Question: Would you change jobs for more money in a whole other industry or stay at your current job?

Charlotte Slade answered on 2 Jul 2025:

That is a really thoughtful question. It’s easy to think that more money automatically equals more happiness, but it’s often more complicated than that.

For me, I would choose to stay right where I am.

Think about baking your favourite cake. You need certain ingredients: flour, sugar, eggs. Let’s say money is the sugar. You definitely need sugar to make the cake taste good! But a cake made of only sugar would be pretty awful. You also need the other ingredients that give it substance and flavour.

In my job, those other “ingredients” are things like:

Curiosity: I get paid to ask “what if?” and then try to find the answer.
Problem-Solving: It’s like getting a new puzzle to solve every single day.
Impact: Knowing my work could one day help people or our planet.
Learning: I am constantly learning new things, so my brain never gets bored.

My current career has a great mix of all those ingredients. A different job might offer me a whole lorry-load of “sugar” (money), but if it’s missing the other things I love, I don’t think I’d be very happy in the long run. I’d rather have my perfectly balanced (and delicious!) career cake.