"I just wanted to cry in the evening." How war, burnout, and an esoteric game forced a marketing professional to rethink her career and leave a stable job in IT

About experience in IT

My path in IT certainly can't be called traditional or predictable, but perhaps this is further proof that there are quite a few departments, opportunities, and channels to get into this field — not only through technical expertise & experience, but also through soft skills.

My first career step in an international IT consulting company was a position as a personal assistant, where I supported executive directors in their daily work routine, operational tasks, building teams and entire departments within the organizational structure. It was a valuable experience, because such close work with the C-level gave me an understanding not only of the specifics of the IT sphere from the perspective of an employee, but also from the perspective of the entire IT companies' business ecosystem, their needs and strategic decisions.

I consider myself lucky because throughout my journey I have only met incredible people - my colleagues, mentors and coaches who were genuinely interested in my growth and development. For me, this is like one of the features of the IT world and a filter for a certain worldview that is not built on bureaucracy, competition or scarcity, but on equality, respect and teamwork.

So when we couldn't fill a vacancy in the marketing department for quite a long time, one of the executive directors highlighted this opportunity to me and helped with the horizontal transition, where my future mentor — the marketing director — took me under her wing.

Perhaps that's why this is an unconventional career story - when I made the decision to transition to the position of Marketing Manager, FinTech and started working in this role, I still had no idea what I would do, either from a marketing perspective or from a FinTech industry perspective.

I would join calls with colleagues and simultaneously open ten tabs in Google to quickly find the necessary terms and try to catch the context of the conversation and the essence of the issues. This period in my life showed me that you should never underestimate your soft skills, the ability to work in a team, build relationships with people and be flexible. They cannot be measured or given the rank of junior, middle or senior, but they are the other side of the coin of hard expertise, and both sides are equally important when moving on your career path.

The most valuable projects in IT

Considering the beginning of this story, I am simply proud of myself — for this entire period and for this entire path traveled. But this feeling came to me over time, even relatively recently (probably, back then I was too busy mastering a whole new corporate world of information financial technologies for myself). While developers, testers, designers, products and projects are working on projects, the marketing department is working to ensure that these projects appear in their company, and not in the company next door (so, please, cats, always respond when marketers come to you with their questions, requests, articles, trend reports or tiktok! — believe me, behind each such request there are hours of careful analysis, strategic planning and competitor research).

My favorite project (and I'm so glad I had the opportunity to be a part of it and touch its creation, even though my contribution is quite small compared to the total effort of my incredible ex-team!) is Star 10Forward.

While our competitors were following the beaten path, creating pdf trend reports on 50 slides of small text, we decided to look into the future and imagine how our planet and society could develop in 50 years depending on the level of technology development and how responsibly we treat it, what level of well-being awaits us and create four whole interactive cartoon universes from this. This project involved a lot of effort, crazy concepts, dozens of hours of interviews with top IT market experts from key industries, and sleepless nights and overtime. No regrets!

About the decision to change the field

My radical change in professional activity coincided with and was layered on top of other unpredictable life experiences (which, unfortunately, I would like to avoid and never know in principle). Two months in a new role and a full-scale war begins, and with it a forced emigration abroad. I lasted a year and a half, but each layer of this experience left its own imprint, which I could not cope with at the same time.

Then I realized that I needed to change the trajectory of my life, because no one could help me if I couldn't help myself. The first step was therapy, the second was regular exercise three times a week and walks outside. Slowly, these established rituals gave me back some energy and resources, which I was able to invest in long reflections on what I wanted to do with my life.

It was incredibly scary, so for six months the thoughts of leaving IT just lived in my head, I felt them on a subconscious level with my apathy, but I didn’t let them creep into my consciousness. When you’re in another country far from home, losing a stable job and a stable income is a decision on the verge of absurdity, at least that’s how it feels.

But why doesn't anyone say that fear and courage taste exactly the same and feel the same?

