Ask a Manager

It’s more Friday good news — this time with updates! Here are updates from people who shared good news here in the past.

1. The person who found a new job after a hard job search (#1 at the link)

I wanted to write in because the job I thought was my second choice and not bad going in a pandemic … turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.

The job that was my “first choice” turned out to be somewhere utterly dysfunctional and increasingly publicly not aligned with my values.

The job I went to gave me confidence in things I’d done before, in new things, in working independently and with others, and in disclosing and not being held back because of my neurodivergence, and it was at a fascinating place where I got to learn so much about history and politics through the projects I worked on.

I was headhunted through that a year ago to manage the campaign for a major cultural organization’s landmark project — which hasn’t always been plain sailing, but I’m keeping a level head and really excited about what this could set me up for next with all the great feedback and experience I’ve had. Which might not be that closely related to what I’ve been doing up to now! But this job and the last one have cleared my mind so much that I can see I have strengths as well as weaknesses — and there might just be careers out there that play to those, even if they’re careers with words that 16-year-old me didn’t understand and thought were boring.

Oh — and I met my partner at that last job. We’re now buying a flat together :)

2. The success story from a student (first update here)

I’m the student who sent in good news about getting into grad school back at the start of Covid.

I earlier sent in an update at the one-year mark about how while there were struggles, it was also the right move and I was happy with the decision. I can say that since that update, I took on a supervisory role to two students, I’m on track to publishing multiple research articles, and I was approached about a potential job in my field last summer (a true whirlwind)! I was offered the job and before I even submitted my thesis I began work in a role that was perfectly tailored to my background and in a supervisor position — not bad for a first job to start my career!

I’ve since submitted and passed my thesis, so this is to be my last semester as a student. I feel completely ready and at peace with the decision to leave academia. My love for learning at the academic level has been satiated (for now), and I’m very much looking forward to being able to have entire nights and weekends completely to myself for the first time in my life. I’m excited to have a proper income for the first time, and I’m already planning my first guilt-free vacation where I won’t have to bring any school work/check emails religiously — it will be incredible!

This isn’t to say that there haven’t been issues. Life looks pretty rosy when looking at the big picture, and I’ve worked my butt off for the opportunities while having the support of family and friends that make it seem this way. But working a full-time job while writing a thesis at the same time has made for an incredibly stressful last third of the year, and being hit with the realities of leaving a largely-liberal group of peers to the wide-ranging opinions and perspectives of the corporate world (wow, hello blatant sexism…) has been interesting to say the least. Overall though, I’m grateful for how the last 2+ years have been and for the people I’ve met along the way. While this job isn’t forever, regardless of its challenges it’s a fantastic stepping stone that I’m grateful to have.

So thank you AAM, for being a wonderful source of both entertainment and learning, which I’m excited to use myself! I hope to one day be a manager that is the source for someone else’s Friday Good News post. :)

3. The person who found a new job after the previous one soured (#2 at the link)

Back in late 2021, I wrote to you with Friday Good News that I had landed a new job after my previous job had soured. Since then, things got significantly worse, and then much better than I could have imagined.

The job I wrote to you about turned into a disaster, unfortunately. My role was a new one, and I learned in my first few weeks that the role had been created to get around one particularly difficult person. My boss was reluctant to put his foot down and make this difficult person cooperate with me, which left me virtually unable to do any work, as she refused to give me essential passwords. This was a one-year contract position, and, around the nine-month mark, my husband and I decided it was time to start applying for other jobs. This was a fortuitous decision, as one month later I was told that, despite previous assurances to the contrary, my contract was not being renewed. I massively ramped up my application process, but was still unhappily faced with unemployment when my contract ended just before Thanksgiving.

I kept at the application process diligently through several months of unemployment during the holiday season, and, despite the real struggle, it paid off immensely. At the end of January, I was offered what seemed to be a dream position: it combined the expertise of the field I’ve been in for the past six years with my academic passions, gave me the opportunity to move from an area where my husband and I had very little support system to the area where the majority of my family and close friends live, and gave me a significant raise. I’m now making more than twice what I was making two jobs ago. And a few days before the job offer came in, we learned that we were expecting!

Three months into my new job, I can safely say that this really is Good News. The work I’m doing is challenging and satisfying, my colleagues are supportive and collaborative, the institution’s policies will give me a great maternity leave, and everything just feels right in a way it hasn’t in years. Thank you, Alison, for running a site where I could not only get advice that helped me in my journey to get here but also find reassurances that I would, even when the going got tough.