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Sky News
a day ago
- Automotive
- Sky News
'I won £500k for one race': Inside the life, and finances, of a jockey
If you've ever spent your morning commute daydreaming about starting afresh with your career, this feature is for you. Each Monday, we speak to someone from a different profession to discover what it's really like. This week we chat to Harry Skelton, National Hunt jockey and winner of the David Power Jockeys' Cup... Jockeys are self-employed, so your pay can be up and down depending on your results... We get a flat rate fee of around £200 a ride and then if you win or place, you get additional prize money. About 8% of the winning pot goes to the jockey. We generally get paid to train and exercise horses in the morning, too. For me, a typical day is a bit different... because I'm very much involved in the training and running of the yard. My brother Dan Skelton is a renowned trainer and only narrowly missed out on becoming Champion Trainer last year when losing on the final day to Willie Mullins, so on non-racing days I'll be up at 5.30am before stopping for an hour at 1pm, before going back to the horses riding out, schooling horses and organising the training before stopping about 5.30pm. On racing days... I'll be up at the same time and immediately riding out before heading off to wherever that day's racing is, sometimes three to four hours away. Most of the time I'll be home by about 7pm but sometimes it can get up to 10pm before I'm home. I don't have a particular pre-race routine... and not anything superstitious, but I just want to be sure that I'm prepared for each race as much as possible, and I'll always do my homework on that. I don't get any expenses... everything is a cost to the jockey. Tom Messenger, who works for us, does most of the driving, but there's a lot of time spent in the car. I was two when I first sat on a horse... I have always ridden, but not all jockeys need to start that young. My first job was as an amateur jockey at Richard Hannon's yard when I was 16. You have to be determined. You must want to win in this job. I run as a business, so all my prize money goes into there... It's just a question of trying to keep building that up. The David Power Jockeys' Cup was a new competition for jump jockeys last season, with a first-place prize of £500k, which I was lucky enough to win. I haven't paid tax on it yet, but if you're paying big tax bills, it means you're earning plenty, so even though they're a pain when it comes to paying them, I'd rather be paying them than not. I haven't bought myself anything out of that prize yet, but I will be putting on a big party to say thank you to everyone who has supported me. I do have a pension and investments ready to go... but I think I'll be busier in retirement than I am now. My message to horse racing critics is... there's a lack of understanding about what goes on behind the scenes. I've been involved in horses my entire lifetime, along with a lot of other people, and we do it because we love the horses. The sport has a fantastic event in August called National Racehorse Week, where the public can come to visit training yards for free and meet the racehorses and people who look after them. The biggest misconception about my role is... that jockeys must be seriously tough and resilient. The falls and injuries that go with the job aren't easy to bounce back from. Jockeys require a very high level of strength and fitness. It's true that if you are shorter, you will be a bit lighter... which will make life easier as a jockey. I'm 5ft 7in. When choosing a horse... I always like to see a good head carriage and good, strong ears. If I could change one thing about the industry... I would change the amount of jump racing through the summer, which would allow for more downtime. Winning sponsorship deals is... ultra-competitive, and I now have someone who helps me with that sort of stuff. There are lots of generous sponsors who want to get involved in the sport and when they come knocking, you greet them with open arms. It's a very big family in the weighing room... and we really look out for one another. We also travel a lot together to the races, but it is ultra-competitive. When that flag goes down and the tape goes back, you want to win - it's sport. There are winners and there are losers, but that's the way it is.
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
I lost my software engineer job in May and have taken up welding. I'm happy to leave the tech industry — AI has changed it.
