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

    Asked by back520pang on 2 Jul 2025.
    • Photo: Charlotte Slade

      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.

    • Photo: Oleg Kozhura

      Oleg Kozhura answered on 4 Jul 2025:

      Good question! The cake analogy Charlotte made is very on-point & it’s hard to give a better answer! 😀 Personally, I wouldn’t switch careers for more money. Don’t get me wrong, money is important and getting paid fairly for your work is a must, but I’m getting a lot of satisfaction from knowing that what I do matters on a scale bigger than oneself. The work we do is important for the themes of air pollution & climate change, and knowing that it has the potential to benefit the whole world is a great motivator that’s hard to beat!

    • Photo: Robbie Lynch

      Robbie Lynch answered on 16 Jul 2025:

      If I felt that I could do the new job as well as I do my current one then yes. A lot goes into deciding whether to move jobs but its also important to have the skills required.

Comments

  • Photo: Kip H

    Kip H commented on :

    This is an incredibly good question. While you need a certain amount of money – money isn’t everything. In 2024 I left a high paying job with nothing to go to because I desperately needed a break.

    Recently I’ve taken a job that pays less than the high paying job (although not much – about £4000 a year) but the job gives opportunities that I’ve never had and I have the ability to make changes to the system now.

    Would I like more money? Yes. Most people do. But I wouldn’t leave my current job for another one at the moment.

    Remember there are 168 hours in the week. You’re supposed to spend about 56 hours a week asleep. It means most people work about 40/112 of their waking hours and it’s really important that you find a job that gives you satisfaction.

  • Photo: melissau

    melissau commented on :

    This is a great question – it can be very tempting to think that the job which pays the most money is ‘better’ than one which pays less but for me what matters is getting satisfaction from your job – my first job was in financial markets, which is much better paid than the job I do now but within a few years I realised that I hated many aspects of the job. I was fortunate enough to be able to get a new qualification to switch into the type of work I do now and I don’t regret it at all. For sure, I can see friends who still work in finance who have a bigger house than me or drive a flashier car than me but I’d rather feel positive about the positive impact my job has on people and animals than have those!

  • Photo: martinpike

    martinpike commented on :

    It took 16 years from medical school entry to being a consultant, which seemed like forever. Now I have been a consultant for that long and I appreciate having chosen a career that is interesting and changes over time. I enjoy my job and do not seriously consider changing it….but if someone offered to train me as an aeronautical engineer or an astrophysicist, I would take it up. It is very difficult to choose a career as one has little to go on as a child. There is a degree of deciding to be happy and interested in what you have chosen, rather than hankering for ‘what ifs’. Also any set of qualifications do enable you to do more than you might think.