Stepping down felt like a career setback. This is the real story

On my way to a team offsite. Sharing a cab with one of my direct reports. I had just broken the news that I would be stepping down as manager and someone would be hired to replace me. I knew that of everyone on my team, she would be particularly sad. And she was. 

Some time later, she asked if I would be presenting at the offsite. “Yes,” I said wryly, “on ‘How to Navigate Your Career at LinkedIn.’”

We burst out laughing. Laughing felt good. 

I may have relinquished my role as manager willingly, after much well-reasoned soul-searching. But the first thing people ask is how I feel about it. I know where the question is coming from. But the truth is that I’d been facing an inflection point for some time now, trying to balance what I’m naturally good at with what I think I’m supposed to be chasing. 

Ambition is a funny thing. We often talk about it as if it’s an inherent character trait; you either have it or you don’t, and to have it means you’re always stalking your next big move. But lately I’ve been thinking about ambition as being more like an emotion. Our feelings about work are constantly changing. 

Three years ago, I was determined to be a manager — I wanted it so badly. I wanted to show that I could stretch beyond what I was hired to do, which was cover health care. And while I think I did a fine job managing the Segments team, I struggled to admit that I didn’t have the spark for it (or at least certain parts of it) that I thought I would. 

Not like the spark I get from writing. Or from engaging with the lively community of clinicians on LinkedIn that’s been growing by leaps and bounds every year. 

A community that I built, to a significant degree. 

“You light up when you talk about that stuff,” my manager told me. 

We were sitting in a conference room, having a rare in-person 1:1. Her words were encouraging but I could read between the lines. We both knew what I had to do next. 

It would be easy to indulge in loaded language at a time like this. “Pushed out,” an anxious mind might imagine people saying. 

Of course, my therapist, in all her wisdom, would certainly call that a thinking trap. Mind reading, she’d label it. Why pretend to know what other people are saying about me? Why assume they’re saying anything at all? 

But mind reading or not, part of me still dreaded the questions. 

Even if I’m returning to the beat I know and love, one that’s only become more important over the past two years. Even if it really is what I want. Even if, as a former boss told me, the only person who would know the real story would be me. 

This is the real story. 

I actually did believe that I was the best person to lead “How to Navigate Your Career at LinkedIn.”

I’ve been here for six years, after all, a lifetime in tech. I’ve held three roles and gotten two promotions. I’ve been a manager and an individual contributor. I’ve seen things. 

Mentoring has always been my favorite part of management. So I was excited to teach people how to get ahead here. I wanted to be candid about all the information that other generous coworkers had shared with me over the years. I wanted to encourage them to identify problems and then try to solve them by experimenting and taking risks. 

But it was more than that. 

My career has always been a story of fits and starts. Long before I joined LinkedIn, I would study the profiles of people I admired, trying to figure out how to mirror their career trajectories. I took a particular sort of inspiration from people who didn’t get their big break until well into their time in the workforce.

I wanted to give people permission to fail. To tell them it was okay to try something and then change their minds if they later came to realize it wasn’t for them. And that it was even okay if they tried something and later came to realize they were terrible at it — because failing is part of growing. None of us will succeed at everything. Just keep moving. 

I started my presentation this way: “There’s nothing particularly special or unique about my career trajectory here,” I said, before adding that I was going to talk about it anyway. The story would illustrate bigger points, I said. I’m a journalist, after all. I like stories. 

Then I mentioned someone else — someone fairly high up now — who has also, over the years, made the transition from individual contributor to manager and back again. We could just as easily talk about him, I noted.

“Except I have the mic now,” I said, “so we’re going to talk about me.” People laughed, louder than I expected. 

They were listening. 

A former LinkedIn editor, who I admired tremendously, once told me that I would get ahead here because I have “grit.” It was her parting comment to me during her last week. I was still relatively new to LinkedIn, and I had some lingering imposter syndrome. No one had ever used that word to describe me before. It stuck with me. 

I’m telling this story as a story of triumph (I have the mic now) but the truth is, the past two years have felt like anything but. Part of it, of course, was that my stint as a manager overlapped with the two worst years of my life. My dad died and I didn’t get to see him in the 17 months before he did. Not long after, a doctor found a mass in my husband’s colon and told us (wrongly, it turned out) that it was likely cancer. I could barely keep my head above water, consumed as I was by the fear of losing him too. 

I was not, to use the corporate-speak, “set up for success.” 

And I don’t think anyone should be ashamed of the fact that sometimes being ambitious at work isn’t our biggest priority. Sometimes we just need to tread water for a bit until we can catch our breath. 

But even putting aside my personal struggles, I don’t think I was alone in feeling like I did. The pandemic upended almost everything over the past two years. Most of us weren’t set up for success. 

My career trajectory isn’t particularly special or unique. 

I’m launching this newsletter as a passion project in addition to returning to my primary role leading our health care content strategy. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve decided — and why I’m really excited — to step down from management. Because like many people who’ve reached a certain level in their careers, I suddenly have a new vision for what I want out of mine. One that, to me, at this point at least, feels more meaningful. 

Not only does ambition shift over time, but during the pandemic, our entire relationship with work began changing. 

Even for people who know how to navigate their careers by now — and can teach others how to do the same — that relationship can feel like muck. 

This newsletter is about the muck. It’s about what happens at the intersection of our careers and our personal lives, the experience of being a working professional. It’s about how we weigh money versus passion. It’s about the opportunities we bomb because we weren’t right for them — and the ones we bomb because they weren’t right for us. It’s about the career setbacks that feel like relief. 

It’s about the transitions we inevitably make throughout our careers. It’s about figuring out the right time to have children and how to balance work and parenting once they arrive. It’s about caring for aging parents just when the kids start to get more independent. It’s about that strange feeling when you look around the office and notice that you’re no longer the whiz kid, and the whiz kids are looking at you with more deference than you deserve. 

The pandemic changed all of us. And it challenged everything we believe about work in ways we’re only beginning to understand. 

I might be a manager again someday. And maybe when I do, I will feel that spark, because it will be the right time, the right opportunity in my career. 

Ambition can ebb, flow and change shape. 

The last question I took during my presentation was about whether I was nervous about becoming an individual contributor again. The questions had been submitted anonymously, written on Post-it notes so people could be candid, and passed down to me in a stack. This Post-it was the only one asking about me specifically, rather than the practical tips I had shared. 

At first, I skipped over it, trying to parse out the tone. Why was this person asking? What were they asking? What did they think I might be nervous about? Insecurity bubbled up. 

But then I channeled my ever-wise therapist and decided to challenge my own thinking traps. I considered the question as if it might have come from a fellow manager — someone wondering whether they truly could take a step back and still get ahead. 

That’s when I realized that it’s important to tell our stories, the ones only we know. The real story. 

Because the answer is, no, I’m not nervous. If anything, I’ve never felt more confident that I’m making the right decision — no matter where it leads. 

But if I were nervous? Well, that would be normal too. Just like it’s normal to have a career “trajectory” that looks more like something that a kid scribbled with crayon. It doesn’t need to be pretty. It can still be art. 

And we’re not alone in our journeys, even when it feels like we are. That’s why I hope you’ll subscribe to this newsletter. And tell your stories along the way. I’ll pass the mic.