Tabby Toney left her tech career for welding after being laid off in May. The tech industry's growing reliance on AI led to frustration and a desire for a career change. Toney finds welding creatively fulfilling and plans to pursue it professionally after training. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Tabby Toney, a 37-year-old former software engineer based in Oklahoma, about leaving tech for a blue-collar career. It's been edited for length and clarity. My path into software engineering wasn't direct. I followed a friend into tech and started doing manual testing, knowing nothing; I was just doing user-experience work. I self-studied, paid for virtual classes, and bugged all of my software engineer friends until I could get a job as a software engineer. I loved tech because of the intellectual stimulation it provided. I enjoyed the creative problem-solving and critical thinking required to make things happen. That part has been taken away with the industry pushing AI. Last year, I started thinking about a transition out of tech. I was having recurring moments of frustration, and all my friends were having the same issues. I was laid off in May. At first, I thought I'd just take a month off because I was already so burned out. But I don't sit still very well, so I decided to take up welding. I had a feeling I was going to get laid off due to the industry's direction with AI, so I was hoarding all my extra money in preparation. I didn't want to start over again, but I also didn't want to be bored. I needed something to keep me engaged and feeling like I was contributing, but my tech job didn't do that anymore. Like me, I have friends who are completely leaving the tech industry right now. If tech isn't your whole life, it's OK if you want to move on. Now it's a little easier to make the jump. With how often the layoffs are, I feel less like I'm leaving something stable and steady. There's a lot of talk now, like, "Are you just mad because AI is taking your job?" That's not it. I haven't lost a job to AI. I think the problem is the industry's reliance on AI when it's not ready yet. Also, a lot of decisions are being made by non-tech people who don't fully understand how it affects the people who are writing the tech. I started feeling the shift affect me in October of last year, but I didn't want to leave the industry because tech has always excited me. I dreaded the coming interview process if I were to continue looking for software engineering roles. You have to drop everything for two months and study for these assessments, which are like studying for the ACT. I couldn't stand the thought of dropping everything and studying all over again for the interview, so I decided to take a month off, and I haven't looked back. How I picked up welding after getting laid off was pretty random. I took welding in high school, and I remember running around as a kid in my grandpa's garage, where he and my dad did it a bunch. I thought of it as something you do to repair things around your house or farm. But I borrowed some of my family's equipment and tried it again during my month break. I enjoy it because it's creative. However, metallurgy also involves knowing what to use and how to do it in certain situations, so there's still a thinking aspect to it. I also like working with my hands. I'm doing some side jobs for some friends right now, but I'm not at a level of welding yet that I would feel comfortable applying for a job in the field until I at least finish one class, which I start in August. Tech years are like dog years with how fast stuff changes and new inventions, but if we rely on AI to do so much, it almost feels like you're going backward in your skills, unless you're the person creating the AI. I've forgotten things that I previously knew how to do just because I hadn't done them in so long, and I've heard other people say the same thing. The market and the job industry didn't have to go this way because we could've used AI as a supplement. It's great as a helper. With how the industry is now, I'm pretty happy with my decision. I thought I would be a nervous wreck forever, but I was ready. I feel so relieved now that I have left tech and have a new plan. If you have a career change or layoff story that you would like to share, please email the reporter, Agnes Applegate, at aapplegate@ Read the original article on Business Insider
Harvard Business Review
07-07-2025
- General
- Harvard Business Review
Research: When It's Time to Leave a Career You're Passionate About
From commencement speeches to career advice columns, the call to 'follow your passion' is all around us. The advice, increasingly doled out and internalized, is clear: Find work you love, and pursue it relentlessly. But a wealth of research shows that we don't often get it right on the first try. Pursuing a passion can leave you burned out or misaligned with who you've become. Consider Elizabeth Rowe, a world-leading flutist in the Boston Symphony Orchestra, who decided at age 50 that she wanted to pursue a different passion. To fully dedicate herself to something new, she felt that she had to quit music—something she has pursued since she was a child. But this felt antithetical to everything she's always been told: to persevere and keep going no matter how tough things got. Rowe struggled for years before finally pulling the plug, and is now (belatedly) thriving in her second career as a leadership coach. So, why is it so difficult for people to give up on something that they are—or were—passionate about? In our newly published research, we reveal one key barrier: worrying about being judged for walking away from a pursuit of passion. Whether it's a teacher reconsidering the classroom or a nurse thinking about leaving medicine, people worry that others will see them as immoral and incompetent for quitting their passion. As the author and former journalist Simone Stolzoff noted in an interview, 'I felt guilty. I felt that I was abandoning a calling. … Will my colleagues and my coworkers ever forgive me?' But here's the twist: these fears are often misplaced. The Research In one study, we asked full-time employees who were passionate about their work to imagine giving up on it. We then asked them to predict how others would judge their moral character and competence for making that choice. In a separate sample of participants, we asked third-party observers to evaluate these same professionals for giving up on their passion. The difference was striking: Passion pursuers expected to be judged far more harshly than they were actually judged for giving up on their current passion. We found this effect was unique to giving up on a passion. Specifically, when people were asked about giving up on work they were less passionate about (something akin to a job that is pursued to pay the bills), their expected judgments were well-calibrated with how others actually judged them for giving up. Why the disconnect? We found that passion pursuers ruminated on all of the reasons why stepping away from their first passion signified that they were a failure. In contrast, observers—unburdened by the emotional weight of the decision—had a different view: They were more likely to view giving up as an opportunity to reengage with something better aligned with the passion pursuer. Said differently, the passion pursuers viewed giving up as 'the end of the line,' while third-party observers viewed it as 'a stop along the way,' a necessary yet courageous step to continue pursuing what matters over the course of one's career. Crucially, we found that these anticipated negative judgments didn't just affect people's internal narratives—they also shaped how they intended to behave. In a study with PhD students highly passionate for their studies, we found that the more they feared being judged for giving up on their PhD, the less likely they intended to speak up about exploitative or unjust conditions in their programs. Speaking up about such conditions suggests dissatisfaction with one's pursuit of passion, which may have led students to worry that speaking up could be interpreted as walking away from their current passion. This pattern is not unique to academia: we observed similar dynamics among samples of teachers and nurses. In another study, we found a way to reduce this fear of judgement. We recruited teachers who are—or once were—passionate about their work, and had thought about giving up on teaching in the past 12 months. We told half of them that people overestimate how harshly observers will view them for giving up on their passion for work. After providing this information, we measured their behavioral intentions 14 days later and found that they intended to engage in more actions related to giving up than the control group, such as creating a plan to quit and finding a resume coach. Thus, equipping people with the knowledge that their social concerns for giving up are misplaced may help people make the jump to pursue their next passion. The Takeaways People flourish when they see their careers as evolving journeys rather than fixed destinations, and yet so much of the discourse around passion pursuit focuses on ceaseless perseverance. We suggest reframing the discourse to emphasize that passion pursuit can have many stops along the way. Some pursuits of passion become less tenable over time as life circumstances change. Similarly, what one is passionate about today may change in the future. Both may require a pivot, and this should be seen less as giving up on a passion and more as a stop along the way of pursuing one's next venture. If you're someone pursuing your passion and thinking about quitting, ask yourself: Are you staying because you want to—or because you're afraid of what others will think? It's easy to assume that walking away signals weakness. But our research shows the opposite: people view those who give up on a passion far more positively than predicted. Giving up on a passion can be really difficult. After all, the time and effort invested is hard to part from. But it isn't necessarily giving up on yourself. It may be the first step toward something more aligned with who you are.
