Anonymous wrote:OP. I appreciate the genuine responses. I’ll take a look at higher ed as well. I think the question of why Big Job to something slower pace is easily explained with having a young family. Kids are ES. IME no one thinks it’s strange for working moms to say “I need better work life balance in a stable field”.

Professional skill sets are concentrated in economic development. Think project design, implementation, evaluation and management of $500M+ portfolio. I genuinely like completing complex analysis and research, it sounds like an analyst or IC role could be a fit.

I was really good at what I was doing, so I kept getting promoted, kept getting new projects, and ended up C-Suite accidentally. i had a reputation for being able to mentor and develop staff, people who worked for me ended up leapfrogging into leadership roles and performing exceptionally well. I’m not some magical manager, I just hired well and invested a lot into staff PD.

Knowing what I know now, there are ways to work well without ending up in charge of everything. That doesn’t mean being lazy.

Trader Joe’s wouldn’t work because working with the public directly is one of the most stressful things you can do. Consultant is a similar no, I’m not interested in client management, it’s one of the big things I’m trying to get away from.

To the poster who said I’m at least 45 which means 50….my age is literally in the title of the post. Bizarre.

Anonymous wrote:The thing is, everywhere in gov is understaffed. So even the pretty mindless back office jobs are stressful because the volume is high. for ex, lot of fed HR is mindless (think, scan this folder of 300 resumes to confirm they all have x years of experience) but there are a handful of people doing that for an entire agency, so they are carrying a lot of weight. And there will always be senior officials who want things yesterday. So nobody is insulated from stress.