Golden handcuffs: why I left a high-paying corporate job to do my own thing

I was earning the most I ever had, so why was I not happy?

Work hard, get the degree, success will follow. That was the deal.

I was Head of HR for Technology at Credit Suisse, and before that in senior HRBP roles. I saw all the requests.

A child is ill, and you are still expected to keep an eye on your email.

You want the promotion, so you are in the office, because visibility counts for more than what you produce. And on top, you pay for your own lunch while you are there. Wonderful.

An hour each way on the train, three days a week, and that hour is out of your time, not theirs.

The golden handcuffs are real. The money is good, and the money is what keeps you there.

Then I had children, and reached a point where I started asking: is this it for the next twenty years?

What a three-day office mandate actually looked like

I had to get up at 5.45am on office days. Get myself ready, get my daughters ready, then out of the house at 7.00am. Drop them at breakfast club by 7.15am. On to the usually busy, hot train by 7.32am. In the office around 8.15am.

I then needed to leave again by 5.00pm to be home before the school club shut. I barely saw my children, but I was always one of the first to leave the office.

Since 1 June 2025 I have saved at least 360 hours not commuting, and my alarm is now set for 6.30am. I still have to get the girls ready, after all.

So I left it

More flexibility, more freedom, and my own assumption going in was that getting back to my old salary would take at least two years.

I would rather spend those two years building something I decide on than another twenty asking permission.

Never that reliant again

If Credit Suisse had not been taken over, I could easily have still been there. But understanding how much of my life was under someone else's control has made me realise I never want to be in that position of reliance again.

What filled the hours

Here is what I did not expect about getting the hours back. The time filled easily, mainly in three ways:

1. Mum taxi, and I am now there for things I used to hear about afterwards.
2. I built my own business, in hours that used to be a train.
3. And I learnt AI properly: a whole workforce of agents, skills and the automations behind them, not a chat window and a shrug.

I left corporate for many reasons. This was just one of them.