Member-only story
I had a well-paying job at an investment bank. Here’s why I left after two years.
For a job that paid less
When I was an undergraduate studying economics, I didn’t know what I was going to do in the future. I had no notion of what my career would be like or what I had to do to get there.
All I knew was that I wanted to be successful.
Back then, success to me was defined as being sufficiently rich — to own a car, a house and other material goods that I wanted. It is to be in a state where money no longer matters. It is not about being flamboyant and flaunting one’s wealth, but to live a comfortable life without worrying about money on a day-to-day basis. Owning a Porsche or a Toyota barely matters, as long as I can comfortably afford the loan on it.
To be successful (in my own definition above), my plan was this: Get into an investment bank, slog it out for a good ten fifteen years, climb the corporate ladder and make lots of money in that period of time and retire.
Two years into that plan, I am full on abandoning it.
Wait… but what changed?
A lot. The biggest change was my perspective — my definition of success and what I wanted out of my career.
