251 - oh, i quit 🤷♂️
Hey there, !
Did I tell you I quit my job and I'm now in a new one? 😮😮😮
It has been an incredible 7.5 years at Deloitte, and no, this isn't a long, soppy note about thanking everyone and long congratulations on amazing work with great clients and an outstanding set of people which make up nearly half of my subscriber list 💖
That would be for LinkedIn, and yes, I probably should write something there too, but I have an aversion to social media (unless for doomscrolling or messaging people).
This one is more about how I thought about quitting.
1. Should I stay, though?
I don't like quitting things. If you didn't notice, I left Deloitte after 7.5 years when most people leave after 3-5 years, or go all the way to the top. There's rarely any in between, at least, from what I have experienced. Hell, I'm the last of my cohort that joined Deloitte Digital in 2017; there's no-one from that year left any more!
What was interesting to observe were the barriers that stopped me from getting on the pathway to quitting. These had roots in a lot of behavioural science, one of my fav passions to read about, and thus a fascinating thing to observe myself experiencing. These include things like:
- Sunk cost fallacy: You've put in so much effort already - you don't want to waste that, right? You may as well keep going! and going! and going!
- Escalation of commitment: The more you get involved, the more you take ownership, the more you are part of the very fabric of your job and company - you just got a promotion and the bells and whistles that come from it.
- Status quo bias: meh, what's happening now is fine. Why rock the boat?
- Identity: you're a Deloittian, that's who you are!
(Note: These barriers are also outlined by Annie Duke in her book Quit - which breaks down most of the above as well. I haven't actually read the book yet, but it's on my list!)
These made me constantly hesitate about whether to take the plunge and go and do something else. I've been encouraged by many ex-colleagues to leave and see what else is out there; be a small fish in a big pond rather than stay somewhere relatively comfortable.
What is a ship built for, if not to sail the ocean?
2. It's not you, it's me
Even with knowledge of all these things though, if you don't know what you want from your life, or where you're going next, it's actually quite hard to determine why you would want to quit.
And that's the main change that has occurred for me in the last few months - not necessarily knowledge of the exact path forward, but being more conscious that:
- There's so much more in the world I haven't experienced (see: all the travel I did in the last year)
- Wanting to prove to myself that I've learned a lot and can apply it outside of Deloitte
- A lot of my friends have already left and scattered to the four winds
- Wanting to be more agentic with my life, and be conscious about what I'm wanting to do
I think in a previous piece, I talked about, "If you don't know what you want to do next in your life, then you have to experiment until you find out." That's what our teenage and uni years are usually used for - to try as many different things as possible, to meet different people, to experience life in all it's myriad facets. And I'm finally getting around to more of it in my early 30's.
There's always risk involved, of course. But I'm lucky, in some ways, to still not have an established partner or family, because it means that I'm able to make some of these more drastic life decisions without significantly impacting others. In addition, I'm in a very privileged position that my safety net is going back to the corporate world, and barring that, I have savings enough to take time off if needed.
Look at that - even change is risk-mitigated, for me =="
3. Grappling with feelings
I just made Senior Manager before I left, and it was bittersweet to say goodbye to a position that I'd been working for for so long. Through my long service leave, I realised what would be next for me as an SM and then going on to Director, and I thought that this was the last opportunity before I embarked on that journey that I could take a path out somewhere else.
I can't really write out specific criteria that I went through to make this decision - it was definitely just a feeling when an opportunity arose - but I feel like if I could do it all again, I would have a list of 'quit criteria' that would help me decide when and where I would pull the trigger to leave. It's kind of like a pre-mortem; you work out what would make you leave, and then leave if those conditions are met.
Interestingly, because it was more of a feeling, most of the reasoning I came to is actually post-rationalising. Persuading myself that the feeling is the right one, and convincing myself that it's the right idea. Is it? Who knows...that's something else I should probably unpack another day tbh.
Regardless, it's probably clearer to say that this opportunity, which came from an ex-colleague of mine, is about building a social enterprise from the ground up for a family office. At the moment, the idea is still in the air, but we're workshopping it and have the next 4 or so months to work it out. It's very startuppy vibes, which is taking some getting used to - especially the ways of working and the MASSIVE reduction in people I can annoy on a daily basis!
But like I said, being more agentic and consciously constructing life is the goal. This is one of the first steps towards that.
Any questions, let me know~
Chat soon :)
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✔️Real Life Recommendations
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Ikiru - by Akira Kurosawa, tells the story of a government bureaucrat who finds out he has cancer, and what he decides to do next. It's a very poignant movie about purpose in life, which okay, I did choose because I knew it would speak to me at this particular stage in my life, but it was wonderfully shot, had a very funny story, and had some very harsh truths about existentialism. I highly recommend this one - it's a 4 star for me on Letterboxd :D (Also sidenote, I think it's been remade into a movie called 'Living' starring Bill Nighy!)
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Bar Margaux - on Lonsdale St, recommended by a friend of mine who wishes to remain anonymous and mysterious, is a basement bar that looks like a bar you'd expect in the movies. It has some really nice vibes - a cool looking bar, tiled floors, a whole bunch of different types of seating areas at the bar and booths, lovely dim ambient light and not being too loud to not be able to chat - a perfect date spot. Recommended!
🚌 Adventures on the Information Super-Highway
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Breaking Down OnlyFans’ Stunning Economics - have wanted to post this for a few weeks now; it's absolutely FASCINATING statistics and insights. Payments in 2023 exceeded $5.3B, with creators getting an 80% revenue share!!! IMAGINE THOSE ECONOMICS woweee.
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Internet Archive forced to remove 500,000 books after publishers’ court win - intellectual property is so interesting and fraught with potholes in an internet age. Why should we gatekeep so much content that's free? Focus on something else - like making it convenient to stream, or access, or borrow, and people will go there first! (c.f. all the video streaming services that are annoying the shit out of me paying $15 per service like seriously? Just give me easy access for one price goddammit)
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Rice Farming Gets an AI Upgrade - technology is good, sometimes.