Sometimes You Have to Leap Before You Look
I think I can say with a good degree of certainty that people who read PF blogs are, by and large, planners. I know I am. So what I’m about to write is going to seem contradictory to that statement. I’m going to tell you about how I recently left my job without having another one just months after the birth of our second child. Don’t worry - it has a very happy ending.
[It turns out this story is way too long to be just one post, so this is part 1 of 2.]
Look before you leap, right?
I just read on Free Money Finance a post commenting on the story of a guy who quit to stay home with his 2-year-old son. FMF sprinkles comments on the story throughout the post. Some I agree with; some not so much. Essentially, the guy quit while his lower-paid wife kept working. They made some pretty major lifestyle changes to accomodate the new arrangement.
I disagree with one thing FMF said in particular and if you read his blog, you know he’s hit on this a few times. He abhors the idea of quitting first and getting a new job second. I mean he really hates it.
I disagree with him because that’s exactly what I did. Let me tell you the story.
Where I was
A couple of months before our second child was born, my company offered one of its periodic buy-out offers. It’s an old-line company and they routinely do mass firings (I hate the terms ‘lay-off’ and ‘RIF’). Before they actually fire anybody outright, they usually offer an incentive if people will volunteer.
A little bit of back story. I’d worked at this job for several years. I was competent at it but had no passion for it. I learned nothing on a day-to-day basis, but the pay and benefits were excellent. I can tell you that many people there felt like they were trapped by the golden handcuffs (ok, maybe ‘gold’ is an exaggeration, but you get the general idea).
I didn’t exactly hate my job. I just didn’t like it very much. Ok, I didn’t like it at all. The only reason to go was the people. My coworkers made it bearable. At the point when I left, not only did I not like it, I didn’t care. That’s a dangerous place to be.
When the company made the offer, initially I was ambivalent. I mean, they’d done this so many times that it wasn’t much of a surprise. What shook me a little bit was the intimation that this firing was going to be bigger and they didn’t expect enough volunteers.
If you’ve ever gone through a mass firing, you know that they are indiscriminant. I firmly believe the correlation between how good a job you do and your likelihood of being canned is close to zero. Companies just aren’t that smart. They routinely let good people go and keep idiots. So in a situation like this, anybody can get whacked.
So, just to catch you up, I am at a job I don’t like and the company is giving me a pretty decent incentive to quit before they might fire me. Did I mention that if I don’t volunteer and they fire me anyway I get nothing? Yeah, that’s important to know.
Talking it over
My long-suffering wife, to her great credit, was very supportive. I obviously didn’t make a snap, unilateral decision, but she didn’t do what a lot of people would have done in her situation. By the way, when all this went down she was in her final month of pregnancy.
Imagine if you will. You’re about to become responsible for the life of a second child when your husband tells you he’s considering quitting his job without having another one lined up.
She was great, though. We talked it over. Talked about the possibilities. Discussed back-up plans to our back-up plans. We prayed a lot and we didn’t sleep a lot for a few days.
We decided.
I told my boss I’d be volunteering. I quit.
Tune in next week to find out how it all worked out and I got my dream job.
April 11th, 2008 at 2:16 am
April 11th, 2008 at 4:26 am
This is a very interesting article and I am glad things worked out for you in the end. I have read a lot of sucess stories about people buring their boats etc and that being the springboard to their sucess. However, I am one of those cautious planners that you mentioned and I worry about all the people who burned their boats and we didn’t hear about because they were not sucessful.
April 11th, 2008 at 7:33 am
Brave move , wish you all the best ,
tracy ho
wisdomgettingloaded
April 11th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
The job situation reminds me of my Uncles. When it comes to the big wigs, they don’t care about you as a person, they just see you as a number. If you make them money, they are happy.
There are so many jobs out there and it just never made sense to me why people work jobs they hate. All it requires is motivation and self-discipline. If you have these two traits, anything is possible.
April 11th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
I think a lot of people will relate to being in a job like that: don’t hate it, but wouldn’t choose to do it. Looking forward to part deux…..
April 14th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
You’ll be rewarded for your bravery. And if there were never any difficult decisions, never stepping out on a limb, never doing what you know is right even if it’s tough … how interesting would your life story be? Good for you.
April 18th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
I agree with one of the other comments that most people can relate to having a job that is neither great nor terrible. Some days I’m in that spot myself, and other days I enjoy what I do.
My question is whether or not you’re the type of person that requires some time of external event to make such a decision. I frequently think that it would be difficult for me to find another job with equal tangible and intangible benefits. But then again, if forced by a layoff or other major change I think that I’d be more motivated to search out something new. It makes me wonder if I’m managing my career in too passive a manner. Thoughts?
April 18th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Todd–
Your question comes down to the definition of Faith. Sometimes I really don’t know. Should you leave your job to strive for excellence? Should you wait until you get the boot? When I have taken the faith route and thrown all caution to the wind, I seem to do worse. During the times in my life when I have had no faith, I have done the best. When I have cried out to God, I have done well. When I have utilized positive thinking, things have gone from bad to worse. I wonder if I’m being tested — or what exactly is going on? How shall we then live? That is the question. I’m still trying to figure it out.
April 19th, 2008 at 3:12 am
[…] give you a sample, I recommend his recent post about the circumstances that led him to leave his job despite not having a new job lined up and his […]
April 19th, 2008 at 3:37 am
Todd: Interesting comment.
My sense is that most people need an external event to make a big life change. Most people seem fairly risk averse (appropriately so) when it comes to their career/job.
At the opposite end of the spectrum are people that act without thinking. They don’t need an external event to get into trouble. They do it all on their own.
Somewhere in the middle are the fortunate few that are willing to take risks that most of us aren’t, but in a way that their preparation or perhaps their innate ability causes them to succeed.
A few weeks ago I read an article about how failed companies were seen as a badge of honor in Silicon Valley. I can’t find the article now, but in searching for it I found two other interesting articles.
Since this comment is long already, I’ll leave the two articles in the next comment.
April 19th, 2008 at 3:42 am
FIRST ARTICLE:
(apologies for the long link)
http://www.siliconvalley.um.dk/NR/rdonlyres/8E779766-1E07-44B5-85D6-59F942C26839/0/030107_Stanford_Eweek_GuyKawasaki.pdf
Key quote:
“One of the differences you notice between people from Silicon Valley and people from other places are their attitude to failure. In other places you either do everything right and succeed or do things wrong and fail. This is not the way is works in Silicon Valley. Here people understand that failure is the first cousin to success.”
SECOND ARTICLE:
http://www.sanjosemagazine.com/main/?p=376
Key quote:
“Another difference in Silicon Valley is how extensively companies encourage risk-taking among their workers. Dando says that people from other regions tell her that Silicon Valley is a special area for that corporate quality. Unlike any other place in the world, they say, companies in the Valley encourage their workers to “think outside the box” and be adventurous in coming up with exciting new ideas and products to survive in a competitive market. People are not criticized for their failures, and this sense of worker trust helps stimulate a much richer environment for innovation. “This is something that’s not tangible, but there’s some kind of synergy that occurs in this valley, and it encourages people to climb out from under their security blankets and try new things,”Dando says. “In Silicon Valley, it’s not shameful to try something and fail. In many cases, it’s a badge of honor.”