This chapter is about motion. Because once you’ve accepted that you’re not starting from privilege, pedigree or protection, the next uncomfortable truth arrives: you are going to have to move — often, awkwardly — before the world agrees you deserve better.I didn’t job-hop because I was reckless. I job-hopped because I was hungry and hunger makes you practical long before it makes you proud. And when you’re hungry, you don’t wait for the perfect plate — you eat what’s available, learn the kitchen and keep your eye on the menu. Note the food pun — I was (and remain) food‑obsessed, fat and permanently hungry: emotionally and physically. I have also made some bad decisions in job-hopping because my ego was bruised.Myth of the loyal climbThere is a corporate fairy tale sold to people who already have safety nets: stay put, be patient, prove yourself and one day someone will notice. In Indian family style, we tend to have a checklist that determines your level of respect and gives a (false) sense of accomplishment. Want to see it? Let’s go, as many cultures may also resonate:Step 1: Matriculate with eight As.Step 2: Apply to medicine, law and BCompt (not BCom — that is inferior).Step 3: Go to a leading university and meet your husband/wife there (they should have the same level of education).Step 4: Graduate and do community service or serve articles.Step 5: First job and pay your parents back — Brown Tax is a thing and it tends to stay with you your entire life.Step 6: Marriage.Step 7: Kids — one boy and one girl.Step 8: Buy a house (with outbuilding or cottage or extra rooms for parents — this Brown Tax thing is still a thing).Step 9: Start going overseas twice a year (take parents and siblings and in-laws with you).Step 10: Get a bigger house, get bigger cars, get bigger at travel, compete with those around you and start taking your kids down the same checklisting road.That story doesn’t work when your salary barely covers transport, your family needs support, your body already makes you “unpromotable” and no-one has pre‑decided you are leadership material. For people like me, loyalty without leverage is just slow poverty. So yes — I moved. Sometimes for R50 more. Sometimes for exposure. Sometimes just for oxygen — the kind you need when a role is slowly suffocating your ambition. Was it glamorous? No. Was it strategic? Absolutely.Because every move taught me something new: a system, a stakeholder type, a skill, a blind spot. While others were polishing titles, I was stacking capability.Lowering expectationsBefore I figured out when to leave, I had to learn — painfully — when staying was doing real damage. We don’t talk enough about the cost of staying too long in the wrong place, because loyalty is romanticised as virtue. In Indian parent tone, “What will the people say?”Especially for women. Especially for people who were taught to be grateful just to be in the room. I stayed in roles longer than I should have because I didn’t want to look difficult. Because I was afraid of being labelled ungrateful. Because I believed that endurance alone would eventually be rewarded.It wasn’t.Staying too long doesn’t just slow your growth — it quietly rewires your self‑worth. You start lowering expectations. You stop asking for a stretch. You begin to confuse familiarity with safety. The damage doesn’t arrive loudly. It arrives subtly.And here’s the part no-one prepares you for: when you finally do leave after staying too long, it looks reactive. Emotional. Unplanned. The very thing you were trying to avoid. Staying past your expiry date doesn’t make you loyal. It makes you less legible.That’s when I learnt this truth: staying can cost you just as much as leaving — it just invoices you later. Leaving early may look unstable. Leaving late looks desperate.The real skill is knowing when your growth curve has flattened and having the courage to move before resentment sets in. Once I understood that, my moves became cleaner. Calmer. Less defensive. I wasn’t running anymore. I was repositioning.Here’s what no-one tells you when you’re early‑career: your worth is real but early on, it isn’t yet fully priced by the market. You don’t build leverage by demanding respect. You build it by becoming useful in rooms that matter. So, I said yes when others said, “That’s beneath me.” I learnt faster than my pay grade. I delivered before I was trusted. And slowly, quietly, the gap between what I earned and what I knew began to close. That’s not selling out. That’s investing in yourself.The R50 mathsLet me explain the R50 job hop, because people love to judge it without understanding the arithmetic. R50 isn’t money. Let’s be honest. R50 is taxi fare. R50 is lunch. R50 is the difference between dignity and debt when you’re twentysomething and surviving on hope and instant noodles.Every small increase mattered. Not because it made me rich, but because it gave me breathing room. And breathing room is where learning lives. I hopped like a cute bunny (OK, more like a chunky hare) and learnt to navigate different personalities, categories and cultures. As sure as the day, I met a series of characters from a leadership perspective. Leaders from the slimy uncles who drank too much whiskey to those who liked the ladies to some who bred venomous reptiles as a hobby to old-school legends to charismatic ones who avoided difficult situations to a beautiful, blue-eyed, smart American blonde — yes, she defied all those perceptions of blondes.Each move was random. I wasn’t running from something, I was running towards exposure. A new system. A new boss. A new way of working. A new lesson in what not to become. Sometimes the lesson was technical. Sometimes it was political. Sometimes it was simply, never work for this type of human again. All valuable.Being called ‘unstable’Job hopping gets framed as instability by people whose careers were built on steady allowances — emotional, financial or familial. When you don’t have those cushions you build momentum instead. I was labelled impulsive, unfocused, a flight risk — all the things people call you when they’ve never had to survive without a cushion.What I actually was? Curious. Strategic. Unwilling to rot. I have always believed and still believe that