Power Trip
It’s Okay to Not Want a Promotion
In defense of a thoughtful lack of ambition
I couldn’t tell you what the meeting was about or exactly when it happened — probably a year or so into my first job at a tech startup — but I feel certain I was sitting at a meeting room table and listening to someone go through a slide deck when the thought struck me: Maybe I should get an MBA.
Somewhere, a record scratched. Who had I become? Well, I’d become an ex-writer — a frustrated journalist who hit 30 and felt like her career wasn’t matching her ambition and then pivoted into the MBA- and dude-heavy world of tech startups. Partly because I was worried about not saving for retirement, partly because the job afforded me the opportunity to move to a new city where I wanted to live. Most of all, though, I felt like I’d been stalling professionally. My future in journalism seemed less than bright, and switching industries seemed like the only way to move forward — even if I didn’t know what I was moving toward.
For a while, I went all-in. I became a copywriter, then moved into a strategic marketing role. And so maybe it’s not surprising that when I spent my days being told what to do by powerful people (for the most part, men) who had MBAs themselves, I began to think I should follow the same path.
