My journey from Meta to Makeup😆 part 1

A lot of clients have been asking me about my background and how I moved from Meta to makeup. I thought it might be a useful/interesting topic for some of you who are feeling stuck in your job.

It’s a topic I’ve shared before and have received mixed reactions. Most people were encouraging and kind, while some doubted my authenticity. Use your own judgment and decide what’s best for yourself. You can just take my story as a different point of view.

I have been working in the tech industries for approx ten years, and the last company I was at was Meta. I was in an operational role and the team was quite lean when I joined.

Reasons for leaving (ranked):

🌿My artistic side:

I’ve always had a spark for arts, makeup, photography (you name it). But being brought up in an Asian culture, I didn’t always have the chance to pursue it. I specialised math, science and engineering, but I know it has been a struggle for me to be really good. Whereas for the arts, it comes really easily to me. So there has always been this nagging “what if I tried”.

🍃Living without regrets:

As I got older, I realise there is no single prescribed way of living. Life can be a multitude of possibilities, and our common definition of “success” is not the only way to live. Of course, I did calculate the amount of savings I need to sustain a basic standard of living(no more luxurious travel, no more dining out, no more shopping sprees). At that moment, I just wanted to try living a different way, more than anything else in the world. I want to see how far I can go if I were to pursue something that comes easily to me.

🍃Burnout at work:

Of course I had once enjoyed my work at Meta and the other companies, otherwise I wouldn’t have lasted long. But once the initial joy of learning and growth had worn off, you began to play the same games your seniors and higher ups play. It’s evitable, as long as you are part of the system. The game causes burnout more so than the workload, at least for me. I didn’t know what I was fighting more anymore, I slowly became a shell of myself.

🍃Mental Health:

For months I would not be able to sleep, and have anxiety just thinking of work. On weekends, I stayed in bed and would either doomscroll or sleep it all away. I could not feel happy or sad, or excited. I felt dead like a zombie, with nothing to look forward to. And so I had to get out.

Wow, this is such a long piece.. I wanted to also write about how this one year of quitting was like, but I’ll leave it for the next piece.

To those who are thinking of quitting, it would be best to start with a plan. And when you are making that plan, think about the core skills you have, what do you want to achieve in life versus what you have now. If you want to quit just because you dislike your manager, try to find workarounds instead, like moving teams. Don’t give up!

#CareerTips #quitmyjob #myjourneywithlemon8 #careerchange #MyPOV