Midlife MavericksOne of the things I most regret about my career is not changing jobs more often. I had real offers in my hands, the contract drawn up and everything, and I said no.
I look back and see it as a mistake. The same way it’s a mistake that I never went to live and work in another financial centre. For personal reasons, I always stayed in London. But if I’m honest, what kept me in banking was the fear of earning less, not my personal life.
The offer that still nags at me most was from a hedge fund I loved. It was where I wanted to go next. Everything I wanted to do, written on a piece of paper in front of me. And I didn’t have the nerve.
The base salary was much lower. Total comp could even be higher, but almost all the weight shifted to the bonus. In banking, the package was fat and predictable. Even in the bad years there was a structure holding you up from underneath. A hedge fund runs on a different model. Less guaranteed, far more dependent on what you can generate yourself. And I didn’t want to give up what I already had. I was too comfortable on the money I was already earning. I was afraid I wouldn’t make it. If I could go back, I’d decide differently. Especially because I had no personal responsibilities at the time. What a stupid call.
I ran the numbers so many times. I’d open the spreadsheet on a Sunday night, change one cell, then another, pretending that this time the numbers would say something different. I always landed in the same place. And as much as I loved the team, I didn’t go.
But my maths was wrong. I was comparing the worst case of the new place with the best case of the old one. Comparing fear with certainty. The new side only ever showed up in disaster mode. The old side only ever showed up in its best light. So I stayed where I was a while longer. Calculated for a few more months, did a few more sums. And the years went by like that.
I only left when I couldn’t stand staying any longer. I never made peace with the risk of moving, I just couldn’t carry the emotional cost of staying anymore. I’d hit my limit.
And even when fear gets it right, it gets it right by a small margin. You earn less for a while. A year, maybe two, the time it takes to get good at something new. Two years is nothing.
The scenario fear puts in front of you, the one where you earn less forever, is the least likely of all of them. It’s the tail of the distribution. And for years, that improbable tail is exactly where I chose to live. These days, running my own business, I’ll admit I take far more risks. A lot of throwing spaghetti at the wall. But I don’t know if this change of attitude has to do with age, with experience and the self-confidence that comes with it, or simply with the sheer amount of battering life has handed me, the kind that made me see that, when you add it all up, none of this matters all that much.
Life, unfortunately, isn’t an experimental science, so I can’t test any of these hypotheses. But fear is a terrible mathematician. It exaggerates what you stand to lose and ignores what you stand to gain. And it treats the status quo as if it were free, when in fact it comes with an enormous opportunity cost.
Besides, money isn’t everything when you’re weighing up any of these scenarios. There’s so much more to put on the scale. The price of staying is the years you didn’t spend doing what you wanted to do. The whole mornings spent commuting to an office, thinking about projects there was never any room for. A skill you never built, or that version of you left on pause waiting for a better time. The better time is another thing fear promises you and never delivers. None of this shows up in the sum, and all of it is harder to measure than money.
I’m not sitting here telling you to go and change jobs right now. Only that the argument “what if I earn less?” can’t be left alone in your head. It needs a second question right behind it. Less than what, exactly, and for how long? And what do you gain that won’t show up as a number?
Because if the honest answer to that second question is “maybe less for a year or two, and after that no longer”, then that’s a plan. With a defined horizon and an end in sight.
The difference between an excuse and a plan is just that. The excuse goes on living inside the fear. The plan puts a date on it.
I never put a date on mine. I calculated for years and left anyway, only late, and dragging myself out, when I could have left on a deadline with a clear head. Fear didn’t save me a single penny. It charged me interest.
Comment below. What’s the move you keep running the numbers on and still haven’t made? I read every response.
This article was first published in Portuguese in my weekly column Oh pá, não me lixem! for Executiva.
