Navigating Careers While Expecting

Nikhyl: Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Skip Podcast. I'm your host, Nikhil Singhal. Today's episode is actually what I'm calling, a peacast yes, I made that up, and perhaps it's, repeated by someone else, but, you know, I'm going to take credit for it. peacasts are short form versions of my podcast.

And in this case, what I found was I was doing a Zoom call With someone who's in my network and, she was asking me about an upcoming maternity leave and, you know, she and I had been talking a couple of times over the past year about how to navigate a job search. She had a role at a company where she wasn't really excited about the direction of where they were going, felt like she'd been there for enough time that she wanted to start a search.

But was trying to balance that with family planning and, you know, these episodes, this peacast is just a clip from the conversation we had. And it's an illustration of a framework that I've published in a past episode. When it comes to burnout, I talked a little bit about how to navigate maternity leave.

And my advice is, look, you can have it all, but not at the same time that sometimes you have to sequence what you're trying to achieve. Careers are long and in some ways, the perhaps framework that's maybe made you the professional you've had in the past doesn't apply as you add new constraints or new opportunities.

In this case, She's starting a family and she can't operate in the same decisioning framework. She had when that wasn't actually part of the equation, but those are hard conversations. And sometimes these concepts need an illustration. So I sought permission from her to actually take the conversation we had, which I record in zoom for training purposes, regenerate her side because she wanted to maintain some confidentiality.

So you'll hear sort of a fake voice. Really saying the same things that she said to me in the zoom call, and then I'm ultimately releasing the audio of what I presented to her, in that conversation. So, hopefully, you'll like the episode. It'll be a good illustration of a past framework.

Obviously love to get feedback from you, but why don't we move to the conversation?

Guest: I'm pregnant with my first kid and I've been feeling stuck in a job that frankly I'm not loving. I've held off on job hunting because of fertility treatments and now the pregnancy so I feel a bit trapped. But anyway, something interesting happened.

My company, Analytics AI, is going through a massive reorganization. My manager offered me a spot on the new leadership team.

He gave me two choices, either keep a spot open for when I come back from maternity leave, or put my name on it now,

But only if I commit to coming back for at least a year. It's a bigger role as a senior director overseeing more than 50 million in ARR.

. And look, I was pretty sure I wasn't coming back, but now I'm not so sure. What do you think about all of this?

Nikhyl: I think this one's kind of a no brainer. That you want to sort of take this one and ask for your name to be attached to it.

I only see upside, the only downside that we could create is if you, absolutely hate.

The role that you've been suggested to return to.

Having said that, what you're suggesting is that it's potentially, Senior director in, scope. It is a role that might be more interesting than the current role that you have, or at least equally interesting.

I don't have to, be, trying to understand work life home and build credibility with a new organization I have a lot of that context already. My boss is someone that trusts me. And, you know, if a role comes along and I start actively or passively looking, I'm able to sort of compare it nicely with what I have today.

I'm just going to settle into this new role and see how it goes and then wait until the summer and then I can, start cautiously looking.

Yeah, you're right, and it is a better role, but it's not going to be an easy role. It's kind of a wartime situation with a lot of strategy changes I need to implement. One thing that bugs me about the current company is that it's just not growing in terms of dollars. It's more of a firefighting situation.I mean, I think that the question that you should ask yourself is sort of, what are we trying to maximize And there's like three or four things we can maximize.

We can maximize the ability to have time to search for a new job. We can maximize the flexibility to, come back. In as peaceful of a way as possible you can maximize home life you can maximize the Search for the next job the speed in which we find the next job We can maximize the career potential as it exists today you can maximize the stories that you have or the learnings you have as you go through the next roles.

These things are not all going to be in harmony to one another. My suggestion is that, look, careers are very, very, very long.

So the thing that you want to maximize in this moment Especially if we're having this conversation in five years is you're going to say, look, promotion this month, next month, the ability to sort of get this project three versus project for, you know, this ARR of this amount versus none of it really mattered,

what really mattered at this moment

is for me to be able to do one thing well at a time. And so my suggestion is do pregnancy well.

that is a okay thing to do. settle into post pregnancy in a career additive position. there is no doubt what you're describing as you noted is career additive.

There is ways to maximize that. See note on promotion. See note on playing with maybe the portfolio. But what I would say is that maybe we don't necessarily maximize career in the current role, but we certainly see a better career option. And so when you come to me and you say, Hey, I'm pregnant going to be on leave with which I have generous policy and I'll come back to a better role than I have today.

