Leaving a good job can feel like a risk, but staying may come with its own opportunity cost. As workers become more cautious about changing careers, knowing when to step away, maintain professional connections and leave the door open for a comeback has never been more important.
4 min
Americans are death-gripping their jobs. A lack of options is only part of the reason.
It’s certainly true that opportunities to job hop have waned. The quit rate has been at or below 2% for 14 straight months, according to federal data. We haven’t had a stretch like this in a decade.
But recall that during the “great resignation,” a lot of quitters weren’t leaving for different jobs. Plenty stepped away to travel, start a business or focus on family. And they did it with confidence that they could boomerang back to the same, or similar, roles they left.
Today, that confidence is badly shaken. The disappearing belief that you can return to your previous rung on the career ladder is the other cause of workers’ paralysis.
But some are bold enough to walk away from a plum position, and there is an art to leaving the door open for a career comeback. Some of it is mental, some tactical. If you’re contemplating a break or change, there are strategies to overcome the natural fear you are feeling.
I’ve gone through it myself. I am sweating my way through a version of this concern as I write what is my final “On the Clock” column. I plan to work less and parent more as my wife returns to a full-time office job. After 11 years—and 11 children birthed, adopted or fostered—it’s her turn to come first professionally.
I’m excited for both of us, in no small part because I get to stay at The Wall Street Journal in a different role. I’ll anchor a revamped Careers & Leadership newsletter, coming soon to an email inbox near you. (You can sign up for the newsletter here in advance of the switch.) Still, it isn’t lost on me that the columnist’s role I am leaving is the kind of job that might come along only once in a career.
Many of you have faced something similar.
“There’s the fear of the musical chairs problem, which is really acute in our culture,” says Sabra Meretab, who was chief of staff of Stripe’s payments engineering division when she quit to travel and write a memoir in 2024. “It’s a really legitimate concern that, if I leave, what are the odds that there is still a chair for me when I return?”
In Meretab’s case, there was. She returned to her former company 18 months later.
Not everyone will be so lucky. But the thought of picking up where you left off shouldn’t be top of mind. Instead, think of this: The role you’re in could be a once-in-a-career kind of job. What if the thing tempting you to leave is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?
“We fear the irreversibility of leaving and the opportunity cost of that, but we completely overlook the irreversibility of staying and the opportunity costs that are associated with that,” Meretab says.
Entering her 30s, she worried that the window to globe-trot as a freewheeling single might be closing. A career sabbatical would be harder to pull off later if she had a partner and children.
She concluded that she would regret missing her shot at adventure more than she would regret forfeiting a great job, even if she couldn’t get it back.
It’s hubris to think you are irreplaceable. At the same time, high performers don’t grow on trees.
Jawad Mourabet tries to keep this in mind as he runs his fledgling business, Velto Pickleball Club in Brooklyn, after leaving McKinsey & Co. earlier this year. He told me in March that he was giving himself two years to make it work when we spoke for a column about entrepreneurship.
He reports Velto is profitable, so he isn’t thinking about how to get his old job back. But could he, if he needed or wanted to?
“I actually think I’d be in a better position now to become a partner at McKinsey than if I had stayed,” he says.
This self-assurance is the result of a mindset shift. Like many who vied for and landed a competitive position, Mourabet internalized the sense that he was lucky to be there. Over time, though, he came to recognize his value. Maybe McKinsey was lucky to have him.
He reasons that if he was good enough the first time, he’d likely be good enough a second time—possibly even more so, with firsthand experience running a business.
Meanwhile, his pickleball club is a popular destination for some of his former colleagues. That helps keep those relationships warm.
And networking, post-exit, is key to keeping your options open, says digital sales executive Shannon Leiro. She met regularly with a mentor when she stepped away for two years to start a family. She also monitored industry trends closely and, when she noticed a major shift, determined she couldn’t afford to prolong her hiatus.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I better get back in before I become obsolete,’ ” Leiro says.
Chika Uwazie, former chief executive of a technical recruiting startup, thinks she has more runway. She has spent the past few years creating content, including a podcast, newsletter and forthcoming book, “Timeline Grief,” about failing to hit milestones on schedule.
Still, whenever someone reaches out to gauge her interest in returning to the recruiting industry, she makes time for a conversation, even if she doesn’t expect it to go anywhere.
