A surgeon and a former Meta exec left their prestigious careers for startups. They aren’t the only ones in search of purposeful work - Fortune

For Osso VR laminitis and CEO Justin Barad, treating patients connected weekends astatine the Orthopaedic Institute for Children successful Los Angeles is his broadside hustle. After graduating from the David Geffen School of Medicine astatine UCLA and moving arsenic a surgeon astatine Boston Children’s Hospital, helium became disillusioned with medicine and physicians’ knowing of broad diligent care. So helium combined his aesculapian expertise with his emotion of video games and coded the prototype for Osso VR, a virtual world grooming video for surgeons. 

“People said, ‘This is stupid. You can’t usage video games to bid radical to bash surgery,’” Barad says. “Well, I americium a surgeon, I marque video games, and I cognize this volition work.” 

Barad is portion of a coterie of ambitious, white-collar workers who near accomplished careers successful unchangeable fields and astatine reputable companies for sometimes obscure startups. The formation from dependable jobs to alternate vocation paths is well-documented. Nearly fractional of radical who near their jobs went to a antithetic manufacture entirely, according to a McKinsey survey. 

Fortune spoke with respective individuals who precocious founded oregon joined startups.  What’s peculiarly notable is the occurrence these startup converts achieved successful their erstwhile careers and the breadth of industries represented. They see an Emmy-nominated peculiar effects artist, a doc who graduated from med schoolhouse with a medal for world achievement, and a Stanford MBA postgraduate heading a 50-person squad astatine Meta.

For radical with specified qualifications, joining an early-stage startup is an unexpected choice. But these workers accidental they near salient roles due to the fact that they wanted jobs that offer existent intent but inactive supply an accidental to accelerate their careers. 

Anu Kirk worked astatine Sony’s Playstation part for 7 years, astir precocious arsenic the wide manager of its virtual world business, wherever helium led a 50-person team—a relation helium got by personally asking Sony CEO Shawn Layden for it. He near the institution successful August 2019 and joined Osso VR a twelvemonth later, attracted by the 210-employee startup’s quality to make caller exertion successful a virtuous way, helium says. “There’s thing dystopian astir what Osso is doing.” 

Former Meta exec Saana Rapakko Hunt was caput of halfway maturation astatine Instagram earlier pandemic-induced “soul searching” forced her to bespeak connected her skewed work-life balance. She wanted a mission-aligned relation she’d beryllium passionate astir to marque leaving her kids each time worthy it. Fittingly, her passionateness turned retired to beryllium supporting chap parents astatine The Mom Project, a jobs website for mothers, wherever she presently serves arsenic president. She was initially hired arsenic main merchandise officer. 

Rapakko describes herself arsenic an ambitious idiosyncratic who has “always worked hard,” but she was consenting to compromise connected compensation—a astir 40% wage cut—and sanction recognition—Instagram has 2 cardinal users compared to The Mom Project’s 1 million—but not the enactment itself. 

To warrant her move, Rapakko says her enactment indispensable stay impactful and contiguous caller challenges commensurate with her nonrecreational experience, similar presenting to The Mom Project’s board, starring aggregate functions, and coaching her colleagues to deliberation strategically. In short, it’s the enactment of a values-driven C-suite enforcement and a relation that would apt person taken her acold much years to attain astatine Instagram.  

The smaller and often underfunded quality of startup enactment doesn’t mean it’s immoderate little intellectually stimulating oregon performed by mediocre hires who couldn’t chopped it elsewhere—quite the opposite, Kirk says. “When you’re dealing with a startup, peculiarly successful the aboriginal stages, everybody has to beryllium great,” helium says. “It’s precise casual to place who’s not performing oregon astatine the level they request to be.”

Barad points retired that helium often poaches Sony and Disney employees who enactment successful gaming oregon ocular effects due to the fact that those sectors pain retired adjacent the astir devoted employees. He says immoderate of his caller hires consciousness similar they “found the promised onshore wherever they tin signifier their skills, assistance people, and not beryllium crushed into the crushed until they’re useless and formed aside.” 

Therein lies the existent problem. It’s not that these Fortune 500 émigrés are adverse to agelong enactment hours; they privation an leader that appreciates their unsocial accomplishment set, perspective, and talents. “I tin capable a generic relation arsenic a merchandise manager oregon person and excel,” Kirk says. “But that’s little breathtaking to maine than a institution that says, ‘Hey, we don’t privation conscionable anybody for this slot. We request your circumstantial experience, skills, and perspective.’” 

At startups, employees tin besides assistance signifier the firm imaginativeness and present results that aren’t solely measured against KPIs and shareholder value. “It’s gone from standard successful presumption of measuring the fig of radical you’re touching,” says Rapakko, referring to Instagram’s reach, “to measuring this ngo that you’re trying to propulsion into the world.”