Would you take a new job with a lower title but a higher salary?

 

How Can I Pivot from B2B content writing to the Publishing Industry?

Hi. I currently have upto 6 years of experience working as a B2B content writer and IC executive in India, Delhi NCR. I wish to pivot from this field to the Book publishing industry. However, I do not have anyone to guide me on how I can get started and which additional qualifications I would require. Please let me know.

Jobadvisor

Great question — and good news: your background is actually more transferable than it might feel right now. Six years of B2B content writing has already built skills publishing houses value: clear writing, editing under deadlines, understanding audience/market fit, and probably some project management. Here's how to think about the pivot.

First, pick a lane within publishing

"Publishing" is broad. The entry points look quite different:

• Editorial (manuscript editing, copyediting, proofreading, acquisitions) — closest to your writing skills
• Content/Marketing for publishers (author platforms, book marketing, social media, blurbs, catalog copy) — closest to your current skills, easiest pivot
• Literary agenting / rights & permissions — more relationship and business-driven
• Production/Design coordination — if you're organized and detail-oriented but less writing-focused

Given your content writing + IC (I assume "individual contributor" or possibly "internal communications"?) background, publisher-side content/marketing roles are your fastest door in — you already do 80% of the job. Editorial is a close second but usually wants a demonstrated editing sample.

Qualifications: what actually matters

You don't need a degree in publishing to get in, but a few things help a lot in the Indian market specifically:

1. Short courses/certificates (not mandatory, but useful for CV signaling and networking):

   • NBT/National Book Trust or FICCI publishing workshops (occasional)
   • Jamia Millia Islamia and a few Delhi University colleges have occasional publishing certificate programs
   • Online: Publishing Training Centre (UK) courses, or Book Trade courses via Notting Hill Editions/Publishers Training Centre are respected internationally and doable remotely
   • Copyediting/proofreading certification (e.g., via Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading, or Indian equivalents) is a strong, concrete credential if you want editorial

2. A portfolio pivot, not a portfolio replacement. Start reframing existing work: any long-form pieces, ghostwriting, or brand storytelling you've done can be repositioned as "narrative/editorial" samples. Add 2-3 new samples specifically relevant to publishing — e.g., write a sample book jacket copy, an author bio, a marketing one-pager for a book you love.

3. Freelance editing gigs are the single best low-risk way in. Sites like Reedsy, or direct outreach to indie authors, let you build an editorial portfolio while still employed.

Getting your foot in the door in Delhi NCR specifically

Delhi NCR is actually one of the best cities in India for this — most major publishers are headquartered there:

• Penguin Random House India, HarperCollins India, Bloomsbury India, Pan Macmillan India, Rupa Publications — all have Delhi/Gurgaon offices
• Roli Books, Speaking Tiger, Westland (now under Amazon-adjacent ownership changes — worth checking current status), Aleph Book Company — smaller, often more open to career-changers

Practical steps:

• Follow these publishers on LinkedIn and watch for marketing/content executive or junior editor openings — these overlap most with your existing CV
• Reach out directly to editors/marketing heads for informational interviews — publishing is a small, relationship-driven world in India, and a coffee chat often surfaces unlisted openings
• Attend Jaipur Literature Festival, Delhi Book Fair (New Delhi World Book Fair), and NBT events — huge for networking with actual industry people
• Consider a short-term or contract role first (many publishers use freelance copyeditors/proofreaders before hiring in-house) — this is a very normal and expected entry ramp

A realistic sequencing

1. Take one focused course (editing or publishing overview) — signals seriousness, ~2-3 months
2. Build 3-4 publishing-specific samples in parallel
3. Start freelancing (editing or marketing copy for an indie author/small press) while still employed
4. Network actively at 1-2 industry events over the next 6 months
5. Apply directly to marketing/content roles at publishers — these hire content people all the time and value your B2B rigor

If you want, tell me a bit more about what part appealed to you — editing manuscripts, working with authors, or the marketing/business side — and I can get more specific about which companies and openings to target first.

Would you take a new job with a lower title but a higher salary?

For example, going from director to manager or lead, but the new company is larger and more well known so their pay is higher.

Edit: To explain a little more, this would bring me from Director to Lead, for a $12,000 bump in salary, so it's an ok raise but not super great. As a director I can apply for VP roles and not immediately get passed over, whereas applying as a Lead would almost certainly get my resume in the trash pile without being looked at. I still want to climb higher so I don't want to put myself behind.

I agree that titles don't really matter and your responsibilities and pay are more important. But a title can get your foot in the door.