The essence of it is that the field helps you give honest answers to your most secret deep questions (the ones where we already know everything, but we don't allow ourselves to say it out loud because of fears). All this time I felt as if it was not me who chose marketing and I did not choose the IT world, but it chose me, and I went with the flow. Am I ready to invest my whole life in moving up the career ladder that I did not choose? Giving myself an honest answer to this question and changing something is the scariest and bravest thing I have ever had to do.

The IT sector lures with its stability, confidence in the future, and financial well-being, but in my opinion, it couldn't cover up the reality where I simply felt unhappy. So I started to get to know myself, my talents, strengths, desires... and search for new meanings.

On adapting to the world of self-employment

I used to think that Monday-Friday from 10 am to 7 pm was difficult and restrictive. When I went into the free-floating world of freelancing, I realized that it's quite easy to show up for work within these limits and have a well-deserved weekend and a well-deserved payment for my time.

In freelancing, the rules of the game are different, you become the absolute master of your time. This is the greatest reward and at the same time the greatest risk, and it all depends only on what kind of relationship you have with discipline and the ability to manage your time. I am still going through it, but in the conditions of working for myself, this skill is pumped up quite quickly, sometimes painfully and very powerfully.

I have entered completely new areas for myself, where I start all over again. Every time I get tired of the process, I remind myself that a person grows old when he refuses to learn something new, and this gives me new strength and inspiration to move on. It is also a reminder that there is no stability in the world and that changes should be accepted with ease. It is only important not to forget that everything learned needs to be applied, and some lessons are better learned in practice, otherwise you can get stuck in the role of an endless student and never find out if it is yours.

My experience in IT gave me hard skills and a solid understanding of marketing, which now affects not only my work and the opportunity to work freelance, but also my life in general, and my fluency in English, which I improved thanks to exclusively daily work in an international company, helps me feel confident in any corner of the world and continue to work in the international market, providing other services.

My life experience, my radical change of activity, my work in IT have shown me that I learn quickly and I often succeed well, but now I also give myself the space to understand what I really love to do and what I truly enjoy. Because they say, "find what you love and you will never work a day" and I want to experience it for myself.

Money and finance

I had a financial cushion at the beginning, which became my island of security and confidence and helped me decide to take a step away from a stable job in an IT company. Previously, I simply knew that I had money and that I was spending so much, but I never had the overall picture (and, accordingly, did not take responsibility for it). Freelancing helped me become an adult in terms of finances and start carefully accounting for expenses and income - now at any moment I can clearly answer how much money I have, in which wallets and currencies, where and in what volume it comes and where it goes.

The world is unstable even when you have a stable job, so it's better that in our worldview, principles, and habits, having a financial cushion becomes a basic necessity. At the very least, it will definitely allow you to sleep better.

I am glad that I took such a responsible approach to creating a financial cushion. Now I have not yet been able to reach the level of monthly income that I had when I was employed, but I give myself time and support. I anticipated such a scenario, risks and challenges that I would encounter in the process and understood that the field and employment that I am moving into has its own specifics, and first I will work on my portfolio and reputation, so that later the portfolio will work for me.

For financial security, I found one part-time project directly with the UK market that allows me to earn the monthly minimum I want. With the rest of the time, I experiment, learn, and work on a portfolio — it's a great working model if you're changing your field drastically.

Advice for IT professionals who want change

Be honest with yourself. Write down your fears to see how many of them are rational and how many are unfounded scenarios that will most likely never come true. Prepare a financial cushion and move into an open relationship with money, where you control it, and not it controls you. And try right now what you have been putting off for a long time, what you have been thinking about for a long time, what the thought of which gives you goosebumps. Do you have the opportunity to try to do this “half-time”? One lesson, one training, one client, one attempt to declare yourself. It is not necessary to change everything at once, but do you have one small action right now that can become a starting point?

Once I thought that if it weren't for the war and emigration, maybe my life changes wouldn't have been so drastic. Maybe it would have been a smoother transition, or a completely different life scenario. But life is such an interesting thing — it's constantly changing, and will change many more times. No matter how much I look back, I've never regretted changing. It always leads either to a better place or to a better version of myself, and that's its charm.

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