there is someone out there smarter, younger, cheaper, sexier and hungrier than you. We cannot afford to plateau, get too comfortable and become redundant. Your presence, your experience and just your being should be irreplaceable.I wasn’t collecting payslips. I was collecting pattern recognition. How different leaders behave under pressure. How organisations reward obedience more than excellence. How “culture” becomes an excuse for exploitation. You can’t learn that by staying comfortable.From scraps to skillHere’s the part that only makes sense in hindsight. While I was hopping for scraps, I was accidentally building global‑grade capability. Different industries, different stakeholders, different expectations, different power dynamics — a crash course in how the same rules behave differently depending on who’s enforcing them. I learnt how to adapt quickly. How to read rooms fast. How to speak to executives and interns in the same sentence. Those skills don’t come from loyalty but from exposure.Let me be clear: some of my moves deserve to be studied in a museum under the exhibit titled “Ambition with No Adult Supervision”. I once left a job for R50 more knowing full well that R50 would be eaten entirely by transport costs. I did the maths. I still moved.The new role came with a better manager, better exposure, and fewer Sunday scaries. I have left jobs without a formal offer letter, without a safety net, without applause from family and with exactly one supportive voice saying, “You’ll figure it out.” That voice was me. One such “job drop” deserves a whole paragraph — literally. I was four months pregnant with my first son, working in a toxic agency with a lunatic CEO who treated the agency like a concentration camp. Enough was enough when the environment became nothing short of a horror story and it risked affecting the health of our baby. Hermanth one evening said, “Just quit, we will make a plan.” Just quit with no job, no income between the both of us and baby bump starting to form.Were these moves polished? No. Were they brave? Also no. They were necessary. But let me tell you something harder — and far less flattering. Not every move I made was necessity. Some were ego.When the offer flatters your insecurityThere is a specific kind of danger that comes with being overlooked for most of your life — the first time someone wants you, it can feel intoxicating. When you grow up being told you’re too much, not enough, or never going to amount to anything, validation doesn’t just feel good — it feels corrective. Like proof. Like revenge. Like finally being seen. Now remember, I am from a small town, judged for being too fat and ugly, where fat equals dumb as well.So, when a shiny job offer arrives — with a bigger title, louder praise, or someone telling you how “impressive” you are — it’s easy to confuse flattery with fit. I’ve taken roles not because they were right, but because they stroked a bruised ego. Because someone finally said, “We need you.” Because the title sounded important or someone important wanted you to join their team. Because the offer felt like external validation for an internal wound.That move is expensive. For example, I was starting to grow my position and reputation positively within the media industry. The agency I was representing was number one on the continent at the time. I was in a leadership role and was put onto the global pitch team. When pitching for a global piece of business, our agency was the clear winner.A competing agency heard I was the apparent silver bullet. I felt like I was in demand; the “It” girl in the industry. Ego levels 110% and walking on clouds. The CEO of the competing agency then called me and offered me a role. At this point, my ego had taken over to the detriment of not doing the appropriate analysis that I normally do for every move. I moved to the competing agency and realised it was not a culture fit for me and left after three months back to my original agency. This taught me to eat humble pie and ensure I do cross-checks before letting my ego make decisions.Ego‑led decisions rarely ask the right questions. They don’t ask: will I grow here? They ask: do they want me? Ego makes movement feel urgent. Wisdom makes it intentional.Don’t let the offer choose youOne of the most important lessons I learnt — late, but decisively — is this: an offer isn’t an honour. It’s an invitation. And invitations can be declined. Not every opportunity is your opportunity. Not every promotion is progress. Not every jump is upward — some are just louder. I had to learn to pause when an offer arrived. To interrogate it the same way I interrogated discomfort.I started asking: who benefits most if I take this role? Am I being hired to build — or to buffer someone else’s dysfunction? Is this role aligned to my strengths — or just my hunger? Because here’s the truth: if you don’t manage your ego, the market will. And it will do it by dangling titles, praise and urgency until you jump — even when staying would have built you more. Lest I forget that need and desire to update your LinkedIn status with your new title so your peers and former boss feel that pang of regret of losing you.Leading with ego is just not worth it.The discipline of saying noThe first time I said no to an attractive offer, it felt terrifying. It felt ungrateful. Arrogant. Risky. But it was also the first time I chose long‑term growth over short‑term validation. Saying no didn’t shrink my opportunities. It clarified them.Because when your reputation is solid and your network is real, the market doesn’t disappear when you decline. It waits. That’s how you know you’re no longer hopping out of fear. You’re choosing from strength. Ego is loud. Mastery is quiet.Early in my career, I mistook attention for progress. Later, I learnt that real growth often happens in quieter rooms — the ones where you’re trusted, not flattered. Where your work speaks before you do. Where no one needs to convince you that you belong. I stopped chasing offers. I started evaluating environments, cultures, leaders and share prices.And that shift?It’s what turned job-hopping into career architecture. Sometimes you don’t move because you can. You move because you should.Business Day