Welcome to All of the Above

This one is for the generalists who do it all, who refuse to box themselves in so they can fit into narrow job titles, and who know they can have a thriving career anyway

Welcome to All of the Above, a place where Generalists, Jacks-of-all-trades (not to mention Jills and Jaxes), and the wearers of many hats are finally at home. I’ve found I have a lot to say about career, purpose, and how people like us can fit into a corporate world that so desires to box us in. All of the Above is my attempt at making sense of all of that.

I’ve had this idea for awhile, but haven’t quite known how to start it. Should it be a new newsletter, or just a section? A new newsletter may make sense one day, but for now, I’ve decided to stick with this being a section under my current brand. As this grows, that may change! But for now, this is the way I can give this a go without overthinking it too much (and if you know me, you know I already have the newsletter created…)

Do I need a new logo? I decided I did, and I created this placeholder myself in Canva, which I am stating in case anyone reading this is familiar with my husband’s work and thinks “did he create that monstrosity?”. He didn’t — this is all me, but if this takes off I’ll enlist his help soon enough. Visual arts are not my strength, but I am allowed to do things I am bad at, an idea that I am trying to embrace more and more since it came up in podcast interview with Amanda Jackson.

I have a lot to say about career, but also don’t want it to take over what I’m doing on This Might Be Cringe. So, I’m carving out a section of that space (for now) called All of the Above. I know there are other Generalists and ‘All of the Above-ers’ out there – so this one is for you.

I originally titled this essay The Plight of the Generalist, but as I wrote this evolved into me reckoning with why I’m even starting a new project now and how it fits into my career history and evolution. Yes, it’s an introduction post. The seemingly throw-away ‘welcome to this new thing!’ essay. But it felt important to write (and don’t worry — The Plight of the Generalist is coming).

Two months ago, I gave two-weeks’ notice at a job I’d only been at for six months. Since I left, I’ve been exploring a self-employed path for myself. I’ve talked about why I quit at length here, but I’ll walk through the situation I found myself in and where I went from there at a high level here.

I’ve been laid off three times since 2022, and since then I feel like I’ve been treading water from one role to the other, trying to grow a career in a niche I put a target on, and then fell into. During my last layoff, I started to explore what being self-employed would look like, and things were unfolding. I snagged a three-month contract in a Product Management role, and really started to see how I could make a career in this space. I found I enjoyed having a set amount of time to go in, figure out a set of problems, and know I’d leave at the end of a set period, having left things better than before.

Six weeks in, my manager asked if I wanted to extend my contract. And instead of just saying yes, I asked about whether or not a full-time role at the company was possible. If I am being honest, that question came from fear I didn’t know I had until I blurted it out. I negotiated a title I’d been working towards, a salary that felt comfortable, and I was converted to full-time. All along, there was a tiny nagging voice telling me to stop this process. To extend my contract, to keep working, to figure it out later.

But my ego kept seeing the LinkedIn layoff posts, the large companies getting rid of employees en masse, and I thought I was doing the right thing for me (and my family).

Unfortunately, that nagging voice wouldn’t shut up. As soon as I converted to full-time, I felt a visceral shift within me. I started to see the work differently. I felt less ownership of my time and my energy — even if the work didn’t change all that much, my psyche knew I was working for someone else now. I tried to push through, but I felt extremely un-aligned from what I knew I wanted and it took a deep toll on me. It’s so hard to articulate what was so difficult now that I am on the other side of it, but ultimately, I think straying so far from my surface made a lot of ‘little’ things difficult for me to manage. Staying in that role accelerated my burnout and zapped my energy in a way that was, frankly, a bit terrifying.

Build your freelance offer on the side, and figure it out while you still have a paycheck, the conventional wisdom reads. And that is wisdom — if I were giving anyone advice, this is what I would say too.

But wisdom is not black and white, and unfortunately often doesn’t understand the nuance and gray areas of our situations. The energy I was giving to my job felt like it was triple the energy I’d given to any other — even though the work wasn’t that different, I got to work from home, and on paper it was a dream! I was in the thick of the worst periods of seasonal depression I’ve experienced (which I can only now see in hindsight) while training for a half marathon, parenting a toddler, and attempting (and honestly, failing) to keep up with all that it takes for adults to keep their homes running smoothly (I’m talking to you, laundry). This created a perfect breeding ground for burnout to infiltrate my life, and made it so that I had no energy at the end of the day to even think about what my next steps could be.

