Some kids want to be firefighters, others want to be doctors. I wanted to work in corporate.

No, I am not making this up. My Mom and Dad both had awesome careers in the corporate world (accounting and finance, respectively). My folks had plenty of time to spend at home, seemed to be intellectually stimulated at work, and we lived a comfortable life. So, when it came to declaring a major at the mature age of 18, business was the easy choice. I went on to graduate in less than 4 years from the business school at the University of Washington with a focus on finance, marketing, and sales.

After graduation, I landed my dream job: I was a financial lease associate at Starbucks Coffee Company. Translation: When a landlord of Starbucks had a problem, I answered the phone and responded to emails. It was pretty cool to represent an iconic brand and to a set of important stakeholders (Starbucks’ landlords), to be the “voice” of the customer. I got promoted every year for the next 4 years. My salary had doubled and I was getting more and more responsibilities. What could possibly go wrong.

After the 4th promotion, “manager” was added to my title (business analysis manager, for those keeping track at home). I asked my manager what the process looked like to actually manage a team. I was told I was too young. Ouch. I left one month later and was leading a team of six at Amazon 6 months later. Was I too young?

After another promotion at Amazon, I moved to AWS and worked on a number of different projects. All were super interesting, but for the first time I started to get a taste of corporate politics. No longer did I only need to worry about doing great work, I now needed to worry about who knew what, how to influence key stakeholders, and other non-value add (in my opinion) work activities. During this time, my wife and I welcomed Jillian to the world. While I didn’t realize it at the time, becoming a Dad started to fundamentally shift my mindset.

While at AWS, Google called. Google said they needed someone with my skill set to join. How could I say no? After all, to a person whose life mission was to succeed in corporate, is there a better opportunity? I joined Google, my wife and I had our second kid, and 2 years later I got promoted. Six months after being promoted, I woke up to an email that said I had been laid off. I was no longer a Googler. I was crushed. I didn’t realize that working at Google had become a part of my identity.

I picked myself back up and took a much bigger job (director of revenue operations, for those still keeping track) at a small, publicly traded company. During my first week I knew I wasn’t going to last. I realized how much I valued time with family and I wasn’t willing to go into the office 5 days a week and do copious amounts of business travel. Luckily, Google called on the Friday of my first week and asked if I wanted to come back. I agreed and was working at Google later that month.

Fast forward to today and I still work at Google. The difference? I don’t think of myself as a Googler, but as someone who works at Google. I am grateful for the opportunity and the people I’ve met and skills I have acquired, but I now believe that there’s much more to our lives and identities than work.

I decided to become a coach to create a space to help others wherever they are in their journey. If you also want to jump start your career or switch paths, drop me a note.