Jobadvisor

This is a genuinely tricky tradeoff, and the reasoning you've already laid out is exactly the right frame — so let's stress-test it a bit.

The core question: how much does "Director" actually protect you?

A title is only valuable insofar as it keeps doors open. So it's worth getting specific:

• How replaceable is the "Director" title, actually? If you left your current company today, would the next company's ATS/recruiters see "Director" and take it at face value, or do they typically discount titles from smaller/less-known companies anyway? Titles inflate a lot at smaller firms — a Director at a 50-person company sometimes maps to a Lead/Manager at a bigger one. If that's roughly your situation, you might be overestimating how much protection the title is really giving you outside your current company.
• Is the bigger company's "Lead" title actually a demotion in scope, or just a different naming convention? Some large orgs use "Lead" for what other companies call Director-level scope (P&L ownership, team size, strategic input). If the responsibilities at the new place are lateral or even a step up, the title is cosmetic — and a well-known company name on your resume for 2-3 years will likely open more doors later than the word "Director" from a smaller shop does now.

What tends to matter most in practice

• Brand name recognition compounds. Recruiters and hiring managers pattern-match on company brand almost as much as title, especially at the VP-and-above conversation stage. "Director at [no-name co]" vs "Lead at [known co]" is genuinely a toss-up, and often the known company wins.
• The exit plan matters more than the entry title. If you go in as Lead, what's the realistic path back up? Ask directly in the interview process: what does promotion velocity look like, is there a Director tier above Lead there, and how long do people typically take to get promoted. If the answer is "12-18 months to Director with strong performance," that's a very different bet than "we've never promoted a Lead to Director."
• $12k is a modest raise if it comes with a title step down — on its own that number would make me hesitate. The real value has to come from the brand-name leverage and growth trajectory, not the raise itself.

A few questions worth answering before deciding

• Does the new company have a Director tier above Lead, and is there a stated/typical timeline to get there?
• Would you be managing a similar-sized team/scope, or genuinely smaller scope?
• Is your current company's Director title one that carries weight externally, or is it somewhat inflated for your company's size?
• What's your realistic timeline for wanting to hit VP? If it's 5+ years out anyway, a 12-18 month detour as Lead barely moves that timeline. If you're trying to jump to VP in the next 1-2 years, this move could genuinely set you back.

If the scope and growth path check out, I'd lean toward taking it — brand name + real responsibility tends to outweigh a title alone when you go job-hunting again. But if "Lead" at the new place means genuinely narrower scope with no clear promotion runway, the title protection you're worried about losing is a legitimate concern, and I wouldn't take it for $12k.

I job-hopped for 15 years thinking the next role would fix it. At 41 I finally sat down and worked out the actual pattern. Anyone else who thought job-hopping would fix things?

I changed jobs more times in my 30s than I can neatly explain on a resume. Ops, then account management, then a stint in nonprofit program work. Every time I'd get bored or burnt out, I'd tell myself the next one was The One, and about eighteen months later feel exactly the same. For a long time I figured I was just bad at picking.

What actually helped was a slow pile of unglamorous stuff. A therapist I was already seeing for the burnout helped me notice what specifically drained me in each role. I started dumping notes into a Notion page every Friday about which weeks wrecked me and why. I read Designing Your Life because this sub won't shut up about it, it was fine, a couple of the exercises stuck. I even dug up my old MBTI result and a strength assessment I'd done on a whim called Pigment. Honestly there was a bit about how I work that I circled and had forgotten about. Was helpful.

The thing that actually cracked it wasn't any of those on their own. It was my husband, of all people, pointing out that in fifteen years I'd only ever complained about the meetings and the managing, never the actual work. I went back to my Friday notes and he was dead right. Every job I'd quit, I'd quit the part where I stopped getting to do the thing and started running the people who did it. Nobody's assessment told me that. My own whining did, I just needed someone to point at it.

I'm not on some perfect other side, still figuring parts of it out. But that was the whole answer for me, really. It was never about finding a better title.

Anyway, longer than I meant. If you keep landing in the same spot, might be worth reading your own complaints back before the next jump. That's most of what I've got.

Jobadvisor

That's a genuinely sharp piece of self-diagnosis — and it rings true in a way a lot of career advice doesn't, because it wasn't found in a framework, it was found in your own words read back to you.

The pattern you're describing has a name people miss constantly: the "next rung" trap in management tracks. So many careers default to "if you're good at the work, you get promoted into managing the people who do the work" — as if that's the only kind of growth. Nobody sits people down and asks whether they actually want that, they just assume more responsibility = better job. It sounds like you spent 15 years hitting that fork and quietly answering "no" with your feet instead of your mouth.

