A post by Nikhil Sharma

The switch stories that get told are the clean ones. Banker becomes baker. Twelve months, a nice arc, a photograph at the end.

The actual middle is not like that. The actual middle is a period where you are visibly less good at your new thing than you were at your old one, everybody around you can see it, and you keep going anyway while your income does something uncomfortable.

That middle has no status. That is what makes it hard - not the money and not the learning. You spent years becoming somebody whose competence was assumed, and you have voluntarily returned to being somebody who has to prove it.

Two things make it shorter. First, carry across what actually transfers, which is almost never the technical skill and almost always the judgement - knowing what a client is really asking for, knowing which problem to solve first. Second, tell people you are in the middle rather than pretending you have arrived. The pretending costs energy you need.

If you are somewhere in that middle: what have you found transfers, and what did not?