We talk about bad jobs all the time. Bad bosses, bad pay, bad hours. Those are easy to explain at dinner.
The harder story is the good job you stop loving. Nobody throws you a going-away party for that one. Over two months of Women [In] conversations, I heard it again and again.
A 4.0 and a wrong number
Lauren Fitzpatrick Shanks knew after one semester of aerospace engineering that she didn't want the career. She had a 4.0.1
She stayed because someone told her no Black woman had graduated from the program. Then she stayed well over a decade more: Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Leidos, Intel. On paper, a dream run.
"I didn't have that North Star except for the dollar figure," she told me. Later, more quietly: "I don't actually believe in war."
That second line stopped me. You can be very good at a job your values don't agree with. For a long time, being good at it is enough to keep you there.
When the structure eats the curiosity
Melissa K. Diaz did everything right. Audit at RSM. Corporate finance at Starwood, a Fortune 500 hotel company.2
Then she noticed a single small change had to travel through four or five approvals. She kept suggesting better ways to work. They kept going nowhere. Her summary is five words: "It stole a lot of the curiosity."
She called a friend from her RSM days. Together they built High Rock Accounting, a fractional accounting and CFO firm designed the way she'd been asking work to run all along.
Good at it is not the same as filled by it
Dr. Gloria Esoimeme was a physician and a medical director. Respected, needed, well paid. She also knew she "would not be fully fulfilled only being a doctor." She was already coaching friends through hard conversations.3
So she resigned and started over in Dubai. This is a woman who arrived in the US with $250 and spent $100 of it on skincare. Starting over doesn't scare her the way it scares most of us.
Sometimes the move is backward
Lindsey Wilson stepped back in title and in pay in her thirties to test higher education. Today she is Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Maricopa Community Colleges.4
Nancy A. Shenker had the big titles: Citibank, Mastercard, CMO of Reed Exhibitions. In her forties she walked away to build her own company, theONswitch.4
Neither of them left because the job was bad. They left because the job was no longer theirs.
What I'm taking from it
Falling out of love with a good career is not a character flaw. It's information. Try three things. First, name what's keeping you. If the honest answer is the number, as it was for Lauren, write that down and look at it. Second, watch your curiosity. When it goes quiet, as it did for Melissa, that's an early signal, not a mood. Third, let a step back count as a step. Lindsey's pay cut is part of how she got to the C-suite.
Lauren's advice to her 25-year-old self works at any age: "Go get the psychology degree. Do the thing that scares you."
Next in the series: When the work and the soul stop talking.
Repositioning yourself or your company for what's next? The Cheeky Rooster is here for it.