Let Go and Haul: the cost of a lateral career move
Week 42, 2018 – Brooklyn
Journey: where we’re at
Busy! We tested some new functionality for the video editor, had been doing a ton of work on hiring, and are just super heads down on product (and will be until the end of the year).
Unrelated: I’ve been locked out of my Facebook account since the data breach a few weeks ago (despite asking support to fix this for me three times ugh). I gotta say, while it is kinda annoying not to be able to use that thing for biz sometimes, and it is majorly annoying for events, I otherwise can’t really say I’m missing it…
Journal: what I learned
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the cost of making a lateral career move. Since we’re supposed to have like six jobs in our lifetime (or whatever) now, there’s a good chance you’ve done this too and have already done some side-stepping into another job.
Around 2014, I decided to start moving my career towards leading product and teams in pursuit of my goal of eventually being a CEO. I’d already been doing a lot of both of these things – but not in a full time capacity. The next three years that unfolded ended up being three of the hardest years of my life – especially career wise. I had five jobs over three years (consumer is volatile), and I had to work extra hard to pick up all the skills I needed. I joke that I did a low key DIY MBA, I spend nearly every night reading some business book or other. I’d look at course reading lists business school programs I respected to see what those students were studying, and every day was a steep learning curve of getting used to living inside email, documents, negotiations, strategy, meetings, listening to people’s problems etc. It was major change from spending my days inside design software, critique, facilitating product workshops and sure – doing some strategy and team stuff but not all the time. While I was pursuing this career move, I had to be 100% focused, there wasn’t much time for personal creative projects or design.
Anyone who works in a fast paced industry should expect the tools and style of work to change with the times, but what happened to design around 2014 –2017 was not just some change but a huge change – compared to the early 2000s years in terms of tools. Everyone switched to from Adobe programs to Sketch, and an explosion of prototyping tools hit the market.
By the time I was done with putting myself through this lateral career move, and I’d met my goals, I found myself having to design again. (Just because you’re moving sideways to another area of work doesn’t always meant you totally leave the previous work behind. In fact, often people expect you to just have two skills now). But oh geez had design totally changed. I had to re-learn some tools. Luckily I have amazing friends like Summer who recently gave me a crash course in prototyping tool Framer, and people in my community I can reach out to for help! ❤️
So what’s the takeaway here? I think if you’re going to make a lateral career move and you’re transitioning from something that is subject to a lot of change, if you intend to go back to it, know that there might be a re-entry cost.
Jams: what I’m into
Well first of all, I can I say how happy I am that Sonos FINALLY supports Airplay? Omg why did that take so long. The jams are so much airier now.
This Sunday mostly brought to you by Yukibeb’s Soundcloud. If you don’t know her yet, check it.
British RnB singer Sharna Bass’s track that recently featured on Insecure Season 3. I don’t love the music video tho so I’m just linking you to the audio 😬