The Proximity Trap: When Your Role is Just a Convenient Address

A real estate guide to career decisions: renovate your role, relocate, or risk being left behind

Welcome to Frank Takeaways. I'm Frank, writing the notes worth keeping from decades at companies like Slack, Etsy, and Google. I run a coaching practice dedicated to guiding leaders through the tricky stuff of building products and high-performing teams.

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In careers, like New York real estate, location is everything — until it isn't. As a New Yorker of 19 years, I've learned that proximity to "good neighborhoods" can be as deceiving as proximity to power. Being "close to everything" isn't the same as being essential to anything.

That's why when you spot a beautifully renovated apartment listed below market rate, you know there's a catch. My first apartment, a one-bedroom in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington DC, was exactly that: beautiful renovation, great price, questionable location.

"Just four blocks from the Metro!" I'd chirp defensively when …