The Decision To Return
How one woman weighed the pros and cons of returning to work at Vimeo.
In order to grow, we need space to expand.
The career journey of modern women leaders can have more twists than an M. Night Shyamalan movie. But for many of us, stepping away from a ‘good enough’ opportunity to try something different is an anxiety inducing endeavor. There is a worry that if we step away there will be consequences in pay, in title, and in levels of respect.
Examples like Maria Pahuja, Senior Director of Partnerships at Vimeo, show us that this is changing. No longer is an employer gap on a resume cause for shame and question. Women can take the space they need to explore opportunities, grow themselves, and return to full time employment if they choose, and do it on their terms.
Maria started at Vimeo in 2014 when the company was less than 200 people. She describes it as “an amazing place to work, fast-paced, exciting, challenging and fun at the same time”. She led the operations team on the Entertainment side of the business while Vimeo was still working on it’s positioning in the market.
As Vimeo evolved to focus on more tools for video creators and less on producing original content and licensing, Maria stepped away after being there for three years. She wanted to focus solely on operations and grow her skills. This led to her starting her own business while growing her family, adding two babies to the mix.
In the years ‘in between’ she created Vayas Consulting company providing Fractional COO services to startups and taking on projects to help businesses to improve their workflows and their bottom line. While she was pleased with the growth of her business, her full roster of clients, and regular leads coming in, she felt that she had hit a plateau again. She was open to an opportunity to push her professional boundaries.
While Maria was growing her company, Vimeo was growing as well. The company is now led by a young energetic (female) CEO and has expanded the workforce to over 1000 employees. According to TechCrunch, “From Q1 2020 to Q1 2021, Vimeo’s revenues expanded from $57 million to $89.4 million, a gain of around 57%.” It was not the same startup Maria had left those years ago.
But the decision to return to full-time employee status after years of complete autonomy is not an easy one to make, especially with two small children. Maria, however, did not have to make that decision all at once. Vimeo reached out to her with an opportunity to “test the waters”. They hired her consulting company on a contract basis so she could see first-hand how the company had changed.
She felt confident in taking the chance as she knew the person she would be reporting to and had worked with her many times before. She also knew and respected the new CEO’s leadership style and felt confident with her driving the growth. What she found was that working collaboratively with product and engineering teams again, gave her the energy she was seeking. This helped her come to the decision to become a full time employee once again.
Because of COVID, not as much changed in her daily life as she anticipated. She is still working from home, but with less flexibility, logistically. She doesn’t feel as comfortable ducking out to do personal things between meetings or taking a random day to herself as she did before, but as she describes it that tradeoff is work it to feel “so much more engaged and invigorated in my work that I am energized to dive in each day so handling those logistics are just part of the job.”
For Maria the decision to return was about professional fulfillment. At this stage it is important for her to be engaged with work that excites her and allows her to grow. That meant going back to Vimeo.
From this experience she has learned what’s most important to her at this stage. She shared her advice for women considering making a move like hers, “Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want, ever. Whether it’s more money, more flexibility, to be on certain projects, to work remotely, etcetera. You will never know unless you ask. The more people that ask for what they want drives change.”