I'm like, we're very much in the green, then what we have perhaps delayed is we've delayed our ability to start in earnest our job search,

that's mostly a factor of pregnancy. Thank you.

that's not a factor of the quote unquote commitment that you've made, though there is some lightness there.

But I think that pregnancy will almost force the same timeline is the note I'm making, then what the commitment means. And I'm trying to come back in a more settled position than I am trying to like improve the speed of promotion, because I think that that's Yet another stress that frankly is just not worth it. What I really like is the fact that you're able to have a good conversation with your manager, your manager is very open with you about your choices.

That's going to play well, if you need more time,

you need more flexibility, if work tends to be difficult, if the role, you know, tends to be complicated or filled with politics, you're going to want a manager. Who's got your back and then if you decide to start a new job, you're going to want as much space to do a great job in the first 6 to 12 months.

I don't think the market's going away. I don't think the current role you're describing is weaker. These are the two things that I would say could change our opinion. But those are actually the opposite. And so I'm very confident this is the right right counsel here.

Guest: I've just been so anxious about moving forward for over a year now. With all this AI stuff happening, there are tons of startups out there. So I guess my question is like, am I playing it too safe by staying?

Maybe I should just quit and look for something while I'm not working.

Nikhyl: Yeah, and I think that the way you should rationalize it is I think you should state that, you know, it is true.

You are playing it safer than you could, but I think the rationale for that. And I think this is a very key point. sometimes we play it safe, but then the question is, are you, not taking the biggest job at the best company that you could. And then the question is, if that is not happening, why is

that?

the articulation of the answer here is not timidness, nor inability to manage a search. It is a direct consequence. of Decisioning on your health and your family.

in the next set of years, you are going to say that was the correct decision. You are not going to say sh*t I wish I had traded off my health and my family to another company, but that is the implication of you feeling anxious your anxiety is heavily connected to saying that you're trading off your career.

Because of your health you are never going to regret that.

you've been given quite a gift.

a safe re entry. And you've been given the gift of a family because you're at a company that allowed you to actually invest in that. The good news is when you are ready to re emerge and re stack your prioritization, the market will not only support you, but will likely look at you as a senior director entering in the market with working in AI in enterprise. It's only going to be a richer market for you. So like, from my perspective, it's all roses.

But mentally, I have a lot of empathy for the note that this is the first time in your life that you've actually prioritized something that's different and you've managed your career quite effectively. But This is the correct calculus. That's the reason why I'm pushing the way I am.

Guest: You're absolutely right. I guess I'm just reacting to a different way of making decisions. I've always put my career first and now I'm being asked to prioritize something else. To be honest, like, it feels weird.

Nikhyl: And that's okay, because what's gotten you here is different from what's getting you to the next stage. And my note is that this is temporal.

it's okay because careers are long and this is the right investment. You can imagine a scenario which is much more complicated and much more murky. I can imagine a scenario as we described, which is the go forward plan is maybe more concerning.

let's say they gave you a package.

pull out come back with nothing and that seems scary. And now we're having a much more like, do I take the step away or make a commitment to something? And I know I don't want to do just for the purposes of safety.

And now I'm in a real trade off situation. Thankfully, we're not here,

it's okay to sort of look at this a little bit more longer term. So I think the question is going to be, once you come back, you'll have a lot better sense of how much energy you want to put in, what type of ambiguity you want to go solve, et cetera.

The very nice thing about what we do is that There's always a list.

That's why I think that since you have this positive it's almost a no brainer.

Thank you so much. This is super helpful. I think I've been so focused on not missing out on career opportunities that I almost missed the opportunity right in front of me to grow into a new role while also growing my family.

Hopefully this advice resonated with you. if you're navigating a work life situation or an upcoming leave or perhaps maternity, and you don't think that this advice quite applies, you have a particular twist that would be helpful for me to weigh in on, I want to hear from you. We can kind of workshop this together and maybe, present this on a future peacast as well as, you know, I want to update my frameworks, make sure it's always applying to as many people as possible.

Thanks for listening to the skip. If today's episode resonated with you, please consider leaving a review or sharing it with the people, you know, who want more out of their career. You can always subscribe my podcast on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you currently listen. You can also follow me on my newsletter at sub stack.

And if you have questions or comments, email me at Nikhyl@skip.Community, or leave a comment, send me a note on LinkedIn, Twitter. Threads. I try to answer each one directly. As always, I'm Nikhyl and this has been the skip.