#career-transition

#career-transition

I got my PhD in philosophy from the University of Melbourne, Australia, in 2007. After that I did a postdoc for three years at Princeton University in New Jersey, then a second postdoc at the University of Oxford, UK. I wrote my breakthrough game, QWOP, in 2008 while I was at Princeton. After that, I began a gradual pivot away from academia. Like many academics, including so many of my friends, the thought of leaving was at first totally unthinkable. It's not as though my philosophy career was going badly; I had secured prestigious postdocs and enough publications.

According to a 2024 report, over 70% of workers worldwide said they would prefer to work from home in order to save time and money by avoiding a commute. And while many dread back-to-office mandates, it's still possible to work from the comfort of your home.

Nine years ago, Aubrey was playing professional soccer in Toronto. Eight years ago, he was in Pennsylvania looking to extend his soccer career, but that didn't go as planned either, and he wound up using his Notre Dame degree to become a software engineer.

When I made it through the initial months of the pandemic working in luxury retail, I thought I was safe. I even spent some money on renovating my deck and outdoor space at home. I was stunned when, in September 2020, my position was eliminated.

Being financially independent is a truly stunning and incredible circumstance. It gives you autonomy: You love your job? Great! Stay there and throw some more dollars on the pile!

I remember doing my first tasting with my store manager. We tasted a black cup of coffee and she goes, 'Now I want you to describe this coffee.' It was the first time I'd ever been asked this. I tasted it and said it tasted like dirt. She looked at me and said, 'earthy, great.'

"It's been a memorable journey these decades with the ABC/ESPN family, but I have decided that it's time to move on," Jones wrote in a statement posted Friday on Instagram.

Leaving Wachtell wasn't an easy decision - it's one of the great law firms in the world, and I learned an enormous amount there. But it wasn't about leaving something behind; it was about being intentional about what came next.

I got fired, which is a good thing. And I didn't know what I was going to do. It was the first time in so many years.

I just didn't know what to do. My mom was a single mom, and we didn't know anything about financial aid or applications. We were kind of lost.

Baking cakes started out as a college hobby. I'd make them for my sorority sisters and, once word got out, the broader Dallas community.

As a forward-deployed engineer, my primary job is listening to customers. The results are very rewarding. Software engineers can feel far removed from customers, because they often can't see their impact.

When I went into a scene, I fell in love with that girl for the next 50 minutes. I wanted my scenes to not just appear real but to be real to me, because it made my job easier. There were very few girls who didn't orgasm in my scenes. My goal was to get the girl off, because that gave me pleasure.

When the crypto startup I was working for was sold in July 2025, I saw it as the perfect opportunity to go all in on myself as a content creator. I had about $6,000 in savings and less than 40,000 followers on TikTok, but I believed I was worth the investment.

That experience was so bad for my mental health that I decided that I couldn't do this forever. I wanted to make more of an impact on people's health in terms of prevention.

I was standing on line with my parents at Tree House's original location, where we waited an hour and a half for 12 beers. I thought, 'this is a business I want to get into.' These were the salad days of craft beer, when it seemed like the lines would never end.