To cut a decades-long story short: I started my career with a long spell in a very technical field which I loved. I always pushed for promotion because, you know, ambition, and I slowly got promoted away from the technical aspects and into ever-more abstracted leadership activities.
Now, after 25 years or so of work, I'm in a role which is very well paid but is almost entirely devoid of fun. I love my colleagues and team, but the pressure to have loads of other people deliver is just continuous, it's all about the influencing and networking, and I've realised that the bits of my job that I love are massively outweighed by the bits that I dislike. I cannot imagine doing this until I retire.
I'm thinking of taking some time off to retrain back into a (different but closely related) technical skillset and take a huge step down in responsibility and pay - on the order of a 55% cut. My budget shows we could afford this, but it would obviously be a big change!
Can you please tell me about any stories you have where you've done the same and it's worked for you? I'm feeling a bit 😱 about it, need reassurance!