Judging the career choices of others isn’t in the service of humanity either

When I was in kindergarten, I could answer the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” much more easily than I can now as a college junior. At six years old, I would blurt out “Archaeologist!” before my teacher could finish the question, but as a 20-year-old, there are a few long pauses before I say something along the lines of “I’m still figuring that out.” Yet this indecision should not be seen as shameful — nor should any other career choice. Judging others for how they choose to pursue what they’ve learned at Princeton post-graduation is an intolerable endeavor and is antithetical to our values as a campus.

I have spent dozens of hours wondering about what career I should pursue, attempting to extrapolate a cohesive vision for my life beyond Princeton — a life beyond my current world of problem sets and precepts. Though I’ve tried to theorize endlessly about what career I want, I've found real-world experience to be the most elucidating, and by far the most helpful one I’ve had was working in consulting at McKinsey. I spent two summers at McKinsey through an internship program aimed at expanding the diversity of the recruiting process through targeted hiring. Over the course of these months, I dove head-first into, what was for me, uncharted territory: corporate America. Attracted by the case interview, which focused on the application of rigorous problem-solving skills to abstract situations, I was excited to see what McKinsey had to offer. And thankfully, I learned a lot. Beyond becoming well-versed in the importance of credit card points, I developed an understanding of what matters to me in a career. I realized that I wanted to contribute to the world beyond helping businesses’ bottom line. As such, after two summers, I felt confident crossing business analyst off my list of possible careers.

Despite having similar experiences, many of my fellow interns decided to stay at McKinsey, accepting return offers for jobs post-graduation. Where I saw many downsides to a career in the consulting field, they saw many positive opportunities. This difference could have been due to differences in anything from upbringings to career goals. What became evident to me is that people assign different weights to values and realities when deciding on a career. Initially, it may have been easy to cast judgment on those who wanted to work at McKinsey; I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I thought that choosing a career based on the high salary was somehow inferior to choosing a career based on passion. But I quickly realized that there was a problem with this perspective, beyond the fact that it’s a privilege to consider money as a secondary factor in determining my career choice. I was imposing my own values on them. Specifically, because I value impacting the world further than helping businesses and challenging myself in academic ways in my career, I assumed that my considerations were the “right” considerations and that anyone who differed from me was “wrong.” It was easier for me to judge people than it was to understand their career decision-making process.

A similar attitude surrounding career choice is pervasive at Princeton, especially for those who are considered to be studying majors that are more aligned with service and are thus expected to follow through on related careers, such as the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA). SPIA graduates who pursue consulting are viewed as making “worrying” career decisions. For some, this means that for the Class of 2023, around 8 percent of graduates had a “worrying” career decision.

The judgment and criticism cast onto SPIA and non-SPIA concentrators alike who decide to pursue a career in consulting seem to stem from the opinion that such a career path is antithetical to our unofficial motto of being “in the nation’s service and the service of humanity.” Some may look at McKinsey’s track record with Purdue Pharma or the Saudi regime and decide that it is impossible to simultaneously work for McKinsey and be in the service of humanity. These are valid considerations, but just as it is important to explore the implications of working at an institution that has made terrible choices, it is equally important to ask ourselves what our judgment of others means in terms of respecting our motto.

When we look down on our classmates for choosing a career in consulting, we impose our own values about what makes a career choice “good” onto them. We tell them that their reasons for choosing a career are morally bad, and that ours are morally good. We disrespect the liberty each individual has to decide for themselves what they value in a career. We also reduce them to their career choice; by categorizing some into the “sell-out” box, we ignore the complexities and intricacies of each individual. Respecting the individual and their liberty is part of being in the service of humanity, too. Indeed, our motto does not only apply to helping those who are materially disadvantaged, but is about broadly being in the service of humanity, which involves less tangible values like upholding the liberty of individuals to have preferences and make corresponding decisions free from the imposition of their peers’ values.

Some will inevitably think that working at a company with a history of making poor choices overrides our interest in preserving individual liberty. But it is almost impossible to find an institution that is free of mistakes. Should we consider working for the U.S. government antithetical to being in the service of humanity because of its deadly drone strikes? Should we look down on SPIA concentrators who choose to work at the United Nations because of its history with sexual exploitation? Or what about when they choose to work at the Brookings Institution, which may have illegally lobbied for a foreign government?

Being in the service of humanity does not only mean that we must make wise career choices, but it also informs the way in which we as a community consider and treat the individuals who make different career choices. When we choose some values as being the only valid ones, we erode an individual’s liberty to make such decisions for themselves. Discourse and discovery, from late-night conversations about the meaning of life over Murray Dodge cookies to having public service-focused career fairs, rather than shame, are avenues through which career choices can be discussed in a way that more closely aligns with Princeton’s informal motto.