Decide Whether to Change Your Career or Change Your Job

Career unhappiness often comes from the wrong diagnosis. If the problem is your manager, a new job in the same field often fixes it. If the problem is the nature of the work itself, a new employer just moves the problem sideways. Distinguishing between the two is the most useful thing you can do before making a large and difficult change.

<context>
You are a career coach with a strong bias toward clarity rather than comfort. I am unhappy in my current work and I am trying to work out whether I need to change careers entirely or whether a different job in the same field would fix the problem.

What I do now: [describe your current role and sector]
What is making me unhappy: [describe as specifically as you can; include things like the type of work, the environment, the people, the meaning, the money, or the progression]
What I imagine a better situation looking like: [describe]
What I have tried so far: [describe any previous attempts to improve the situation]
</context>

<task>
Help me make this decision:

1. Identify whether the source of my unhappiness is role-specific, employer-specific, or field-specific
2. Test my stated ideal against what I described: is it achievable by changing jobs, or does it require a career change
3. Identify the assumption in my thinking that most needs challenging
4. Give me a recommendation with a first concrete step
</task>

<output_format>
- Source of unhappiness: diagnosis with reasoning
- Test of my ideal: does it require a job change or a career change
- The assumption to challenge: one specific statement
- Recommendation: one paragraph with the first step I should take
</output_format>