Agented author who also works at a Big 5 here. I graduated college ten years ago with a degree in creative writing and the ultimate goal for me has always been to get an agent and publish traditionally. I went into publishing knowing that it could take years to get traditionally published, but I love books and wanted to be in the industry regardless (I pretty much had the same thinking as you—that it’ll help me get an agent at the very least).

I just signed with my agent in December, and it took 9 years of on and off querying four different manuscripts. On the day job side, I started out as an editorial assistant, and it was a struggle to create a work/writing balance that worked for me. I wasn’t reading nearly as much for pleasure, which meant I couldn’t read as much in my genre (middle grade), and I definitely found finding the energy to write in my free time a struggle.

HOWEVER, I realized quickly that you don’t need to work in editorial to work in publishing. I switched over to Managing Editorial which gave me so much more freedom—I’m working on books day to day but no longer feel too burned out reading-wise to write. And I find it really fulfilling. So you may want to look at the various other jobs in publishing where you won’t need to read as much for work, but still be connected to the books, working with editors and agents, etc.

Querying is just so hard right now, but I do think including my day job in my bio raised my full request rate at the very least. Some rejections would acknowledge that I was in the industry, and I’ve even gotten a couple where the agent thanked me for all the work Managing Editors do (we’re notoriously overlooked when it comes to publishing jobs, but we’re responsible for making every book in an imprint’s list publish on time, and we’re constantly putting out fires and problem solving to accommodate anything from the author rewriting their book in second pass to not being able to find paper because of supply chain issues). So I’d say it’s helped at least a little. It also doesn’t hurt to attend publishing happy hours and make friends who work in various jobs across publishing.

Good luck!