You are more than your job

How title and salary lead us astray

It started with a pit in my stomach every Tuesday night.

I was working as an operations director at a high growth startup, and my weekly 1:1 with my boss was always nerve wracking. It was my job to know my team’s performance like the back of my hand, so I’d spend time the night before or early that morning reviewing reports and chasing down answers to questions that I knew were coming.

At best, these meetings would end with an acknowledgment that my team hadn’t screwed up too badly. At worst, I’d come up short on one or many questions and leave the meeting with a sense of failure that would tie up the rest of the day.

It was a stressful life that often motivated me to divert precious time and energy to work that could have instead gone toward my marriage, health, and sanity.

The wrong definition of status

I lived this life for years because I was convinced that this was ‘what it was all for.’ I had spent three years and $200k on business school precisely to be in this position. So why was that promise of a great life not exactly panning out?

Now, with a bit of distance, I realize that I was putting up with this crushing lifestyle because of status. A prestigious title with an enviable compensation package was how I was measuring my place in society, and by extension, my worth. That concept of worth, however, would be directly challenged in the coming years.

I would eventually get laid off from that job and the next four after it. No amount of late nights, exceptional presentations, stress dreams, or resolved team conflicts would make a difference.

It was always just a matter of time until the last-minute invite would pop up on my calendar and I’d find myself joining a zoom meeting hosted by a member of HR along with whoever my boss was at the time.

Nothing is more volatile than losing your income. Overnight, you go from planning for the future to trying to prolong the present.

Vacation plans and work timelines instantly give way to performing survival calculations. How long will my money last? Where will I find my next job?

Five layoffs will force anyone to get extremely familiar with these two questions, and as I left and joined each new company, my answer to them began to change.

 I stopped drinking the corporate rah-rah kool aid and began to doubt whether I’d ever see a dime of equity as I signed the next offer letter. The sacrifices I was making became clearer to see and my idea of status began to evolve.

A new perspective

If there’s one good thing about being laid off so many times, it’s that my wife and I had become pros at living a comfortable life in ‘survival mode.’ We learned how to be frugal when times were lean and used that discipline to build savings when money was abundant.

As we paid down debts and filled our savings over the years, the cost of our lifestyle steadily went down. As I’d grind through yet another job hunt, the anticipated stress and anxiety that came with preserving my income increasingly looked like a raw deal.

I’d eventually come to realize that my true passion was not in managing people and being near the c-suite but instead performing data analysis. Nerdy, I know, but it’s the one thing I did in every job that I was good at and that always felt right.

When I found myself between jobs, I took those same analysis skills and applied them to my budget data. Performing these ‘survival calculations’ allowed me to confidently establish an income ‘floor’ that the next job needed to bring in to keep life comfortable.

I came to realize that a wide range of data analyst job titles existed in the space between my lifestyle floor and my previous income. I was finally starting to see the gulf between what I actually needed and what I thought I needed, based on my old conception of status.

What I thought I needed:

• Director+ job title

• Six figure salary

• Gold-plated compensation package

What I actually needed:

• Sufficient income

• Low stress

• Ample family/social time

This was an eye opening realization that I decided to run with. I took a data analyst job that paid $50k less than the management job that preceded, and it was a revelation. I loved the work, and I didn’t miss the responsibility and stress. Most importantly however, the salary was enough.

All the savings we had accumulated over the years meant that we had every negative outcome handled in advance. By eventually paying off all our high interest debt, we got to keep much more of our income than we did in earlier years.

Believe it or not, I’m currently in yet another job search, but I’m much, much clearer on what makes sense for me now.

Playing a new game

I still seek status, but I measure it differently now. Today, status means being able to take a lower paying job that I find rewarding and that allows me to spend time and energy on the people and interests that I care about.

I’ve traded ‘acing’ the 1:1 with my boss for 7+ hours of regular restful sleep. I spend my free time being a more present husband and no longer use it to ‘get ahead’ of the upcoming work week.

All those rounds of doing survival calculations taught me how to describe my lifestyle needs through numbers that opened my eyes to the subconscious status game I had been playing since I was in high school.

“Knowing your numbers” is something that anyone can do, whether you have a job or not, and it is the first thing I’d recommend doing when seeking to understand your financial life. If you’d like to determine yours, I lay out the steps in my post about How to achieve to Financial Serenity.

If your life looks anything like mine did a few years back, there’s a good chance you’re chasing a version of status that’s no longer serving you well. Getting clear on your numbers is how you put the tradeoffs you’re making into perspective.

Once you’re clear on the delta between what you think you need and what you actually need, that regular date with stress and worry starts to look a whole lot more optional than you think.