• Taylor M. LaSane built a career coaching side hustle while working at Google.
• Last year, she accepted a voluntary buyout to focus on her business full-time.
• She shared why she made the leap — and her advice for others weighing major career moves.

Last June, Taylor M. LaSane faced a decision she'd been weighing for years: whether to walk away from her six-figure salary at Google to go all in on the career coaching business she started three years earlier.

Google had just offered voluntary buyouts to some US-based employees, including those in the finance organization where she worked, positioning the program as an option for workers who didn't feel "all in" on the company's direction.

LaSane said her buyout offer included just under six months of severance pay. While the payout would help ease her transition to entrepreneurship, the risk was still significant. She said her income from the business was roughly 10% of what she earned at Google — and she had to weigh the financial implications for her husband and their twin toddlers.

Around this time, LaSane learned about the unexpected death of her uncle at the age of 62. She said he had recently retired and been looking forward to having time to "relax and actually live." His death, coupled with the buyout offer, made her question how long she was willing to wait to pursue her own plans.

"It was a reminder that life is too short to wait for permission," said LaSane, who is 32 and lives in Atlanta.

She ultimately decided to apply for the buyout and, after being accepted, took the offer — with her employment formally ending in October.

Over the past year, I've interviewed more than a dozen workers like LaSane, many of them from Big Tech companies, who chose to quit their jobs without having another role lined up. Some eventually landed at another large company. Others stepped away from the corporate world entirely — joining smaller firms, launching their own ventures, pursuing career pivots, or focusing on personal priorities, such as parenting.

These people have become outliers in an economy where workers are quitting at one of the lowest rates in the past decade — a trend fueled by a hiring slowdown across tech and other sectors that has left many holding tightly to their jobs with few appealing alternatives.

Those who walked away told me they did so for a range of reasons: concerns about job security, changes in workplace culture, entrepreneurial ambitions, or a desire for more meaningful work. The common theme: they were seeking greater long-term control over their careers.

TikTok visibility and motherhood slowed the business

In addition to LaSane's main role at Google, she volunteered as a career coach through an internal program for Google employees. She said she enjoyed the work and led as many as eight 40-minute coaching sessions in a given week.

In 2022, after seven years with Google, her growing interest in coaching — among other factors — began laying the foundation for her eventual exit.

That February, she began making career-focused TikTok videos. Around the same time, she began questioning whether her role was the right fit for her after she worked hard for a promotion, earned it, and still felt an "empty feeling."

"I was taking meetings at 2 o'clock in the morning, my hair was falling out, it was not a great time," she said. "And then I got the promotion, and I felt worse than I did before."

After reassessing her priorities, she took another step toward career coaching. In May 2022, she formally launched SHYNE, a coaching company focused on helping corporate professionals navigate career transitions. Later that year, in October, she earned a certification in leadership and performance coaching from Brown University.

From there, LaSane began taking on clients in her spare time and generating a modest income. But two factors held her back from pursuing the business more aggressively: the time constraints of juggling a full-time job and her growing concerns about the visibility of her growing TikTok presence.

LaSane said a few Google colleagues mentioned seeing her videos, and while she was never discouraged from posting, she worried about the potential career implications of being so visible online. So she decided to scale back her posting.

"I think I was trying to balance having a business on the side, but also managing the internal corporate brand," she said.

In 2023, another development pulled her away from her side business: she became pregnant with twins. In May of that year, LaSane took a break from the business that lasted until around September 2024 — spanning her pregnancy and about 10 months away from work, including eight months of company-provided maternity leave and two months of vacation and medical leave. When she returned to Google in the fall, she also refocused on growing her business.

Going all in on entrepreneurship

LaSane decided to trade TikTok for LinkedIn as her primary platform — and leaned more into group coaching and live events. Then in early 2025, she began questioning more seriously whether her position at Google was still the right fit, as organizational changes — including a growing emphasis on AI — left her increasingly uncertain about her responsibilities and long-term path.

At the same time, she believed in her business's potential — and felt the eight to 20 hours a week she could devote to it outside work and family obligations were limiting its growth. She also weighed her job security at Google, which she felt wasn't guaranteed.

"Big Tech layoffs are happening everywhere, so it wasn't like staying there was necessarily any more stable than leaving," she said.

So when she learned about Google's buyout option and mulled it over, she decided to apply and was approved. After assessing her family's financial situation — which included her husband's income and her business earnings — she accepted the offer.

LaSane said that, on the whole, Google was a "great company to work for," adding that the community she built there is what she'll remember most fondly.

In recent months, LaSane said her business has evolved from a focus on one-on-one coaching into a "career studio" with workshops and group coaching programs. She's not currently taking a personal salary from the business, but said individual events and programs have generated revenue. She said last year's Dream Day event — a live coaching workshop — brought in about $3,000 in revenue.

