Q: How can I change careers without taking a pay cut? A: HAHAHA!
Reading Penelope Trunk’s Blog with my morning coffee, I had to chuckle at her answer for the everyday more common question of: “How can I change careers without taking a pay cut?”, her answer will follow me for the rest of my life, and I want to share it with you:
“A: You cannot change careers without taking a pay cut. It is childish to ask this question. So stop asking it.”
As my co-writer and friend Jess presented in her last blog: “What if I want to change careers?”, everyday more and more people look at other’s success and think: “crap, I’m in the wrong business!” Well, guess what kiddo, you are, and so am I, and so is the Lawyer making 200K a year. I believe that its natural human behavior to feel unsatisfied for working for others. It may be because the challenge fades away, or because you think you could do better, or maybe you don’t get paid what you KNOW you deserve; for whatever the reason, we need to move on. But, expecting to re-start your career and not re-start your paycheck, sounds quite childish.
Think back to the time where you got out of college or high school, and count how many years it took you to make what you make now, or how many different jobs did you have to move through, how many bosses you needed to get to know and so on and so forth; now, keep that memory and crush it. You will have to do exactly the same thing all over again.
Back in the day of my youth, I went to Music School, and became a professional musician (no, it’s not an oxymoron), and once my childish dreams of stardom were fulfilled, I found myself with an over inflated ego and a really skinny wallet, so I decided to go back to school and get a masters. Stupid me thought that thanks to my masters I was going to start making the big bucks; I was wrong. But after a lot of work, a lot of experience and jumping around through different aspects in my career, I keep on increasing how much I feed my wallet.
My brother, after reaching his potential at corporate America decided to go on his own and start his own company… guess how much he was making? NOTHING. He is extremely successful now, but he had to start from the beginning and work his ass off to get there; so could you.
The ugly truth is that if you got laid off or are about to, Those Jobs Will Never Come Back – New Ones Will, and you may have to change careers and start again, but there is nothing bad with that. If you are afraid of making a change in your life, because you may need to make some adjustments in your life, you are a fool. And since I don’t want to be telling my audience how much of a fool they are, I will leave you with a quote from Penelope Trunk:
“You are saying that it’s more important to buy all the stuff you’re buying than it is to be engaged in your most rewarding work. In most cases, really, you get more bang for your buck by switching to a career you like than staying in something else for 20 years just to live what is your fantasy of adult life. Because really, adult life is not about getting all the things that make you look stable and successful. Adult life is about constantly making difficult decisions about what you are going to give up.”
September 15th, 2009 at 11:28 AM
Change is difficult. And the bigger, more dramatic the change, the higher the chances of a temporary set-back. We have all had them, hopefully with long-term positive outcome.
I see a probable way in which you can switch careers without taking a paycut: doing so on the same company where you work.
Companies are reluctant to give raises to internal job-switchers. At the same time, they are reluctant to give pay-cuts to internal job-switchers. If you are highly valued by your peers and superiors, they will understand when you tell them that you love the company and love iteracting with them, but want to explore another career within the same company. (If you are not respected and needed, you are out of luck). I did transfered from engineering to sales/marketing, and then left on my own to technical services. Granted, it helps it was within the same industry.
Doing a career switch is easy on two situations:
1) When you are employed, and do an internal transfer.
2) When you are unemployed – any career change, if successfull, pays more than what you are making now.
Think laterally:
The project manager wants to do customer service (or vice-versa).
The operations (phone / building guy) who wants to do customer service (or vice-versa).
The marketing guy who wants to do sales (or vice versa).
The finance guy who wants to move into sales (or vice versa).
The Human Resources who wants to do Customer Service.
etc, etc, etc…
September 15th, 2009 at 12:01 PM
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