do the things, and it will happen

Talk about a vague title eh? It was the theme of a conversation I had yesterday with someone from my network who was on a similar sabbatical journey to the one I have been on. “Do the work” came up over and over as critical pieces of our journeys. While none of us are on the exact same journey, there is a lot I think we will all have in common as we navigate these really uncertain and unsettling times in tech. And to be clear, I know that not everyone is in a situation where they have space to take the kind of time I did in finding my next role. At the same time, I think many people have more time than their lizard brain tells them they do, which also came up in yesterday’s conversation.

Below is a somewhat condensed summary of my last 8 months, summarized into a few key practices that guided me. If you’re curious to know more, I am happy to setup a quick call to share, commiserate, and lend my support in whatever way support manifests for you.

Do the math. Before I had to quit, when I was thinking I was taking just 1 month of unpaid sabbatical and then returning to work, I was planning on a month unpaid. It unexpectedly became a mystery as to when I might get another paycheck, as things are going a lot for folks in tech these days. When I should have been allowing myself to grieve, process, and heal, I was instead doom scrolling LinkedIn job openings and trying not to cry every time ANOTHER one of my contacts got laid off. Fortunately my husband knows me well enough to suspect this was happening, and helped me to steer myself towards more productive activities. I did the math, looked at our hard fixed costs, savings, and other potential sources of income to determine how long we’d be comfortable without me going back to work full time. Once you start thinking about the possibility of settling for another job that you don’t love, while still being physically and emotionally burned out from the last one, suddenly you start realizing that you can make things be OK with one less paycheck for a lot longer than you originally thought you could. I figured out that 6 months was fine, 9 months was doable but not ideal, 12 months and we started dipping into savings that we didn’t want to touch. That data helped me to build out a roadmap, and set some reasonable target dates for when I’d begin certain activities. To be honest, that plan shifted a few times as the market kept changing for the worse, but “responding to change > following a plan” is part of my DNA. The bills (literal and figurative) that I was racking up from all of my personal health related “tech debt” was proof that me NOT taking the time to heal was going to be more expensive than taking that time anyway. If you’re thinking you can’t possibly take time off between jobs, or heaven forbid quit the one you have now that is grinding you down, factor in the tech debt you and your family might be incurring and do some accounting on that. You might be surprised what the math tells you.

Do the work (whatever that work is for you). After I adequately grieved the loss of my job, my team, and my work identity, I invested time in healing my body, my mind, my soul. For me that was largely gardening last summer and fall. That creative time allowed me a lot of passively engaged time for my mind to wander, and to imagine what things could be like on the other side of sabbatical. Many of my answers came to me when I wasn’t actively looking for them. 3 months into my sabbatical, I got to a different kind of work. The career focused work I did was extensive, a friend of mine joked that I was the busiest unemployed person they’d ever met, and they were right! I took every opportunity to reconnect with people in my network. I volunteered with local organizations who needed some strategy and vision help. I really flexed my networking muscles to reconnect with people from past employers, clients, and communities I was involved in with lunches, coffees, and virtual meetings. It filled my extrovert cup, and the exercise reminded me that a) I had some super valuable skills that people wanted and b) I had a network of kind, supportive, and genuinely talented people in my circle, quite a few who were going through similar mid-life career crisis like me. It energized me, and gave me the confidence to take my time, and not settle for less, because while I rarely asked for it every single person asked me how they could connect me to companies, peoples, or roles. My network was there to catch me, even when I wasn’t looking for it. Imagine what would happen when I explicitly asked for it!

I next worked with my career coach Carol, who led me through some challenging and extremely valuable introspection exercises. Uncovering the truth of “what I wanted to be when I grew up”, having the language to communicate that vision, it was much harder than I originally thought it would be. Everyone I’ve talked to recently has the same reaction to that question as I did - a laugh, a cringe, and a shrug. 8 year old me knew exactly what i wanted to be (which was an architect by the way, the construction kind). 49 year old me, forget it, no clue! Carol next reviewed my personal core values, my leadership “defaults” , and my strengths with me*. I pictured myself in the role that would fill my heart with joy, and imagined what kind of environment and culture I would be steeped in when I was doing my best work. Then I WROTE THAT SHIT DOWN. Pardon the language, but it was that pivotal to my growth and development.