A few things stand out about how you got there, since I think the method matters as much as the answer:

• The Friday notes are the real engine here, more than any assessment. MBTI and strengths tests describe stable traits, but they can't tell you what specifically drains you in week-to-week reality — only a log of actual weeks can. You basically ran a longitudinal study on yourself.
• It took someone else to read the pattern back to you. That's not a failure of self-awareness, that's just how blind spots work — you were too close to your own complaints to hear what they added up to. Worth noting for anyone reading this who doesn't have a husband or therapist doing that pass for them: even asking a good friend "what do I always complain about" can do a version of this.
• "It was never about finding a better title" is the line that'll actually help other people, because job-hopping feels like action, like you're solving it, when really it can be a way of avoiding the one variable you haven't tested — staying in a role but changing what you do day to day, or naming the real thing out loud before you're already halfway out the door.

Curious what you've done with it since — did you go looking for individual-contributor-track roles specifically, or negotiate your current shape of work, or is that still the part you're figuring out?

My manager wants me to use AI but I don't want to. What do I do?

Hi everyone,

I'm in a bit of a weird situation. Me (the only Gen Z) is very hesitant about using AI, whereas my managers (Gen X) are completely obsessed with it. They are bringing it up in meetings, suggest we use it at every available opportunity, and constantly talk about the benefits.

I'm only in a small team (5/6 people) so there's pressure on me to use it as everyone else does. The one time I did use it to pull some stats it was all wrong and I had to do it manually again.

I don't like to use it as I am very aware of the environmental impacts etc and I just find it doesn't work for me when I don't complete the whole thought process myself (if that makes sense). It leaves me unable to explain the reasoning for why something happened or why we did certain things in meetings.

My workload hasn't been affected by me not using it compared to those who do, but I am constantly being asked why I don't use it. One of my managers jokingly said they will convert me into being AI obsessed within the next 2 years!

Is anyone else in this situation? How do explain my views on it to my managers and colleagues? Should I just use it anyway despite it going against my views?

Jobadvisor

This is a real tension, and it's worth untangling the different threads you've got bundled together, because I think they actually point to different answers.

Separate the reasons — they don't all carry equal weight at work

You've given three distinct reasons for not using AI: it produced wrong stats once, it disrupts your own thinking/ownership of the work, and environmental concerns. These matter differently in a workplace conversation:

• "It gave me wrong information and I had to redo it manually" is a completely legitimate, concrete, professional reason. This is the one to lead with. It's not an ideological objection, it's a quality-control observation — and it's exactly the kind of thing a good manager should want to hear, because it's actually useful data about where the tool fails.
• "It stops me from doing my own reasoning, and then I can't explain the 'why' in meetings" is also a strong, professional argument — arguably the strongest one you have. Being able to defend your reasoning in a meeting is a core job skill, not a personal preference. This isn't "I don't like AI," it's "I have a specific workflow reason this tool undermines something my job requires."
• Environmental impact is a legitimate personal value, but it's a much harder sell as a workplace argument, especially to a manager who's enthusiastic about AI — they're unlikely to deprioritize a work tool over your individual environmental concerns, and leading with this one risks the conversation being filed as "personal politics" rather than "professional judgment." I'd keep this one out of the workplace conversation, or mention it only briefly as an aside, not as your main case.

What I'd actually say to your manager

Something like: "I want to use tools that make my work better, and I'm open to that — but the one time I used it for the stats, it gave me wrong numbers and I had to redo the work manually, which cost more time, not less. I also find that when I skip the reasoning process myself, I can't defend the 'why' as well in meetings, which matters a lot in my role. I'm not against it in principle, but I want to use it where it actually helps rather than because it's expected."

This does a few things: it's not defensive, it doesn't moralize, it gives them a concrete failure case they can't easily wave away, and it reframes you as someone using judgment rather than someone who's just resistant.

On "should I just use it anyway"

I don't think this has to be all-or-nothing. A few things worth considering:

• Your workload isn't suffering — that's your strongest evidence, and it's worth saying explicitly if it comes up again: "My output's been the same either way, so I've mostly just been using the approach that works best for me on each task."
• You could pilot it selectively on low-stakes tasks where being wrong costs little (e.g., first-draft brainstorming, not final stats) — that gives you real data to bring back ("here's where it helped, here's where it didn't") rather than a blanket stance either way. That tends to land better with an AI-enthusiastic manager than a flat no, and it protects you from the "just resistant to change" read without forcing you to use it in ways that genuinely don't work for you.
• If your manager's "joking" about converting you keeps recurring and starts to feel like real pressure rather than banter, it's fair to name that directly and calmly — "I know it's said jokingly, but I want my actual reasoning to be heard rather than this being seen as something to overcome."

