For professionals who've built great careers and still feel stuck — biweekly honest tools and real stories to get clear on what you actually want next, and how to get there.
The worst time to make a career move
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I got my Apple offer letter in April 2020. One month after the world shut down. Companies were rescinding offers. Hiring was frozen across entire industries. My LinkedIn feed was a steady stream of layoffs, furloughs, people bracing for the worst. And I was starting a new chapter at one of the most competitive companies on the planet. Not because I was lucky. Because the decision had already been made before the chaos hit. Here's what most people get wrong about career pivots. They treat the decision and the execution as the same thing. Execution is market-dependent. Timelines shift. Doors close. All of that is real. But the decision about what you want? That has nothing to do with the market. "What do I actually want my career to be" is not a timing question. It is a you question. Most people answer it never. Because there is always a reason to wait. A downturn. A reorg. An election. A vesting cliff. A recession that might be coming or might not. The conditions never get there. Because conditions are never that favorable. The external conditions are not the problem. They're the excuse the fear found to stay comfortable. I started the process that led to Apple long before April. The clarity came first. By the time the world shut down, I wasn't making a decision under pressure. I was executing one I had already made. While people around me were paralyzed, I already knew where I was going. The uncertainty in the world didn't touch the clarity I had about my direction. Clarity is not just a feeling. In a chaotic moment, it is a competitive advantage. So here's the question: What would you decide if the market were completely irrelevant? Not what steps you'd take. What would you decide about what you want, what you're ready to stop pretending is enough, what you've been telling yourself is badly timed? That answer is already in you. The market has been giving you permission to ignore it. The Career Clarity Assessment helps you cut through the noise and look inward. Ten minutes, the right questions, and you walk away seeing something you couldn't see before. Most people say it's the most honest conversation about their career they've had in years. Take the Career Clarity Assessment here. In your corner, Lamiaa Forwarded this email? Sign up here. |
The Pivot File - by Lamiaa Laurène Daif
For professionals who've built great careers and still feel stuck — biweekly honest tools and real stories to get clear on what you actually want next, and how to get there.
I used to scroll LinkedIn with a knot in my stomach. Someone would post about a new role, a pivot, something built from scratch, and I'd feel it. That sharp thing. Not quite admiration. Envy. I'd close the app. Tell myself I was being petty. That I should be grateful. That I had a great job, a real title, people who respected me. Here's what I've learned since then: I was just reading the signal incorrectly. Envy doesn't attach itself to things you don't want. It attaches itself to exactly...
Leaving a job you hate is easy. You have permission. Everyone understands. Leaving a job when nothing's broken? When the people are great, the pay is good, and you've figured out how to make it work? That's the hardest pivot there is. Maybe you don't love your job. Maybe you did once, or maybe you never did. But you're good at it. You know how to do it. It looks good on paper. You've found ways to deal with the pressure, to work around the tiredness, to keep going. That's where I was. And it...