👋🚶🏻♀️➡️Why I quit: Redefining progress for career transitions
I decided to quit when I was being hollered at over the phone at 10 p.m. on a Friday.
Of course, there were a number of reasons beyond that one phone call. I was tired of the long hours, tired of seeing my newsroom shrink while the work to be done grew and grew, tired of always being on call. I had a young son and I kept getting pulled away from our time together. That night, while a higher-up shouted that our app wasn’t updating fast enough (which wasn’t something I could control, anyway), I just thought, “I’m done.”
This was 2015, and I haven’t worked directly in a newsroom since. The step I took next, and the opportunities it led to, have helped me redefine my definition of professional progress. I hope my experience will help you reconsider what progress means to you, too.
Out of the frying pan
I’d spent 7 years rising up the masthead at the daily community newspaper where I’d been hired after college. By this time, I was overseeing our local news coverage and had 10 direct reports.
The next job I found was a step back in almost every way — I would no longer be a manager, and I would no longer have a say in strategic decisions. My job was to run audience development campaigns for various hobby magazine brands and report on analytics so others could make informed decisions.
When I’ve mapped my Career River, I’ve represented the move from the newsroom to the marketing department at the magazine company like this: