Ep 2 - Why You Feel Stuck in Your Big 4 Career

In today’s episode, we’ll going to talk about why you may feel stuck in your Big 4 job and some tips on how to feel freer and more decisive. 

Find the show notes for this episode at RecoveringCorpoholics.com/2. And if you like what you hear, please share this podcast with 5 of your friends to help spread the word. 

Ok so let’s get started.

This episode is going to be a bit personal for me as I felt stuck in my career for years. And if you knew me, you wouldn’t have had any idea as I never told anyone. I just kept my head down and kept working.  

I knew I wanted to do something else but had no idea where to go next and was scared that making the wrong move would set me back in my career. Sound familiar? 

There are a couple reasons why you feel stuck at your job and haven’t left yet. 

First, and the most obvious, financial reasons. 

Working at a Big 4 job, you make a great salary, which increases every year, you get a nice bonus, have full benefits, unlimited sick days (that you probably never take), and you receive random gifts throughout the year. 

And it’s great but it’s also very hard to give up. And this is especially true if you have a family to support.  

Second, is the Fear of the unknown. 

Working at a Big 4, you have great job security. Through the financial crisis in 08-09 and the pandemic happening in 2020 till now, Big 4 firms made announcements that they were going to be there for their people. 

Personally, the firm I worked at actually said they weren’t going to let any us go and made cuts elsewhere in order to protect their staff. On top of that, I’ve only known 2 people to get let go after 12 years of working at a Big 4 and to be honest, it was years coming. 

I’m saying this as when working at a Big 4, you know what you need to do to keep your job and what you need to do if you want to be that A player. 

But working at a new company is tough. You don’t know the rules, you don’t know the people. And they don’t know you. You’re going to have to make a name for yourself again, maybe even hustle like you did when you were younger. 

So here comes the fear of the unknown. Some of the questions you’ll ask yourself are: 

·      What if it doesn’t work out? 

·      What if I left my safe job for nothing? 

·      What if I can’t pay my bills? 

·      What if my boss or team sucks? 

·      What if I’m even more miserable? 

Also included in this category is: 

·      What do I even want to be doing with my life? 

·      What is my passion? 

·      Will I ever even find my passion? 

·      Also, what will people think of me? 

·      Will they think I’m a loser if I quit for something silly, I like? I mean the list can go on and on. 

And the Third reason why you feel stuck is the fear of loss. 

On top of the fear of the unknown, you question that leaving now in your career will cause you to lose everything you’ve worked for in your career thus far. 

Some of those questions you may ask yourself are: 

·      What if I everything I did was for nothing? 

·      What if I don’t use my degree? A degree that you may be still be paying for each month?

·      What about all that time you spent working at your current job. Did you just waste all your good years?

So how do you move past this so you can get unstuck and finally make a decision you’ve been wanting to make? Here are 4 strategies to help you:

Find the Full Show Notes here.