LaSane said she wants to give herself at least a year to pursue the business full-time before considering a pivot back to the corporate world.

"I thought about the story I wanted to tell my kids," she said. "That she took this kind of risk and was willing to bet on herself in this way — that's the story I want them to know. So I think bailing out too soon wouldn't fit the narrative."

Among her top pieces of advice for people navigating their careers: Chase the purpose and future you want — not the one you think you're supposed to have.

"If you get clear about that, everything else will fall in place," she said. "That's what happened for me."

• Camillia Nwokedi left her tech career to become a content creator in 2025.
• She started with $6,000 in savings and experimented with posting for 60 days before leaving tech.
• Nwokedi said the journey is lonely, but it's the best decision she has ever made.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Camillia Nwokedi, a 28-year-old content creator based in Pittsburgh. It's been edited for length and clarity.

When the crypto startup I was working for was sold in July 2025, I saw it as the perfect opportunity to go all in on myself as a content creator. I had about $6,000 in savings and less than 40,000 followers on TikTok, but I believed I was worth the investment.

In less than a year, I've gained brand deals, consulting and coaching clients, and I'm launching my second cohort soon. I'm taking the lessons I learned from the startup to build myself from the ground up.

It's been a difficult emotional journey, but investing in myself is the best decision I've ever made.

I worked at Accenture before getting into crypto

I worked at Accenture from late 2019 to 2021. Bitcoin was popping off at the time, and I started getting the itch to get into crypto, so I started listening to podcasts and building connections in that space.

In 2022, I connected with the CEO of a bitcoin rewards platform, and we hit it off right away. He offered me a job as a special ops agent, and I took it.

The team was really amazing, and I had a lot of senior responsibility, which I loved. At the same time, I was building a social media presence on TikTok and Instagram, where I posted about optimization, self-belief, competence, and more.

In mid-2025, the company was preparing to be sold, and I saw it as an opportunity to give myself a shot. I had been posting consistently, and it really gave me confidence to start looking at myself as an entity and not just a cog in the system.

I had helped scale and sell for other people, but now it was time to give myself that opportunity.

I did a 60-day trial run before going all in on content creation

In the 60 days prior to leaving the startup, I did a series on TikTok called SIM 60, where I posted a video each day pretending to act like a video game Sim. It was all an attempt to get me out of my head, put myself out there, and make content creation more fun. What it did was unblock me as a creative and force me to stop taking myself so seriously.

My audience significantly grew in that period, which gave me confidence that I'd be able to make life as a content creator work.

There are two necessary components for creating a startup: finances and self-belief. And sometimes, if you don't have the financial component, your self-belief can make up for that gap. Getting my self-belief up helped me feel as though I could go all in.

I started with $6,000 in savings and created a research and development budget

A lot of the initial planning was trying to get my working capital in place so that I could make this leap. I had about $6,000 in liquid savings and a retirement account with about $30,000 in it, which I didn't want to touch.

It wasn't a lot to go off of, but because I had been putting myself out there on social media consistently and even had a few user-generated content (UGC) and brand deals coming in, I had a lot of self-belief.

I even gave myself a research and development budget, so I had a little money set aside if I wanted to invest in coaching or consulting to help me with my branding. Thankfully, I haven't touched my retirement account.

I set quarterly goals and have days dedicated to things like CEO and CFO responsibilities

I looked at all the roles that I would have to maintain as a one-person business and decided to split my week into days dedicated to each role.

I have CEO day, COO day, CMO day, and more. It makes it so that every part of me can show up at the table, but I'm not necessarily asking myself to do it all at once.

Tuesdays are typically consulting and operations days for me. This is when I get things in order and execute things for my clients. As much as I've left the 9-to-5, I try to work within that realm for the structure. It helps me manage my time well without overwhelm.

I also give myself quarterly goals or KPIs, which has been comforting. It adds familiarity and structure to a space that is entirely new territory for me.

It's been an emotional and lonely journey

The most challenging and the most worthwhile part of switching from tech to content creation has been the emotional journey.

One morning, I cried because I was so stressed. There's a lot of discomfort that comes along with pursuing my goals. It can feel lonely to be building something entirely on my own.

I have to gentle-parent myself and my nervous system to keep going, and to keep believing that it's going to pay off.

It's hard to communicate to people how many internal conversations I have with myself on a daily basis to reframe old narratives and rewire limiting self-beliefs.

At the end of every week, I can't believe I made it

If you're considering leaving your job or making a big leap, don't ignore that feeling or settle.

I think people often stay as close to their dreams as possible without actually going after them directly.

As someone with not much savings who is still pursuing her dream, and it's working out, I could not recommend it more. It's the best decision I've ever made, and I hope others can have the experience of pursuing what they want as directly as possible.

Do you have a story about leaving tech and pursuing a different career you want to share? Email the editor, Manseen Logan, at mlogan@businessinsider.com.