Help! Am I Too Old To Switch Careers?!

Dear Betches,

Two months ago, I got laid off from my job in ad sales. Luckily, the severance package was decent, and I have a little bit of time to figure out my next move.

Friends and colleagues have been great about sending along LinkedIn postings for similar roles, but now that I’ve had time to reflect, I realize that I’ve been absolutely miserable working in sales. The idea of joining yet another sales org doesn’t excite me – it fills me with dread, counting down the days until I can finally retire.

If I were 22, I would think, hey, no problem. I’ll just apply for a different entry-level job and try something totally new. But at 29, I feel like I’ve come too far both financially and professionally to throw away all my progress and go back to making half my salary on coffee-run duty.

In your honest opinion, should I try to pursue something new to find professional fulfillment, or has the window on changing careers closed? Is it better to grin and bear it, stick to what I know, and seek fulfillment from my non-working hours?

Spinning out,

Totally Confused

Hey there, Totally Confused,

Thank you for your thoughtful question — you’ve come to the right place. The staff at Betches is overflowing with career late bloomers. Seriously, we have dental hygienists, bartenders, and yes, even sales leads, who have switched over to producing podcasts, creative marketing, and curating your fave dank memes.

The TL;DR is that making a change is possible. Here are the biggest takeaways from those of us who have climbed career change mountain and lived to tell the tale.

It’s hard to hear, but a soul-sucking job probably won’t get better.

If you’re tired of working nights and weekends, tired of colleagues or managers who make you feel like rejected honeydew melon of a fruit salad, or just “tired of being tired,” as Dana (26, bartender turned social media manager) put it, you won’t magically wake up one morning with the pep and intrinsic motivation of Leslie Knope.

If the mental pressure of making a sales quota prevents you from enjoying HBO Sunday nights because the thought of Monday gives you a panic attack, you’re on your way to either crashing out like Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire, or checking out completely to the point that you’re a misery to yourself and your teammates. Get out of there!

Find low-risk ways to pursue something new.

So you’ve been laid off — not great, money is the best — but this grants you a much-needed reset period. You can suddenly put the time and energy once reserved for pacifying “The Man” into a new pursuit that diversifies your portfolio, helping you better position yourself for a different type of work.

For Dana, she began managing her bar’s social media profile to gain experience from an institution that already trusted her, which she then parlayed into freelance marketing gigs. For Emma (27, publicist turned writer), she published a weekly Substack to create her own clips.

If you’re worried about putting yourself out there in a new way, take the advice of Hannah (32, actor turned branded content lead) and “view this as an experiment.” The stakes don’t have to be high, and even if this project or undertaking feels small in comparison to your ultimate goal, it could be the very thing that sets you up to make a move when the time comes.

Your future self will thank you.

Whether you’re adjusting to a pay cut, honing new skills, or panic-Googling “what does KPI mean” under the conference room table, once you settle in, the learning curve will have been worth it. You deserve to have your Walter White moment and finally feel good about the product you’re putting into the world — but maybe choose something other than crystal meth, xo!