Should You Stay, Switch, or Start?

Right now, 62% of people globally are not engaged at work. Another 15% are actively disengaged. Only 23% are truly engaged, according to Gallup’s 2024 State of the Global Workplace report. In the U.S., engagement has sunk to a decade low, with only 31% engaged and 17% actively disengaged. If you feel a persistent restlessness about your career, you are statistically normal. The problem is not you. The problem is likely a mismatch you have not diagnosed.

For women, the data is more specific. For every woman at the director level who gets promoted, two are voluntarily leaving their company. McKinsey and LeanIn call this “The Great Breakup,” and it signals that waiting for a company to catch up to your potential is no longer a default strategy. The primary reasons women leaders switch jobs are lack of advancement (48%), unsupportive managers (22%), and unmanageable workload (17%). These are structural problems, not personal failures. Nearly half of women report feeling burnt out.

Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman’s Prospect Theory explains why leaving is so hard. The psychological pain of a loss registers at roughly twice the intensity of an equivalent gain. When you consider walking away from years of investment, your brain isn’t doing rational math. It is trying to avoid the sharp, certain pain of admitting a loss. This is the sunk cost fallacy, and it keeps intelligent people in wrong-fit roles for years.

The standard advice is to figure out what you want, then go get it. Herminia Ibarra, a professor at London Business School, argues this is backwards. In her research for Working Identity, she found that knowing is the result of doing and experimenting. You change careers by testing possible selves, not through introspection alone.

This quiz uses that research. It does not ask what you dream of doing. It asks how you react to your current work reality. Your answers will point to one of three paths: staying and actively repositioning your role, switching to a new industry, or starting your own venture.

Eight questions. Under two minutes. The answer will be direct.

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What Your Result Means

Stay & Reposition
You scored here because your dissatisfaction is tied to your specific role or company, not your entire field. The research compiled by Careershifters shows 75% of people are more satisfied after a change, but a full-scale leap may be unnecessary. Your restlessness may stem from a mismatch in work orientation. Amy Wrzesniewski’s research finds people see work as a job, a career, or a calling. You might have a calling orientation in a role that treats it as just a job. Her job crafting framework is your toolkit. It means proactively reshaping your job by altering your tasks, changing who you work with, or reframing how you see your work’s purpose. The cost of not doing this is slow disengagement—becoming part of the 62% who are psychologically unattached. This week, write down three tasks you enjoy and three you dread. For one dreaded task, draft one sentence on how you could delegate it, automate it, or stop doing it without asking permission first.

Switch Industries
You scored here because your core issue is with the industry itself—its purpose, culture, or fundamental mechanics. The problem is not your manager or your title. A 2023 McKinsey report found that unsupportive managers and unmanageable workloads are top reasons women leave, but if you imagine doing the same work at a different company and feel nothing, the field is the problem. The real-world cost is burnout that follows you from job to job. Herminia Ibarra’s research suggests you cannot think your way into a new industry. You must test it. Your action this week is not to update your CV. It is to find one person on LinkedIn who works in a field you are curious about and send a brief, specific message asking about a typical Tuesday. Do not ask for a job. Ask for a description.

Start Your Own
You scored here because your energy comes from creating things that don’t yet exist in your current structure. This is not an escape from a bad job. It is a pull toward building something. The data from the National Association of Women Business Owners shows there are over 13 million women-owned businesses in the U.S. alone, a segment growing significantly faster than the market average. The cost of ignoring this signal is resentment and a growing sense that you are using only a fraction of your capability. Ibarra’s model calls this “crafting experiments.” Your task this week is not to write a business plan. It is to spend one hour doing a piece of work you would do in that hypothetical venture—design a logo, write a product description, calculate what you would charge one client. The goal is to test the work itself, not the idea.

