Why are you here?

In the first quarter of my PhD program, I was at a Halloween party when another student found me in the kitchen and asked, “Why are you here?”

She didn’t mean at this party, she meant in the PhD program itself.

Truthfully, I didn’t have a good answer. I wasn’t trying to become the world’s expert in anything, nor was I pursuing a specific set of skills. I had finished my master’s degree at the University of Washington in Human-Centered Design and Engineering and spent the summer at Microsoft Research. I thought I needed a PhD to level up, and that I was going to enjoy the experience.

This student, in much kinder words, told me that this would be a terrible way to spend my 20s.

I ended up leaving the PhD program that quarter, but the question that she asked has stayed with me throughout my career because I’ve realized that it is incredibly useful for orienting me to my work — both as an employee and as a consultant.

“Why are you here?” is a deceptively simple question. It forces you to reconcile two things: what a situation actually needs and what you’re uniquely capable of contributing. Many people ignore this question and default to their job description, but a job description is someone else’s best approximation of what a company needs at a given moment in time. A job description doesn’t tell you how to show up, it tells you what people hoped you were capable of when they hired you.

Answering the question “why are you here?” is more important than ever as the gap between why you got hired and what needs to be done continues to grow. In many of the conversations I’ve had over the past few weeks — both with people about to enter the workforce and those starting to think about retirement — this question is exciting and terrifying.

The longer I’ve worked, the more I’ve come to believe that every role is temporary. Organizations change. Teams change. The work changes.

The people who are most impactful aren’t the ones with the clearest job descriptions, they’re the ones who engage with reality and adjust accordingly.

Whenever I feel stuck, I ask myself the same question that classmate asked me years ago, because it’s still the fastest way I know to figure out what to do next.

Why are you here?