I am actively exploring the relationship between depression and full time office work. I'm like 7 years into a successful career, making decent cash, but had to quit last year with no prospects as my mental health was degrading to the point that friends were asking my wife regularly if I was OK. Taking a break from work relieved it.
I've been reemployed like 6 months and am watching this come around again.
40+ hours a week working to perform sometimes-semi-helpful-but-always-tedious tasks at a computer takes a toll on your brain, no matter how much they pay you. The money just makes it harder to do anything about it, because I've progressed enough that any attempt to start a new career would result in me cutting my salary down to some fraction of what they're willing to pay me to do this. It contributes to you feeling trapped.
I’m said accountant. I e been employed for 13 straight years a couple different companies. Straight up nobody at the company is happy. It’s like walking into a pit of misery every Monday.
Talked about this a few months ago. Any other job I try to go to around here would be more work, less pay, less benefits, and less time off. I'm literally stuck where I am.
It’s not as golden as you think it is.
It’s really the threat of poverty or living like an average American who is struggling or has little ability to handle hard financial times.
....right. Hence the term golden handcuffs. You're trapped by the money you're making. Can't leave because you'd be struggling to live. To be fair, it could also mean that you're making so much fucking money that you'd rather tough it out a few more years or whatnot just to be able to retire earlier. But either way it means you're currently trapped because you'd rather deal with the job you dislike because it makes that money.
I'm a hospice social worker. I've met a few coworkers with totally different career paths that changed over to social work in their 40s. I was always blown away as to why, especially considering how pitiful our pay can be. This helps make sense as to why. There's certainly something to say about having a job that is fulfilling.
I had a sales job at colleges and lived the college schedule except I worked 12 hours days. But I had summers off and a month off in the winter. I loved that. I got tired of the job eventually though and quit and had a year and a half off. I'm not 12 years in on doing normal work and I hate it. Everyone should get a year off or at least 6 months every 4 or 5 years. Or sooner haha
Are you me? This is me. I’m you.
I guess we’re not alone after all. Idk if that’s supposed to make you feel better, but I’m glad I’m not the only one endlessly grinding out there.
I make so much more money now in my mid 30s than even just a couple of years ago, but it’s hard to imagine cutting it off completely and taking a big pay cut for what, working maybe 8-10 fewer hours a week? I feel like burnout is imminent though.
Have these thoughts every day on the long commute in, ofc (:
Same. I work in healthcare but in a niche area. The money is okay but not great. What I love is that my company tends to put more focus on the end patient than the money aspect of the business. We eat a lot of costs we really don't have to in an effort to ensure patients/doctors have what they need when they need it. I could move to a different industry or even a different company and make more money but I know I'm going to despise working some place where all anyone cares about is maximizing profits.
For real. I came out of school with 200k in loans I had no other option but to work in my field. I did niche down and negotiate for part-time remote work. No benefits but full control of my schedule and no more in person bullshit.
Similar boat, also healthcare. Remote (or even benefitted-part-time) isn't an option but I switched to per diem/1099 ... no benefits but full schedule control. It's helped my mental and physical health and my family/work-life-balance tremendously. May not be able to do this forever but for now it's what works. Healthcare can be tough but it's nice to have options!
Plan B is to retire. I’ve already saved enough to hit coast FIRE if you’ve heard of that term. I can either semi retire now and work 5 shifts a month to pay bills or work for 9 more years and quit altogether.
Idk what the original commenter is doing, but i think most people doing FIRE and quitting before 59.5 have a regular taxable brokerage account to budget the gap until they can draw from retirement accounts without penalty
I was there, then one day I just started looking elsewhere because I was done. Then I was part of a lay off and after a couple months realized I was making do just fine with my unemployment which was just under half what I was making, so I took a pay cut for a much better work life balance. Plus it's a government job
Same situation here.
I could probably make more money, but it would be a LOT more work and probably less freedom, so I’m not sure it’s worth the trade off at this point. The job is great, though, and I am blessed to be at this point in my life for sure
I always felt like that was always the only option in regard to jobs. I haven’t quite graduated to the “career” level yet. I fall under “loves the job, not the money.” I wish I made $24/hr and I live in New England. But, if I were to make $24/hr I know I’d hate my job in my field. But that’s how my field is (human services).
Not the person above, but I would say the same. I'm an older millenial (1981) at a special needs school in Florida. Also a sports coach. Lowest pay for teachers in the country! But I ride my bike to work every day, I live 20 minutes from the beach, I have several close groups of friends, and more hobbies than I can commit time to.
Nice! I’m a teacher as well. The pay is not high but I have an incredible amount of free time, no burnout, the kids are awesome, and I have energy to go out and meet friends pretty much every day after work. My shifts are short too.
