After almost 10 years of accidentally falling into tech, I quit! I got laid off after giving a company 9 and a half years of my life and looked at my 401k and saw the lack of sustainability when it came to a retirement plan I tried to make the new job work but it was like trying to fit a square in a circle peg. The return to office mandate, the cult-like culture, and the lack of meaningful work made the decision easier.

After being laid off I landed on my feet thanks to a friend recommending me a tech job with another company but it all felt so wrong once I got there. I love to move with purpose and passion or not at all. It turns out even though that the money was nice (like really nice) that couldn’t be the only reason I was showing up to work every day. The first tech company I worked for at least felt purposeful as it was healthcare IT and during the pandemic, I was on the team that was ensuring that the bugs in the hospital software were being addressed in a timely manner and actually doing the tickets. The last one (maybe not forever) made me feel like a number and I was just going through the motions as if I was a cog in a machine. Honestly, that last position makes me hopeful that AI will advance to automate that position because I’ve never felt such frustration that had me questioning, “Why am I here?”

That second layoff kind of led to an existential crisis that led me to assess my purpose and passions and learn how to align them and turn them into a career. I relaxed a bit after that layoff and the entire summer I spent it learning things about myself. I planted some trees, published 2 books, wrote six newspaper articles, wrote a grant, got said grant awarded, and threw myself into volunteering. Funny as the universe works, I also went on vacation as I paid for a vacation and then a month later I was laid off.

The best thing to come out of the pandemic was figuring out what fueled me and why I liked following my passion. I love community work. I love building relationships. I love connecting people to resources and resources to people. Money was no longer my motivation. The pandemic taught me that money was good but life should be more than that. I had to figure out how to take my passions, my why, and turn them into something.

Oddly enough in January, a local woman hired me part-time to be a community engagement consultant. I didn’t know that was even a job. But I fell in love with the work and just getting started. I then took all my volunteer work and organized it into a resume because work is work even if you’re not getting paid. The grant writing, event coordinating, vendor management, crisis management, and communications coordinating all counted even if I was doing it for free. I had things to show for it like successful events, press conferences, monies awarded, and projects launched. My passion and purpose could align.

Maybe one day I’ll go back into tech if it’s tech for good but right now tech is volatile, especially as a black woman who is always being told, “Maybe you can change the culture.” (I’ve actually been told this several times in an interview setting). It should not be the employee’s job to change the culture and do the job she was hired to do. I could write a whole blog post on my experiences as a black woman in tech.

I learned that it’s okay to step back and assess what you value. It’s okay to be good at something and not like to say something. Sometimes I am in the way of my own blessings because if I hadn’t quit I wouldn’t have received the opportunities I have over the last couple of months. Quitting corporate America gave me butterflies and I’m always leaning into the butterflies so I had to do it.

“Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.” Dale Carnegie