I then used all of those insights as input to a networking brief** to capture my vision for the future, and what I was bringing with me into any new role. I shared that brief with recruiters and peers who were on the lookout for roles for me, and had it in front of me in every interview to keep me focused on my goals and to steer me away from a tendency I had of contorting myself into a role or accepting less than what I wanted. It became my new filter through which every company, potential hiring manager, and role would be run through. It also scared the crap out of me because it meant most roles and companies I had been looking at previously were not for me any more. They were not bad companies or roles, they were just not for the future me that I wanted to actualize. When I had this epiphany my coach encouraged me to do this next thing.

Trust the process. You’re where you are because something about your past role, environment, culture, or company did not work for you anymore. At some point, your values and needs fell out of alignment with where you were, and what you had needed before. There’s a strong chance that if you use the same “map” you were using before to navigate your next career move, that you’ll be right back in this tough spot before too long (call back to some Steven Covey wisdom right there). Your new map, guided by your values, principals, and needs, may not lead you to a whole lot of companies. It may even steer you clear of places that are full of roles you could easily secure with your past experiences, which feels darn right terrifying. Again, you may not have the resources available to you to be picky right now, but if you have done the math and you do have space to be picky, see where your map leads you and trust that so long as you’re respecting your boundaries, the right company and role will eventually come into alignment BECAUSE of the new, recalibrated map you’re using.

I also got a lot of help from ChatGPT. I started plugging in what I wanted out of a role and company, and it was able to point me at roles and companies that I had not previously considered because I had not realized they existed! I was able to use the help of AI to expand the destinations that my mental map would lead to. My list of roles and companies that had first grown scarily small once I applied my new map/filters/values, was now quite large and full of exciting new possibilities. In my case, I wanted to work in a tech based organization where my activities can have positive social impact. If you’re curious what that looked like, I shared my ChatGPT history for that question here. Once ChatGPT spit out some a list of companies that fit that criteria, I added a ton of new companies to my research database and was off to the races!

Take every interview. My first thought was, only interview with the places I am already sure are a really good match based on my research. Well, that led to almost zero activity early on. On top of it being pretty demoralizing because my lizard brain was screaming “OMG people are being laid off left and right and you’re being PICKY about who to even talk to? C’mon, you’re not that great!”. My lizard brain is SUCH a jerk. I followed some wisdom from my therapist and asked “wise, future Angela” what served me well and led to a good outcome here. I realized that I was missing opportunities to be pleasantly surprised because of completely irrational fears of some bad outcome of taking interviews with a company who might not be THE ONE. The cost was low if the experiment proved to be a bust, and I was right. Worst case, for a 20-30 minute investment, I made some new contacts and had valuable information I could pass on to other job seekers in my network. Best case, I accidentally stumble upon something that checks all of my boxes because the company didn’t do a great job communicating culture, values, roles on their website. Tthat happened a LOT, so if you’re in a position to hire, please take a look at what you’re projecting on your website and LinkedIn and ask yourself if what you’re reading reflects what you want potential candidates to see. I loaded up all of the data I gathered from close to 75 interviews that didn’t produce opportunities I wanted into my Teal HQ database of companies. I then built out a list of firms/recruiters that I could confidently refer friends to, or steer them away from, because I’d already done a lot of reconnaissance on environment, culture, and open roles.

Trust yourself. This is a simple statement that in practice is hella-complicated in practice. Everything above worked for me. It’s all worth considering, and it may turn out that none of it is helpful or applicable to your situation. I spent over a decade working with a therapist to learn to trust myself, not saying everyone needs this bolstering of self-trust, I can also say I’ve talked to only a few people during my sabbatical who felt confident that they knew what they truly needed to be happy in their next career adventure, let alone how to advocate for it. Whatever homework you need to do, do it. Make the time, invest in yourself, and as much as you can trust what your mind, body, and soul are telling you it needs and don’t apologize for it. I eventually came to accept that if I knew what I wanted and needed, and shared them through my networking brief and reflected them in how I interviewed, that any company or role who fell away as a result were not for me. Rejections are data, and that data tells you what you need to know about the role, hiring manager, and company. And like all data, those facts are friendly and helpful even if you don’t like what they’re telling you.

This feels so incomplete, and likely full of grammatical issues, but the snowdrops are peeking out through the grass and it’s 60 degrees and sunny in Chicago - thanks climate change? :( Regardless of how problematic this amazing weather is, it’s calling to me to get outside and do some early yard cleanup. Gardening season will be upon me before I know it!

*No one who has worked with me will be shocked that my core values are Authenticity, and Service to Others, my Enneagram type is Helper, and that my top 5 strengths are Learner, Connectedness, Input, Individualization, and Achiever.

**Image of my networking brief is below, if you find it might be useful to you, I am happy to share the template!