Fractional Work: A Midlife Crisis or a Career Hack or the Only Way to Stay Sane?

By Michail Katkoff , who definitely could use a breather but instead keeps jumping into the wild ride of fractional work, the go-to move for leaders who want impact without the full-time grind. I never planned to become a fractional executive.   After years of running product teams, building games, leading studios, and obsessing over free-to-play strategy, I found myself in a weird spot: too experienced for most jobs, yet too restless to commit to just one.

I didn’t want to spend the next decade climbing an org chart or sitting in a Monday sync, wondering how I became part of the problem I used to critique on the Deconstructor of Fun podcast . So I started doing the thing founders quietly ask for but don’t know how to describe. ” Or the most honest one: “Our team is great, but very junior.

” That’s how I slipped into fractional work. Not as a consultant. Not as an advisor.

As someone who plugs into a team, takes on real KPIs, and stays just long enough to make myself obsolete. And to be honest, I think I’ve come to love it. Most of the time...

Not because it’s easy, it’s definitely not. It’s one of the most chaotic, unstable, and mentally taxing ways to work. But when it works, it works better than any full-time exec role I’ve ever had.

I got to unpack fractional work with an executive headhunter Miklos Blasko. When fractional actually works, when it backfires, and the hiring mistakes even experienced founders make. All About The Results, Not The Politics On the surface, the benefits are obvious.

  I also get to jump into wildly different businesses: Roblox Studios, PC publishers, as well as tools, tech, and platforms, all running as the silent engines of the gaming industry. Each one is a new world. I stay just long enough to build context, fix something, coach someone, and move on to help the next one.

But the real appeal is more existential than that. I get to stay close to the work. No politics.

No interpersonal workplace drama. Just clear goals, honest conversations, and the ability to say: “Here’s what we’re doing. Here’s why it’s broken.

” As a fractional leader, you’re not chasing influence. You’re chasing impact. You don’t get legacy.

You get velocity. And you know what? That’s enough.

A Lifestyle Not For The Faint-Hearted There are weeks I’m flying high, engaged in strategy calls in the morning, shipping live ops features by night, helping a young PM negotiate a better title while advising a CEO on their CPO hire. And then there are weeks I wake up to two clients pausing, a proposal ghosted, and a Slack full of product decisions made without me. The peaks are thrilling.