We’re led to believe that our careers will always be linear. We’ll start as the most junior person in the room, and slowly get promoted, every few years, up through the ranks until we’re as close to the top as we are going to get.
But reality is a lot more complicated, and our careers rarely follow straight paths. In fact, there comes in time in almost everyone’s work history when you have a decision to make. Instead of just taking the next job above you, you might consider a sideways – or even slightly downwards – career move for various reasons.
Sideways career moves are rarely driven by money or status, and instead are fuelled by more intrinsic values such as learning something new, greater enjoyment or trying to find a job with better alignment to your values.
They can also be, in the right circumstances, a game changer for your career. Making a lateral move can expand your skills, widen your network and teach you how to thrive in new situations that will pay off in the long term.
I’ve written before about the problem with job promotions, where, as soon as someone gets good in a particular role, we end up promoting them into another one where they have to start the learning curve all over again. When viewed through this lens, a sideways shift can be positive if it allows you to continue doing what you’re good at, just in a new role, department or industry.
There is emerging research that backs up these benefits too. Professor Michael Waldman from Cornell University found that people who move sideways in an organisation are more likely to be promoted and experience higher wage growth over the long term than workers who aren’t.
None of this matters when you’re offered a sideways ‘promotion’ and it still feels like an emotional punch.
He found that, when you move sideways, you learn how to perform certain task better, and that ends up diversifying your skills that ultimately increases your productivity when you are subsequently promoted.
There’s a management term for this too. Instead of career ladders, some people call it a “career lattice” where workers shift around into other departments at their same level instead of only viewing promotions as going up, or down.
Businesses that actively lean into this concept of an agile workforce where multidirectional shifts can strengthen different areas actually see fewer employees leave the company and more internal hires instead of having to find outside staff.
However, none of this matters when you’re offered a sideways “promotion” and it still feels like an emotional punch. One of the biggest drawbacks is that they don’t give you the same “honeymoon” feeling that a standard vertical promotion does.
One long-running UK study that followed thousands of workers concluded that getting a traditional promotion gives a short-term spike in job satisfaction, whereas sideways moves had little effect at all. Even though it does have its benefits, it can take years to see them.
The only way to counter this is to try to zoom out on your career. If you’re considering a move into a new role that’s roughly in line with where you’re currently at – or even below – it’s tempting to think about everything that you’re losing.
Instead, try to project where you’re going to be in 18 months’ time, and use that as the timeline to judge it against. Will you have more skills, a larger network or a better working environment than you’re in today?
If the answer to one of those is “yes”, then look past the short-term emotions and make a sideways move with confidence. Although it might not feel like it at the time, it could just end up being the best move career move you’ll ever make.
Tim Duggan is author of Work Backwards: The Revolutionary Method to Work Smarter and Live Better. He writes a regular newsletter at timduggan.substack.com.
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Tim Duggan is the author of Work Backwards, Cult Status and Killer Thinking. He co-founded Junkee Media and writes a monthly newsletter called OUTLET.
