Reframing career change after 10+ years of experience

Changing careers after building one for 10+ years might sound foolish to most people. But when your work stops feeling like it’s losing the reward, or you’re being pulled towards something else, the itch to change direction is very real.

The linear career formula.

The linear career formula: get good at something, specialise, move up, repeat. It works. Until it doesn’t. Linear paths work well for some professions and certain personalities. But more and more people I speak to are curious about what they’re fully capable of.

That gap is that you can be genuinely good at your work AND be quietly underutilised by it.

Stagnation is not a character flaw.

Career stagnation gets treated like a personal (your) problem. As if it’s a sign you’ve lost your edge; but the World Economic Forum’s 2023 Future of Jobs Report found that 44% of core job skills will be disrupted within five years.

Tolerating being a beginner.

The hard part isn’t the decision to change. It’s what comes after. Reskilling after decades in one domain means tolerating being a beginner again. After years as the expert in the room, that’s uncomfortable. You’re not just learning something new. You’re unlearning too.

Everything you built before, still matters…

The one reflection I consistently hear from people who’ve made the change is that everything they built before got them to the next phase. The experience, the pattern recognition, the judgment sharpened over years… all of it transfers.

Don’t wait to feel ready.

Herminia Ibarra, professor at London Business School, found that successful career changers don’t start with a plan. They start with experiments. Small tests, moves across versus up, new conversations with new people.

So, turns out the itch to change direction isn’t foolishness at all - the question is what you do with that itch.