I just read, Michael Lin’s “Why I Quit a $450k Engineering Job at Netflix” article. It’s riddled with a plethora of career lessons from the perspective of someone who had the dream job. In it, he discloses his struggles with attempting to transition from a senior engineer to a product manager at a FAANG (aka a big tech company).
After falling out of love with his job at Netflix he ultimately didn’t succeed in moving to product management, and instead decided to quit Netflix. I wish I would’ve found Michael Lin’s career lessons a little sooner. Like him, I grappled with figuring out what my next move would be after feeling like I was missing something in a role that I’d held for a while. I too ultimately quit my role and found something else that aligned more with where I wanted my future to head.
Falling out of love with your role or company is a common feeling that most people go through at some point during their careers. This feeling causes most people to spin their wheels, and do one of two things: quit or remain in the role. No matter the direction they choose, it seems the most challenging part of this experience is the moving on part. Which is why I’m grateful that Michael wrote this! It’s always helpful to spot the warning signs and prepare for your move if you so choose to do so before you’re ready.
Below, you’ll find the most important career lessons I learned from Michael Lin’s article. Along with his advice, I’ll include a few lessons that I learned while going through my own career switch. The lessons below will be especially helpful if you’re nearing the point where you’re considering a career transition or career change. If you’re ready to develop a game plan and start your move, read this too!
5 Career Lessons from Michael Lin & Breakroom Buddha
Lesson 1: Internal moves aren’t always doable.
Sometimes no matter how hard you try to move internally, it just won’t be possible. I myself learned this as I job shadowed, networked, and took on extra work in an effort to move internally. Just like Michael admits below, the internal move was impossible.
“I thought if I just tried harder, I would eventually get the job. But now I realized that sometimes things are out of your control because of a structural issue.” – Michael Lin
Lesson 2: Your interests and team’s/company’s interests need to align.
If your interests don’t align with your team’s/company’s goals, it’s time to rethink your role on the team/ in the company. This showed up towards the end of my tenure with my team. My team was growing and giving me more and more responsibility. I was learning, but each new task annoyed me more and more. Like Michael, my interests didn’t match the work that my team was doing.
“My team’s goals and my interests also started to diverge. My team was moving more towards a more engineering-focused direction involving a platform migration. But my interests were veering more towards entrepreneurship and product management. The engineering work I was assigned would never be applicable to any other future work I did.” – Michael Lin
Lesson 3: Tomorrow is not guaranteed.
I know this fact to be true. So naturally, I rebelled. For example, I created this blog that you’re reading. I helped university organizations and small businesses with their branding. I volunteered with nonprofits. I did a lot, and I still continue to do a lot outside of work. This however is only a temporary fix, as most of my time was spent doing something that I didn’t completely like. As Michael states below, I had to reassess and figure out how to measure what really mattered to me both inside and outside of work.
“I realized what the real cost to golden handcuffs was. The cost is your youth, your time, and your life. People don’t accurately judge these costs, because a salary is a hard number, whereas the value of your youth is more intangible. But just because something is hard to measure doesn’t make it any less valuable than something countable like money. It’s hard to measure the value of a brand, mental health, or love, but we know it matters.” – Michael Lin
Going Rogue Guide
Thinking about rebelling, but don’t know how? Check out this “going rogue” guide. And yes, you can do the things outlined in this guide even if you’re currently employed full-time.
Lesson 4: Staying in a role that you don’t like for too long is a BIG mistake.
I admit that I stayed in my role longer than I should have. In all honestly, I realized very early that I did not like the role, but I stayed because of the benefits, my ability to leverage the brand, and possible opportunities that could come down the road. But, again, like Michael states below, you lose time by staying somewhere that you know is not quite right for you, and that’s something you can’t get back.
“If you stay an extra two years at a job that you wanted to leave, and did that over five jobs in your lifetime, you just wasted ten years of your life working jobs you didn’t want to do. I felt like I was wasting time.” – Michael Lin
Lesson 5: Playing it safe is the riskiest choice of all.
At some point, I had to stop complaining, overthinking, and even reading career lessons! I decided to just do it. At the action step, I figured out my actual game plan. I stopped doing random acts of rebellion and did real work that aligned with where I wanted to go. I did this independently, and the work that I did, did not revolve around my team or company. I realized that no one was going to make my dream a reality but me.
“When you play it safe, you are just as exposed to all the dangers, except you have no chance of the upside. The longer you put off a dream, the greater the risk that it never happens. So if there is anything you want, you have to go for it right now.” – Michael Lin
WHAT’S NEXT?
Thinking about a career transition or career change? Check out the Breakroom Buddha resources for more career lessons!
![[Guide] Is Your Personal Brand Holding You Back: 6 Ways to Build Your Personal Brand on LinkedIn](https://breakroombuddha.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/build-personal-brand-on-linkedin-breakroom-buddha-300x300.jpg)
Author here. Deja – I love this summary. Thanks for writing it up.