Once upon a time, I was 28 and dumb. But I was never as dumb as author James Damore who wrote a 3,200 word manifesto saying the reason why women and some minorities aren’t more represented at his firm is due to biological differences. True or false, that’s offensive to the women and minorities who made it to Google.

Overall, Google’s workforce is 69% male, 31% female. However, when it comes to technical positions, just 20% of the jobs are filled by women. 56% of the workforce is White, 35% Asian, 4% Hispanic, 2% Black, 4% Bi-racial, and less than 1% Other.

After a decade of trying to become more diverse, Google clearly has not done a great job since African Americans represent roughly 12.4% and Hispanics about 17% of the US population. Interestingly, when it comes to diversity, Asian Americans don’t seem to count for some reason, even though they are an even smaller minority at only 6% of the US population.

Given Damore is now unemployed and facing potential financial difficulties (if he doesn’t win his lawsuit), I wanted to discuss some important lessons everybody who depends on a job to survive should think about. This is a site about financial freedom after all.

I believe in free speech, but it must be conducted in a way that you don’t jeopardize your livelihood. The world is a very sensitive place now. James could’ve written about saving baby pandas from poachers, but if a large percentage of his colleagues get pissed off as a result, he loses.

How many times have you or someone you know said, “I hate my job. I wish I was doing something else instead,“? Probably a lot. But change is hard. Taking the first step towards change can be the hardest and a lot of people just don’t know where to begin even if they’re miserable. If you find yourself in this boat, what’s nice is there are a lot of free resources out there that can help if you simply start looking.

My site is one example. Capital One is another example. They sponsored me to attend one of their free career workshops in San Francisco the other day. Before diving into the key points of the workshop below, I wanted to share a story of a friend who took a risk everybody thought was absurd at the time.

Andrea had been in institutional equity sales for 10 years and grew tired of it. She was a Vice President who made a healthy $200,000 a year salary and a bonus that ranged from $0 – $200,000. She lived in a modest one bedroom apartment in a nice part of town and took the bus to work. Most people in their early 30s would never risk leaving so much money on the table. But Andrea did.

Andrea came into the office one day and told her manager that she was leaving. Everybody was shocked since she was a lovely person who was well-liked by her clients and by her colleagues. When asked whether she planned to go to a competitor, like so many have before her, she said, “Nope! I plan to go to baking school!”

Everybody was shocked! Baking school? What the heck? Even I was thinking what a curiously strange move to make when she could just practice at home after work and on the weekends.

Andrea was determined. For years, she had been dreaming of digging her hands into bowls of dough and watching her own scrumptious delights turn golden brown. If she was going to be a baker, she wanted to be the best baker possible by learning all the culinary secrets at a top school.

Surely a career doing what she loved would be less stressful and provide much more meaning to her day-to-day life. Even with the $8,000 cost to attend baking school, and the subsequent much lower salary, she believed this dramatic change would be worth it.

But once she finished school and got her first real baking job, reality hit hard. Being a baker wasn’t anywhere near as stress free as she imagined. She regularly had to work the graveyard shift in order for all her baked goods to be fresh the same day. When she worked dinner hours, she was constantly berated by the head chef, just like how Gordon Ramsey would yell at all the contestants on Hell’s Kitchen. “Hurry up you slackers!”, “Do you want me to fire you? Or are you going to fire the créme brulée because it surely isn’t going to fire itself!” It was non stop pressure in the kitchen.

After several months of work, Andrea said something I’ll never forget, “Sam I can’t take it anymore. If I’m going to get yelled at every day at work I might as well make six-figures getting yelled at every day instead of a lousy $15/hour!”

Andrea ended up giving up her dream as a master baker and going back into banking the following year. Years later she told me, “I have no regrets because I went after what I thought I wanted. I’m a much better baker now than before. And although I still don’t love my job, I have a much greater appreciation. The greatest regret would have been to never try.”

Related: Do You Want To Be Rich Or Do You Want To Be Free?