ABC News
07-07-2025
- Business
- ABC News
Working for someone else made it hard to care for my daughter. So I quit
Chasing a career in law was a surprise to Niti Prakash — and her family. "I come from an Indian family background, anyone who knows a lot of Indians knows there is always a push for engineering or being a doctor," says the 44-year-old from south-east Queensland. "But I was horrendous at maths … and really enjoyed legal studies." Eventually specialising in property law, Niti enjoyed the "boring document stuff". But having her daughter changed how she felt about the work she was doing. Niti's daughter was born with multiple disabilities, which has required a lot of her focus. "Working as a lawyer in private practice, you don't always get the understanding you need to take time to go to appointments. "I couldn't do a lot of things my other colleagues could, like attend evening networking events. "That was really tough." That inflexibility, along with her growing passion for the disability sector, is why Niti recently made the decision to leave law and her work in the disability sector, and focus full-time on her own independent disability consultancy. We spoke to Niti about a career change in her 40s, and what taking the leap into self-employment has been like, while also being the sole carer for her now tween daughter. These are her words. Every milestone with my daughter has had challenges. She is my everything and as a single parent, I have walked every step of this journey with her; navigating those complex systems, fighting for every inch of support. And learning firsthand how daunting the NDIS [National Disability Insurance Scheme] can be for families like mine ... juggling that with work hasn't been easy. My husband and I separated when our daughter was three. That separation threw my world, because I originally wanted to drop down to part-time work to manage all her appointments. Suddenly I had to maintain all the finances, so I went back to full-time work. COVID forced a lot of law firms to realise people can work from home, and they're not watching Jerry Springer. But back then things weren't as flexible. And medical specialists don't work according to your schedule — you take the appointment when it's on offer. I had to ask for a lot of unpaid leave to manage those. Even though no-one would tell you that is the reason they are annoyed, you just felt the heat: "Oh, she's taking another carer's day off." Do you have a unique job you often get questions about? We'd love to hear about it lifestyle@ I've been a lawyer forever and a day. I went from big firms, to small firms, to in-house and government. In one of my jobs I was working as property lawyer, and was advising on specialist disability accommodation. I felt really passionate about it because of my daughter, so I decided to see if I could step into the disability sector. I was successful getting a role in that space and on the side started my own consultancy. Just recently I've gone full-time with my business, and I've been loving it so far. At the start I felt sick about it. I had — and still have — imposter syndrome. And I do have fears about making enough money to make ends meet. I am keeping in the back of my mind that I may have to accept going back to employment part-time or full-time, but am giving it a few months and seeing what comes from that. One of the biggest shifts is I don't feel guilty anymore. No-one ever made me feel that way, but I always felt like I wasn't giving 100 per cent to my job. Just recently I took my daughter to get a new hearing aid, and it felt so freeing. I wasn't going to have to explain the situation to anyone. I just took her out of school early, and simply didn't answer any business calls during that time. This morning, I was able to make pancakes for my daughter, and she was so happy. That's one of the benefits of working for myself, I can do more things with her. That gives me a lot of joy.
CBC
06-07-2025
- Business
- CBC
What's your job-search story this summer?
This Sunday it's Cross Country Checkup the JOBS edition. It's a tough market for young people -- and it's getting tougher in Canada faster than any other major economy in the world according to recent data. How are you affected by youth unemployment? What's your job-search story this summer? Plus, a re you thinking of quitting your job? A recent survey found that 4 out of 10 Canadians were planning on looking for a new job this year. How did you know it was the right time to leave your job? How did that decision change your path?