“I always take calls,” Uwazie says. “I think if you’re building your contacts, you can go back. I think the issue is when you are so focused on the new thing that you become disconnected.”
One caution: You don’t want to earn a reputation as someone who leads people on or wastes their time.
But if you are honest about your intentions, peeking back through the door you left open can help ensure it doesn’t slam shut forever.
Copyright 2020, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. LEARN MORE
BNW Developments has established a Sydney presence, joining Arada and Sobha Realty among the growing number of UAE developers pursuing Australian buyers and development opportunities.
The Australian leather house has opened an immersive four-day pop-up in Manhattan, unveiling its Bloom Collection and redefining what a product launch can look like.
Apple’s growth engine is showing signs of slowing, as rising costs, weaker services growth and AI competition challenge its profitability. With John Ternus taking the helm, the pressure is on to reignite innovation and sustain investor confidence.
3 min
The Apple growth and profit machine is wavering, and the boost from price increases might not be enough to keep it going at historic rates. That dials up the pressure on Apple’s new chief executive, John Ternus.
The company saved the bad news for its earnings call, an hour after it posted its results for the September quarter, projecting that for the current quarter its high-margin services business will continue to slow and that its widely watched gross profit margin will continue to fall.
Apple AAPL -1.83%decrease; down pointing triangle shares had been flat in post-close trading but declined as much as 4% after the company made the projections, which fell short of Wall Street estimates.
The impact of high memory costs are weighing even more heavily on the company, Ternus and Apple Chief Financial Officer Kevan Parekh said on the company’s earnings call. Apple has stockpiled cheaper components purchased earlier, but those inventories are dwindling.
When Ternus took over as Apple’s third chief executive of the past 29 years on Sept. 1, he inherited sky-high expectations. The men he followed were among the most successful company leaders in American business history. Steve Jobs revolutionized consumer devices multiple times. Tim Cook expanded Jobs’s creation to spectacular heights.
The expectations are reflected in Apple’s huge valuation. Oppenheimer analyst Martin Yang noted that Apple stock trades at 36 times next year’s expected earnings, a premium to the overall market, even though its earnings are only expected to grow 1%, which is slower than its tech peers.
“We see insufficient upside to justify the premium,” Yang wrote in an investor note, adding that Apple needs to boost iPhone sales growth and turn around its slowing services business to make him more bullish.
Investors have bid up Apple shares because it has been a port in the AI storm—a reliable and capital-efficient business that stands apart from rivals which are spending hundreds of billions of dollars racing to the AI frontier.
While others invest in data centers, Apple has been pouring its own cash into buybacks and dividends. But that safety may be challenged if Ternus can’t speed up Apple’s innovation engine.
Apple’s lagging performance in AI was evident when its new “Siri AI” chatbot arrived this past quarter. Its long-maligned assistant was already stale the day it arrived, surpassed by agents such as Instinct and Muse that can complete multistep tasks for consumers, while Siri still sets kitchen timers.
Apple needs to give people reasons to buy its devices as they get more expensive. The company raised prices across the board last quarter to help offset higher costs. Without compelling new features, a big question is whether consumers will slow the frequency of iPhone upgrades.
The new iPhone Duo appears to be a bright spot. Consumers are scooping up the $1,999 foldable smartphone despite mixed reviews—so many that Apple can’t keep up with demand. Shipping dates jumped out to January soon after the device went on sale, a disappointment for the normally reliable Apple supply chain.
Apple said its revenue grew 12% in the September quarter, slightly ahead of Wall Street’s expectations. Its widely tracked gross profit margin, at 47.9%, also came in just ahead of analyst estimates.
Apple will need to find new growth avenues because a reliable engine during the Cook era—the services business—is slowing. Courts and regulators worldwide have limited Apple’s ability to charge developers big fees to distribute apps through its App Store, the biggest component of the company’s services segment.
One of its most lucrative App Store fee generators has been the ChatGPT app from OpenAI. Around the time Apple accused OpenAI of trade-secret theft this past summer, OpenAI began redirecting potential subscribers to pay via its website instead of the App Store, skirting Apple’s tollbooth.
Apple’s valuation has bumped up against a ceiling in recent weeks. Six times it traded above a $5 trillion market capitalization intraday before finally closing above the threshold, which it has already fallen back below.
News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, has a commercial agreement to supply news through Apple services.
