The Career Debt of Retraining
Can you make up for the time you invested in a first career?
A lot of us Product Designers have retrained and are or have been old juniors. I am growing a hunch that maybe there’s something messy and universal in what I experienced through late retraining, and the limiting thoughts I had. So here I am, trying to verbalize tangible and subconscious things I have experienced, hoping some people in the community will relate.
I started my career as a Product Designer rather late in my life, eight years ago, just after giving birth to my first child, and after investing seven years of my life in a different field (TL;DR, I worked on all phases of photoshoots). When you read this story, I will very likely have turned forty.
Aging in Tech
The idea of being a junior woman walking towards her forties in Product Design has often been scary. There aren’t many role models in France; you don’t see a lot of silver-haired women in Product Design. I think this explains why I had this preconception that “success” (whatever that means) had to happen sooner rather than later because, at some point, it would be too late to break the glass ceiling.
I eventually found role models in other countries, and it helped me overcome limiting thoughts… but there are sediments of this past mindset in the way I work.
The Career Debt of Retraining
When seeking a first job, you are not too demanding. You mainly want to find a hiring manager who trusts your ability to get up-to-speed and learn fast. It means that sometimes you land jobs at companies that don’t have a strong product maturity, that don’t pay a lot, or that will struggle to help you grow. Do these years count as much as the years you would spend in a mature environment? Feel free to disagree, but my hot take is I don’t think they do. That’s just the name of the game, the “Theory of Special Relativity” applies to work. The impatience it caused me was amplified because I had lost time somewhere else.
Panic can alter one’s judgment, and eight years in, I don’t think my time was lost at all. I had a blast in my past career: I met my husband, found some of my closest friends, learned a ton, built a network, got to live abroad for a bit… I have so many beautiful memories and take so much pride in those experiences, even though they are not always useful in what I do today. I don’t regret leaving that career behind, but I don’t regret this part of my life either.
Fixing the Junior Situation
I lost count of how many times I heard someone who retrained less than 3 years before mention they should be promoted to Senior and get a raise. It’s a classic in the Product Design career-switch landscape. I have mixed feelings about this. Part of me cringes whenever someone drops this in the conversation. I know what I have learned in the past years and how valuable time has been to truly feel like I am “Senioring” my role. But part of me also relates. There is a grey area of transposable skills from one’s past career that makes it difficult to estimate their actual worth. After retraining, I used to see the Junior situation as temporary, something I would quickly fix.
In retrospect, I think it was a lot of unnecessary and unrealistic pressure. Growth isn’t just about how fast you get promoted. The route to getting promoted should be equally interesting. But low income can alter this perspective.
Late in the Game
After my career switch, people my age were usually managing or at a higher level in the career ladder. I have also been reporting to people younger than me on a few occasions, brilliant people I still look up to. They were inspiring, but they didn’t always fully grasp my reality when managing me.
What was different for me was I couldn’t always keep up with the pace, and it made me feel like I was late in the game. I didn’t feel like I could use my full potential because of the life I had. My new teammates were younger. They didn’t have young kids and had plenty of sleep. They were passionate, talented, and full of energy. They knew what was trending more than I did: it was their taste, and I had to learn taste in this new field. They had time to take on creative side projects. They had plenty of free time to work on their careers and market themselves. They could attend after-work drinks and build rapport with the right people. They didn’t have the pressure of a mortgage they had to pay for or their partner financially compensating for a career switch.
Looking back, I think I was more knowledgeable about what is at stake at a company and in work relationships. This helped me navigate and find different shortcuts. It was a powerful strength. Self-commiseration and comparison were such an unproductive waste of energy. I think I have moved past this, and I am able to sincerely be happy when my teammates find success. It doesn’t have anything to do with my trajectory.
Fitting More Experiences in The Years
French writer André Gide once wrote something bittersweet that could be translated as “Choosing meant forever and ever giving up on a remainder, and the large portion that all this remainder represented deemed preferable to whichever unit.” In other words, defining your priorities is hard and involves a bit of grief. I couldn’t agree more!
I say yes to a lot, even to side projects in the design community. Those are usually around knowledge-sharing more than about craft, and they never put my deadlines at risk.
During perf review though, my yes-personality was highlighted as a (legit) concern, and I have been asked whether this was because I was scared of disappointing others by saying no. It isn’t. Behind each yes I say is an enthusiastic yes to growing slightly faster than I would normally do.
I have enough professional baggage to know the true meaning of opportunity and, to a certain extent, missed opportunities. The flip side of this coin is that refusing a project means dealing with FOMO. I am still working on this even though my career switch happened quite a while ago. This is one one the sediments I mentioned in my intro.
My manager recently told me “Yes and is juniors’ superpower, and No is seniors’ superpower.” She meant junior ICs should seize as many opportunities as possible while senior ICs should care about how well their time is being used and candidly challenge if and when something should be done. This is quite a shift.
A Staff designer I was talking to recently framed it this way: “Saying No to some requests means saying a stronger Yes to whatever you decide to commit to.”
Challenging Growth
Eight years have passed since I retrained, and I am still hungry for opportunities and experiences. I am still passionate about what I do and want to keep growing consistently (plateau is the enemy!)
Yet I want to question the way I have envisioned growth through the years:
- Is it something consistent?
- Is it intentional?
- Is it sustainable to always grind?
- Is it realistic to want to warp and stretch time?
Being at peace with a more organic pace and slowing down would have given me more headspace to develop other areas. For instance, I wish I had enjoyed being a junior a bit more, asked seniors for advice earlier, and taken more time to embrace the fun and explorative aspect of design. I have mentored five junior women this year, and I tried to pass this message on to them. But again, I want to acknowledge that early-career low income can blur this out.
Takeaway
I’m sorry this piece isn’t convenient LinkedIn bullet-point advice with a few emojis sprinkled here and there to make it fun. It’s just me being candid about what retraining late entailed for me.
We are all on a trajectory, and after a few years, hopefully, I’ll be able to look back and have more answers and clarity. Maybe you are at a different location on your trajectory and want to add thoughts. If so, please chime in the responses below this story.
I do have a specific and immediate goal I want to work on that I can share. I want to work on pausing before saying yes to sidequests, and to get better at evaluating whether they keep me away from important wins I need. So I can stop dealing with FOMO.
Onwards.