To use the analogy Devon Hunt so eloquently shared in our recent podcast interview: I was on a treadmill that was not stopping, and I knew sooner or later I’d have to make the choice whether or not I would fall off or step off gracefully. So, I took some time to get my bare-minimum finances in order, put in my notice, and opened a door without having any clue where it leads.

I am stepping out into a fog, only able to see one step in front of me at a time, but trusting that following the inspiration I feel will open up the world of possibilities.

I’ve been in tech and startups for TEN YEARS (fourteen years if I am allowed to count my experience in Apple Retail), and while I’ve sat on many different teams and have in fact worn those many different hats I’ve spoken about, I find it really hard to articulate that experience. But surely, there’s something there that someone wants, right? I threw together a basic offering on my website that I know needs work. Right now, I’m trying to sell people on the fact that I can do it all, while everyone is begging for me to pick a niche.

I don’t want to pick a niche and I want to do it all, but I also know I need to really spend some time thinking about that and figuring out what that positioning looks like. My hope is that this space can help me (and hopefully you) get closer to what that is.

I am pretty clear on the fact that I do not want to just be a product manager anymore — in my five years in product, I’ve picked up a lot of other skills that are useful, and have found things I enjoy more than some of the more traditional PM work. I’ve been sitting on an essay draft called I Never Want to Be a Product Manager Again since August, that I quickly put on the backburner when I did in fact become a Product Manager again. I’m excited to revisit that here, too.

There’s also an essay I could write where I walk through each step of my career, how it all seemed to unfold without a plan in front of me, and how that led me to where I am today. In fact, this essay started to take that shape, but what I think is important to communicate now is this: in fourteen years, I went from working at Apple Retail to becoming a Senior Product Manager in a very non-linear career path. I refuse to believe that the work I did before stepping into product is irrelevant, and I know there’s a way to leverage it.

In between that time, I slowly figured out what I was good at, what I enjoyed, and the fact that those aren’t always the same. I managed teams, supported users, and implemented new systems. The word ‘operations’ was thrown onto a few titles I had, to capture the fact that I did the things that didn’t fall neatly under other disciplines. I’ve done a lot, worn those hats, and carry that experience with me in everything I do today.

I’ve also learned that employers and companies love having the person who can do it all on their team, but when hiring need to box people in. I became skilled in interviews at connecting the work I did to the slightly different work the next role would require of me, and between doing that well and coming off as ‘likable’ in interviews (their words, not mine, I promise!), I was able to forge a career path in a non-traditional way, that often doesn’t make sense until you look at it in hindsight.

And once I’m hired in my boxed-in role, I become the person who can do all of the above. And because I know that it’s possible, I’m on a mission to figure out how to convince companies they need a fixer, a generalist, an ‘All of the Above-er’ to [insert job here].

Can I do everything? No. I’m not saying I want to do it all, but I want to do more than a box would traditionally allow. And I know there are other people out there who do too. Maybe, even, that’s you.

And if that’s you too, welcome to All of the Above. I’m excited to dig in, to figure out what ‘career’ even means, and to do it alongside all of you.

All of the Above is for you if:

• You’re finding yourself standing in a fog and not sure where everything you’ve done up until this point will lead.

• You’re letting the path unfold as you walk it.

• You’ve answered the questions “what do you do” (or “what do you want to do”) with a series of words and sentences that don’t feel like they make sense together.

• You wish job applications came with an ‘All of the Above (and more)’ checkbox.

• You’ve been laid off or have found yourself in a similar career pause and want to use that as a forcing function to figure out what’s next.

• You know you’re more than a job title, career path, or corporate box but don’t know how to articulate that yet.

• You’d rather pull all your hair out than ‘pick a niche’, and you believe deep down you shouldn’t have to.

• You’re figuring out how to sell ‘I do it all’ without sounding unfocused, unambitious, or confused.

• You feel like you’re alone in a world where everyone around you seems to fit so nicely into their boxes and niches.

Thanks for reading — I am excited to see where this goes, and looking forward to connecting with others who relate to being ‘All of the Above-ers’. Your ‘All of the Above’ might look different than mine. Maybe you’re a designer who’s been looped into research and go-to-market conversations, or a Chief of Staff who somehow started running analytics and product marketing for a company, or the social media manager who also writes internal communications briefs for the company (and holds the keys to all the PR contacts).

If you have a story to share, I’d love to hear it. You found this for a reason, and hopefully made it this far because this resonates.

Welcome to your new community.

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All of the Above is a publication by Julie Laufer of This Might Be Cringe. If you already subscribe to This Might Be Cringe, you’re all set and will receive these updates — nothing else to do here.

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