Work Decoded

Sheryl Sandberg Says Your 10-Year Career Plan Is Outdated — Here Are the 2 Things You Need Instead

The former Meta COO told Gen Z graduates to ditch the rigid roadmap — and her own career proves why.

Meta's former chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, had a blunt message for Gen Z graduates at Brandeis University's recent commencement ceremony: throw away your 10-year career plan.

"You don't need a 10-year plan," Sandberg said. "If I had one, I would have missed the internet."

Instead of a detailed roadmap, she told the graduates they need just two things: short-term direction — "something to work towards right now" — and a long-term dream — "a sense of the life you want to build."

But here's the part that might surprise you: she doesn't want you to connect the dots between them.

"Don't try to connect those two points," she said. "The path is going to surprise you, and the opportunity lies in those surprises."

Her Own Career Proves the Point

Sandberg didn't just theorize about this — she lived it.

After earning her MBA from Harvard in 1995, she landed a role at the Treasury Department under President Bill Clinton. When that administration ended, she was lost. She recalled days when she genuinely believed she'd never be hired again.

When an offer finally came, it was from a young startup she wasn't sure would survive. That company was Google. She joined in 2001 and helped grow its sales team from four people to 4,000. In 2008, she moved to Meta, where she became Mark Zuckerberg's top lieutenant.

None of that was on any plan she could have drawn up as a fresh graduate. The technology didn't exist. The jobs didn't exist. The path made itself as she walked it.

Sandberg stepped down as Meta's COO in the fall of 2022 to focus on philanthropy.

Why This Matters Now More Than Ever

Sandberg's advice lands differently for today's graduates. Gen Z is entering a job market that AI is reshaping in real time. Tech leaders like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have warned that entire careers could vanish. A January 2025 World Economic Forum report found that nearly half of global employers expect to replace significant numbers of workers with AI in the next four years — with entry-level staff hit first.

Sandberg acknowledged the anxiety head-on.

"I know many of you are rightly worried about what comes next," she said. "You've seen the headlines: This year's graduates face the toughest job market in decades."

But she also reminded them that this feeling isn't new.

"Declaring this particular year the worst is a tradition almost as old as graduation itself," she said. "I'm not telling you the job market is easy, but every generation has figured it out."

Her bottom line: overplanning can backfire. The graduates who stay open to the unexpected — the ones who focus on what's in front of them while keeping a vision of the life they want — will be the ones who land where they need to be.

Even if it's somewhere they never could have mapped out on a spreadsheet.