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How to Leave Your Career While Keeping the Door Open to a Comeback
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Workers are clinging to their jobs, but some are finding ways to embrace once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.
Americans are death-gripping their jobs. A lack of options is only part of the reason.
It’s certainly true that opportunities to job hop have waned. The quit rate has been at or below 2% for 14 straight months, according to federal data. We haven’t had a stretch like this in a decade.
But recall that during the “great resignation,” a lot of quitters weren’t leaving for different jobs. Plenty stepped away to travel, start a business or focus on family. And they did it with confidence that they could boomerang back to the same, or similar, roles they left.
Today, that confidence is badly shaken. The disappearing belief that you can return to your previous rung on the career ladder is the other cause of workers’ paralysis.
But some are bold enough to walk away from a plum position, and there is an art to leaving the door open for a career comeback. Some of it is mental, some tactical. If you’re contemplating a break or change, there are strategies to overcome the natural fear you are feeling.
I’ve gone through it myself. I am sweating my way through a version of this concern as I write what is my final “On the Clock” column. I plan to work less and parent more as my wife returns to a full-time office job. After 11 years—and 11 children birthed, adopted or fostered—it’s her turn to come first professionally.
I’m excited for both of us, in no small part because I get to stay at The Wall Street Journal in a different role. I’ll anchor a revamped Careers & Leadership newsletter, coming soon to an email inbox near you. (You can sign up for the newsletter here in advance of the switch.) Still, it isn’t lost on me that the columnist’s role I am leaving is the kind of job that might come along only once in a career.
Many of you have faced something similar.
“There’s the fear of the musical chairs problem, which is really acute in our culture,” says Sabra Meretab, who was chief of staff of Stripe’s payments engineering division when she quit to travel and write a memoir in 2024. “It’s a really legitimate concern that, if I leave, what are the odds that there is still a chair for me when I return?”
In Meretab’s case, there was. She returned to her former company 18 months later.
Weigh the risk of regret
Not everyone will be so lucky. But the thought of picking up where you left off shouldn’t be top of mind. Instead, think of this: The role you’re in could be a once-in-a-career kind of job. What if the thing tempting you to leave is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity?
“We fear the irreversibility of leaving and the opportunity cost of that, but we completely overlook the irreversibility of staying and the opportunity costs that are associated with that,” Meretab says.
Entering her 30s, she worried that the window to globe-trot as a freewheeling single might be closing. A career sabbatical would be harder to pull off later if she had a partner and children.
She concluded that she would regret missing her shot at adventure more than she would regret forfeiting a great job, even if she couldn’t get it back.
Understand you’re a catch
It’s hubris to think you are irreplaceable. At the same time, high performers don’t grow on trees.
Jawad Mourabet tries to keep this in mind as he runs his fledgling business, Velto Pickleball Club in Brooklyn, after leaving McKinsey & Co. earlier this year. He told me in March that he was giving himself two years to make it work when we spoke for a column about entrepreneurship.
He reports Velto is profitable, so he isn’t thinking about how to get his old job back. But could he, if he needed or wanted to?
“I actually think I’d be in a better position now to become a partner at McKinsey than if I had stayed,” he says.
This self-assurance is the result of a mindset shift. Like many who vied for and landed a competitive position, Mourabet internalized the sense that he was lucky to be there. Over time, though, he came to recognize his value. Maybe McKinsey was lucky to have him.
He reasons that if he was good enough the first time, he’d likely be good enough a second time—possibly even more so, with firsthand experience running a business.
Meanwhile, his pickleball club is a popular destination for some of his former colleagues. That helps keep those relationships warm.
Keep in touch
And networking, post-exit, is key to keeping your options open, says digital sales executive Shannon Leiro. She met regularly with a mentor when she stepped away for two years to start a family. She also monitored industry trends closely and, when she noticed a major shift, determined she couldn’t afford to prolong her hiatus.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I better get back in before I become obsolete,’” Leiro says.
Chika Uwazie, former chief executive of a technical recruiting startup, thinks she has more runway. She has spent the past few years creating content, including a podcast, newsletter and forthcoming book, “Timeline Grief,” about failing to hit milestones on schedule.
Still, whenever someone reaches out to gauge her interest in returning to the recruiting industry, she makes time for a conversation, even if she doesn’t expect it to go anywhere.
“I always take calls,” Uwazie says. “I think if you’re building your contacts, you can go back. I think the issue is when you are so focused on the new thing that you become disconnected.”
One caution: You don’t want to earn a reputation as someone who leads people on or wastes their time.
But if you are honest about your intentions, peeking back through the door you left open can help ensure it doesn’t slam shut forever.
Write to Callum Borchers at callum.borchers@wsj.com