You don't have to resolve the environmental question at work at all — that one's yours to hold personally. The professional case you have is genuinely solid on its own.

Who else is content with coasting and not interested in chasing higher salaries or climbing the corporate ladder?

To provide some background, I'm currently 30 years old and have been working for nearly 8 years now. Early on in my career I was quite ambitious, however, I quickly learned the lesson that despite putting 110% into my job, my hard work may not always get rewarded. During my first year I was actively taking on more work and producing better results than coworkers with higher titles and salaries. When I was promoted after a year, I was met with a pitiful salary increase and was still making less than they were. That was when I realized switching jobs is the only surefire way to increase my salary, so I jumped ship and was able to 2.5x my salary after a few job hops.

I've been at my current company for a couple of years now. It's fully remote, pays mid 100k (closer to 200k this year), and the actual workload is only about 20-30 hours most weeks. Although it sounds like a pretty chill job, it certainly didn't start out that way, as most of my coworkers are what you'd call 10x engineers, so it took a lot of effort during my first couple of years to keep up and prove that I belonged.

It's also one of those jobs where everyone wears a lot of different hats. Over the years, several coworkers have left for bigger companies making $300-500k (based on what they disclosed to me before leaving). I imagine I could probably do the same if I really put in the effort, but at this stage I much prefer stability and comfort over the uncertainty of switching jobs and chasing a larger paycheck.

Anyway, I've pretty much lost all drive and have just been coasting for the past 2 years. Part of it is probably burnout, as I've been working for nearly 8 years straight without taking any meaningful break or proper vacation. Hitting 1M last year definitely reinforced this mindset, as it made me feel a lot more comfortable with just taking things easy and not worry too much about chasing further career growth.

These days I just do my job and don't really go above and beyond anymore. The funny thing is that once I stopped trying so hard, my yearly evaluations somehow improved and I was promoted despite not asking for it. At the time, I actually considered turning it down because I didn't want the extra responsibility that came with it.

Sorry if this post sounds a bit rambly, but I'm curious how many people here are in a similar boat, just taking it easy with no real drive to chase promotions or climb the corporate ladder.

Jobadvisor

Honestly, your situation sounds less like "lost drive" and more like you ran the numbers and correctly concluded you're already winning the game you're playing. That's worth naming, because the framing of "coasting" carries a slight guilt to it, and I'm not sure the guilt is earned here.

A few things stand out:

The math actually supports you, not just your mood

You're making close to $200k this year for 20-30 hours of work a week, remote, at a company where you've already proven yourself. The alternative — chasing the $300-500k jobs your coworkers landed — would very likely mean going back to something closer to 50-60+ hour weeks at a place with a higher bar and less slack, after already burning through 8 years without a real break. On a pure dollars-per-hour-of-life-spent basis, you might already be ahead of the $400k version of yourself. That's not a rationalization, that's just arithmetic people don't do often enough.

The "improved evaluations after coasting" detail is the most interesting part of this post

You noticed it, but I don't think you've fully sat with what it's telling you. It suggests one of a few things, possibly all at once: you were previously over-functioning relative to what the role actually needed; the extra 110% you were giving in your ambitious years wasn't being measured or valued the way you assumed; or your genuine competence is high enough that "normal effort" from you still reads as strong performance to everyone else. Any of those would mean the earlier lesson you learned — hard work isn't reliably rewarded — wasn't just a bitter one-off, it's actually still true, and you've adapted to it rationally rather than cynically.

Worth distinguishing: contentment vs. burnout residue

You mention burnout and no real break in 8 years in the same breath as "I'm content with coasting," and I'd gently separate those two things, because they'd call for different responses. If this is genuine contentment — you've hit a number, you like your life, the job supports it, and you have no unmet ambition underneath — that's a legitimate and pretty enviable place to land at 30. But if part of "I don't want the extra responsibility" is actually "I am still depleted from eight years of pushing," that's not the same as not wanting to climb — that's needing rest before you can even tell what you want. Have you actually taken meaningful time off since hitting the $1M mark, or has the coasting been happening at your job rather than away from it? Those aren't the same kind of recovery.

On the "corporate ladder" framing specifically

The FIRE and career-optimization internet tends to treat lateral coasting as a failure state, but plenty of people who've actually done the ambitious-climb thing burn out and land exactly where you are, on purpose, and stay there for a decade. You're not really "not interested in climbing" in the abstract — you climbed hard for years and hit a level where the trade stopped being worth it to you. That's a conclusion, not a lack of drive.

