Career, exhaustion, layoffs and ambition.
Found out Monday. Eleven years at the company, and the role went to a guy I onboarded three years ago. He is good. That is the part that stings, I cannot even be properly mad at him. My manager said I am "too valuable where I am." Everybody in that office knows what that sentence means. I have been polite all week. Congratulated him in the team channel and everything. Now it is Thursday night and I cannot tell if I am angry, embarrassed, or just tired.
Dropped about 22% of my salary to go to a smaller company with real boundaries. Things I got back: dinner with my kids most nights, the gym four times a week, and the ability to read a book without checking my phone every eight minutes. Things I lost: a title nobody outside my industry understood, and a car payment I did not need. I am not saying everyone can do this. I am saying I could have done it three years earlier.