nature of his journey, Singh acknowledges the value of both depth and variety in one’s career. “Doing just one thing allows you to go deeper into your craft and benefit from ‘compounding,’” he said, recognising the rewards of long-term mastery. But he also believes that embracing change and learning new skills brings a different kind of fulfillment.
“The age of learning one thing in college and milking it for the next 35 years is long over. We all have to keep moving, keep learning, most likely – keep reinventing,” he said.
In the post, he also wrote, “If I get to live and work long enough, I hope to experience another 8-10 career paths,” he wrote, signing off with a reminder that feels more like a life mantra: “Every day is a new day – the game of life starts again.”
Singh’s post sparked a lively discussion on social media around the idea of non-linear career paths. A user wrote, “Like the term “horizontal compounding” would love to hear more about how it’s worked for you and what are your key learnings.”
Another user commented, “Very True. I myself started my career as a marine engineer, and continued there for six years. This was followed by a career break for higher education. For the last eighteen plus I have been engaged as a procurement professional and have served in three different industries where I learnt about the industry specific knowledge. And now I am looking for a general management role. I hope this tendency of learning newer things will help me a lot.”
A third individual wrote, “Going by the yard stick you talk about in this post, I have experienced around 7 career tracks till now – I feel I have harnessed enough ‘horizontal compounding’. As I age, it feels scary in some ways. Now that I am well past my mid-30s, I really want to explore ‘vertical compounding’. Just sharing my own personal experience. Seems like I am too bruised by ‘horizontal compounding’ now. It is very difficult to start from scratch every time and face the enormous uncertainty. Probably now, I just want to experience ‘vertical compounding’ because it looks safer for the time being !!”