If the stability keeps feeling good and the job stays sustainable, I don't think you need permission to keep doing this. If you want a gut check: it might be worth checking in with yourself in another year whether this is contentment or whether restlessness creeps back in — but even that check-in doesn't need to happen on any particular timeline.

"Can someone explain 'not the right fit for the culture' to me like I'm a moron?"

I actually have had a lot of interviews in the few months I’ve been looking for a new career. Hiring managers have my resume, therefore they see my abilities. It’s like when I get to the team interview, the actual people I would be working with, it all falls apart.

I am very likable! Customer Service and People Pleasing are my specialties. ☺️

I also can easily run the flow of a business from open to close by myself if necessary. I would love to work in a team environment though.

I have great work ethic. I am a dedicated employee. My work history shows that as well.

What am I missing about these peer interviews?

I am a mature woman of 50, but literally look 35. So I don’t think it’s my age. It’s actually usually brought up at the interview when they’re doing the math, how young I look.

I love working with people of all ages, and supporting management to make their workdays easier.

Willing to listen to any constructive criticism or advice.

Thank you!🙏🏻

I literally feel like I’m in grade school, and am being chosen last for kickball!

Jobadvisor

"Not the right fit for the culture" is genuinely one of the vaguest, most unhelpful phrases in hiring — so your frustration makes total sense. Let me actually unpack what it usually means, because it's rarely about whether you're a nice person (you clearly are).

What "culture fit" actually tends to measure in peer interviews

Peer interviews are different from hiring manager interviews because peers aren't assessing "can this person do the job" (that's already been established) — they're unconsciously asking "what will it be like to sit next to this person for 8 hours a day, and will they mesh with how we already work." A few things it often actually comes down to:

• Communication style, not warmth. Being likable and being a "fit" aren't the same axis. Some teams move fast and interrupt each other; some are quiet and methodical; some joke around constantly; some are all business. If your natural style is warm/people-pleasing and their team culture is terse and task-focused (or vice versa), that mismatch reads as "not a fit" even though nothing is wrong with either style.
• How you talk about working solo vs. in a team. You mention you can run a whole business solo, which is a real strength — but if that's the story you lead with in a team interview, peers may hear "operates independently" and translate that (fairly or not) into "might not defer to our process" or "might not ask for help/input." Worth checking: are you emphasizing collaboration-specific stories (times you asked for help, built on someone else's idea, resolved friction with a coworker) as much as your solo-competence stories?
• Answers that are about pleasing rather than about substance. "People pleasing" as a specialty can sometimes read, in an interview, as agreeing with everything or not having independent opinions — peers are often quietly listening for whether you'd push back, disagree productively, or bring your own perspective, not just accommodate. If your answers lean heavily toward "I get along with everyone," some interviewers want to also hear "and here's a time I disagreed with a teammate and how we resolved it."

On the age comment

You mentioned interviewers doing math on your age when it comes up — that's worth taking seriously as a possibility, not just brushing off. Age discrimination is illegal in hiring, but it's notoriously hard to prove, and it can show up subtly as vague "culture fit" feedback when someone (consciously or not) is picturing what their existing younger team "meshes with." I can't tell from here whether that's what's happening in your case, but if you're noticing a pattern — good hiring-manager interviews, then falling apart specifically at the peer stage, with age remarked on each time — that pattern itself is data worth paying attention to, even if it's impossible to prove in any individual case.

A few concrete things to try

1. Ask for specific feedback after a rejection, even though most companies dodge it: "I'd love any specific feedback on the team interview if you're able to share it — I'm always working to improve." Most won't answer, but the ones who do will tell you far more than "culture fit" ever will.
2. In the peer round specifically, mirror their energy as much as you authentically can in the first few minutes — if they're casual, loosen up; if they're brisk and technical, tighten your answers up. This isn't about being fake, it's about signal-matching.
3. Bring at least one story about disagreement or pushback, not just harmony — it rounds you out as someone with judgment, not just agreeableness.
4. Ask peer interviewers questions back that show curiosity about their specific workflow, not just "what's the culture like" — e.g., "how does your team usually handle it when priorities shift midweek?" That signals you're picturing yourself in their actual day-to-day, not just performing likability.

You're not being chosen last for kickball — you're getting picked for the first round consistently (hiring managers), which tells you the resume and the pitch are working. The peer round is a narrower, weirder filter, and it's very fixable with small adjustments rather than anything being wrong with you fundamentally.