When the Career Ladder Breaks: Navigating Uncertain Career Moves in Tech

Session description
Many people in tech are trying to make career decisions in a landscape that feels very different from what they once experienced, or from what they were told they could expect. For some, that shift has come through layoffs, AI disruption, changing roles, and a market that no longer feels as stable or predictable as it once did. For others, especially newer entrants, the challenge is stepping into an industry where the path they expected to find feels much harder to see and much harder to trust.
This interactive session offers a different way to approach the uncertainty of evolving workplaces. It explores why some career situations could benefit from applying Agile principles to rethink inherited beliefs about career progression, rather than relying on traditional career advice that viewed careers as predictable, linear paths.
Designed for tech workers, including Agilists, product managers, scrum masters, analysts, engineers, and others navigating uncertainty in or around tech, this session combines reflection, practical activities, and lived experience to offer a more grounded and realistic way forward.

Learning objectives and takeaways
By the end of the session, participants will be able to:

• identify one belief about career progression that feels less reliable in today’s landscape
• differentiate between phase-based approaches to professional development characterized by rigid, long-term planning, and iterative agile career strategies
• apply a more adaptive, Agile-informed way of approaching one uncertain career move