How to Move Forward, Based on the Research

Separate loss aversion from real risk. Daniel Kahneman’s work shows we feel losses twice as powerfully as gains. When you think about leaving, the feeling of “wasting” your past investment is a cognitive bias, not a financial analysis. Calculate the actual risk: what is the minimum savings you need to cover six months of expenses? Write that number down. Then calculate the cost of staying: estimate the annual salary increase you are missing by being in a stagnant role. Seeing both numbers side-by-side makes the bias less powerful.

Test a possible self through a side project. Herminia Ibarra’s central finding is that career change happens by doing, not by planning. If you are considering a switch or a start-up, your next step is not more research. It is a small, low-stakes experiment. Volunteer for a committee that uses different skills. Write one article on a topic in the new field. Do a freelance project for a friend’s business. If your experiment involves client meetings, consider what you would wear; our guide on business casual has examples. The goal is to experience the work and gather data on whether you like the reality, not the idea.

Conduct a job crafting audit. If your result suggested you stay and reposition, use Amy Wrzesniewski’s framework. Take a sheet of paper and draw three columns: Tasks, Relationships, Purpose. Under Tasks, list everything you do. Circle three you want to do more of and three you want to stop or change. For Relationships, note who you interact with. Identify one person or department you could engage with more to make your work more meaningful. Under Purpose, write one sentence about how your work helps someone. Then write a new sentence that reframes a mundane task into that purpose. This is not about asking for a new job title. It is about redesigning the job you have.

Use your network as a sensor, not a safety net. If you are considering an industry switch, your current network will likely reinforce your current identity. Ibarra emphasises the need to build “shifting connections.” Identify two professional associations, online communities, or event series outside your field. Join one and observe the conversations for two weeks. Do not post. Listen. The language they use and the problems they discuss will tell you more about fit than any job description.

Benchmark your situation against the data, not your feelings. When you feel stalled, check it against the structural numbers. McKinsey’s 2024 report shows that for every 100 men promoted to manager, only 81 women are promoted. For Black women, it is 54. If you are waiting for a promotion that never comes, the problem may be the broken rung, not your performance. This does not mean you must leave. It means your strategy must account for the structure, not just your effort.

Define what “enough” looks like for a start-up. The fantasy of starting something is often limitless. The reality requires boundaries. Before you romanticise entrepreneurship, define the minimum viable outcome. Is it replacing 30% of your income within two years? Is it having three committed clients? Is it working no more than 50 hours a week? Write down three concrete, modest metrics for success. If you cannot achieve those under test conditions, the full-scale venture will not solve your problem.

Diagnose your work orientation. Amy Wrzesniewski’s research categorises work as a job, a career, or a calling. Your dissatisfaction might come from a mismatch. Read the descriptions of each orientation. Which one fits you now? Which one do you want? A person with a calling orientation in a job-focused workplace will feel stifled. Knowing this can clarify whether you need to craft your current role, switch environments, or build your own. This framework shows orientation is not tied to job title.

Run a sunk cost experiment. Researchers Hal Arkes and Catherine Blumer found people stick with bad investments just because they’ve already paid. They called it the sunk cost fallacy. To counter it, conduct a thought experiment: imagine you never took your current job or studied your field. With no past investment, what would you do? Write down the first three ideas. This separates genuine interest from your brain’s aversion to loss. The original experiment showed people chose a less enjoyable ski trip because they’d paid more for it. Don’t let your past costs dictate your future.

Sources

Gallup. (2024). State of the Global Workplace: 2024 Report. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/349484/state-of-the-global-workplace.aspx

Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263–291. https://doi.org/10.2307/1914185

McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org. (2024). Women in the Workplace 2024: The 10th Anniversary Report. https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/women-in-the-workplace

Ibarra, H. (2023). Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career (Updated ed.). Harvard Business Review Press. https://herminiaibarra.com/working-identity-book/

Wrzesniewski, A., & Dutton, J. E. (2001). Crafting a Job: Revisioning Employees as Active Crafters of Their Work. Academy of Management Review, 26(2), 179–201. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2001.4378011