The Career Bingo Card
Deliberately take adjacent-but-different roles to fill in squares and become 'scribble-shaped'
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 86%
Clowes treats his career as a bingo card: deliberately choosing roles that fill in squares he hasn't filled — a new sales model, market, product layer, or company type. Each new, adjacent-but-different experience becomes a reusable superpower, letting him pattern-match any future problem 'from some other angle.' The reward for completing the card is getting to work at the intersection of what you're good at and what's valuable.
Origin
Clowes' own framing across Atlassian, Metromile, Salesforce/Mulesoft, and Confluent; he rejects the 't-shaped' analogy in favor of 'scribble-shaped.'
Core principles
- 01Deliberately fill in squares you haven't filled — new models, markets, layers, company types
- 02Each new domain becomes a reusable superpower for pattern-matching future problems
- 03Choose adjacencies, not free-falls — stretch you, but keep something in common with what you know
- 04Aim to be 'scribble-shaped' (deep in many things), not merely 't-shaped'
- 05Worst case you learn something you never use; best case it's the exact tool you need later
How to run it
- 1
Inventory your empty squares
Identify the sales models, markets, product types, stack layers, and company kinds you haven't yet experienced. Those gaps are your bingo squares.
Pro tip Frame each move as 'if I learn about that thing I will become more versatile.'
Watch out Staying in one domain or one operating-model type feels safe but caps your versatility.
- 2
Choose adjacent-but-different roles
Pick your next role to be outside your current lines but still an adjacency — sharing something in common while stretching and changing you.
Pro tip Clowes went from no-sales-team PLG at Atlassian, to a consumer insurance product at Metromile, to Salesforce's elite distribution machine, to developer infrastructure at Confluent.
Watch out 'Don't jump out of a plane if you've never parachuted before' — total discontinuity, not adjacency, is reckless.
- 3
Go three clicks deep outside your job
Deliberately learn adjacent functions (e.g., go a few clicks into the company's financials) even when it isn't your job, to become someone who can contribute across the whole business.
Pro tip The ROI is speculative but can be off-the-chart when a past detour turns out to be exactly the tool a future problem needs.
Watch out Worst case is you learn something you never use — a small, bounded downside against a large upside.
In the wild
At Atlassian, a lifelong corporate lawyer (general counsel Tom Kennedy) sat silent through a 15-minute product-strategy debate, then laid out the strategy the team had committed to a year earlier and showed the current direction was incongruent with it. 'The room went silent... everyone nodded' and changed course. Clowes took it as a model: be the professional who understands the whole business well enough to be 'dangerous in all sorts of situations.'
→ Clowes reframed his ambition around cross-domain breadth, which he calls being an 'unstoppable force in business.'
Common mistakes
Staying inside a single domain for comfort
Preferring the same domain, company type, or operating model feels safe but is the opposite of what drives growth — the versatility that lets you pattern-match new problems comes from deliberately different roles.
Mistaking discontinuity for adjacency
Jumping to something totally outside the lines with nothing in common ('out of a plane if you've never parachuted') is reckless; the moves must stretch you while sharing enough to build on.
Is it for you?
Best for
Ambitious operators, especially earlier-career PMs, deciding whether to specialize or diversify their next role
Not ideal for
Someone who has found the high-leverage intersection of what they're good at and what's valuable and should now go deep there
From the transcript
“my career's been a little bit like a bingo card like I've always been looking for to fill in boxes I didn't have filled”
“it's more like people are scribbl shaped”
“don't don't jump out of a plane if you've never parachuted before like obviously you want them to be in some way an adjacency”
“when I least suspect it at some point in the future it will turn out to be the thing that matters”
From the episode
Why great AI products are all about the data
Shaun Clowes (CPO Confluent, ex-Salesforce, Atlassian)