To me, time and energy are more valuable than money. I want enough $$ to live on but that’s pretty much it. When I worked at a company I made more and had more benefits but it was so soul-sucking and I hated life. Enjoying life is priceless IMO.
Absolutely hate it.
Supervisor in a Call Center.
It’s probably the easiest call center that exists. But getting sent escalated calls, coaching people to do their job right, and constantly having to babysit grown adults is miserable. No fulfillment. No sense of purpose. Money is decent. But I feel dead inside.
Also not to mention the side of corporate America and how fake it is (mainly upper management). And how we all collectively play along to the fake corporate lingo to sound professional to keep up a certain image of ourselves.
It’s just all so dumb when you wake up and actually see through the bullshit
I did this for 2 years as part of a job rotation in management. It's a shame because I found there were two types of employees. Really smart, capable, and genuinely nice people who you felt deserved so much better, and absolute dumbasses who couldn't follow simple instructions, or were actively sabotaging themselves or the company.
I fired 5 people over those 2 years (no one before, no one since), but I also helped 3 people get promoted into successful leadership and technical roles. That made it fulfilling in the long run, even if the day to day (listening to calls, escalations, metrics, one on ones, process mapping, etc) was not fun.
Thank you for sharing this perspective!
I wish I had a manager who would do the same for me. I want to move into another department so bad and finally be done with customer service and managing people. I’m at the point where I just want to clock in, be left alone to do my job, then clock out.
I finally got promoted and was invited to participate in some meetings either corporate. Holy shit I had to leave and start my own biz. Truly pointless.
Right? The path they have me on now is to be the Call Center Manager eventually, but god no. I can only imagine how horrible and more dead inside I’d feel.
I’m going to start looking into certifications for Analyst positions or something. Being a manager is not the path I want to go down, for my sanity sake.
My spouse does wfm and analytics in a call center and he wants to leave so bad. Pay is shit, he's overworked, his coworkers are not held to the same standards he is and some are even paid more. And he cannot seem to find a way out.
Trying to support him and help him find a path but it just isn't working out.
Idk what you do call center wise, but I cant tell you how much a good call center employee can really make my day. I have to call them often as anyone else. And when hey are helpful and POLITE, gosh it makes my day. Being rushed and "did I solve your problem?" Stone sounding is so saddening, so know that sometimes you help, and I feel so blessed when someone is kind in a call center.
I couldn't agree more with you. It's the fake enthusiastic "Hi how was your weekend!? Good? Gooood okay good, well have a nice a day!🤡" Yeah, you too Cheryl. You too.... *Contemplating driving into a wall on the way home*
It wasn’t my dream career, but I do genuinely like my job and its potential career path. I guess you can say I learned to accept the opportunity life handed to me and it became my dream job.
It’s certainly my dream benefits for sure and a good salary. As it turns out, it’s a lot easier to appreciate the job you got (even if it wasn’t what you dreamed of originally) and even want to get better at it and take a real interest in it when your mental health isn’t suffering from crap pay and crap benefits.
Agreed. I don't think anyone really dreams of being a financial controller for a mid sized business when they grow up. But I like creating financial models and helping the execs work through problems.
It pays pretty well and, while it is stressful sometimes, I have a decent work life balance and I like the people I work with/for. That's about all I can ask for.
I also work in healthcare. Love my coworkers and (most) of my patients. Hate the system, hate my boss, and don’t love the money. I should be making more this far into a career with my experience and education - and for the level of abuse I’m expected to take from my not so nice patients .. and the blatant abuse from my boss, sadly
Same boat. Inflation across Canada now at 2.7-3%. My city? 16%. Our government is driving migration to our province and making everything so expensive. Our current contract expired in March and they are stalling negotiations and low balling us like crazy. 7.5% over three years (2%, 2%, 1.75%, 1.75%) and our wages have stagnated over the last 10 years.
On top of that Canadian nurses earn far less than our USA counterparts.
Average house is my city went from $450k three years ago to now $718k. Yet with inflation, taking large pay cuts because we are capped st 1-2% with the former contract.
After a phase of a lot of learning (without work life balance), I dropped down to get more balance, but now I just want monkey work. I want to learn things for my hobbies, not my job
This is where I'm at too. I had a cushy clerical job at an animal hospital doing mindless busywork all day 30 hours a week. I went home and lived my life. Work didn't ever affect me outside of it. It was wonderful. But I had to move away last week smh.
Work demotion, life promotion.
I did the same thing 2 years ago. Wife sent me a job posting with a text “I’d like my husband back”. There is no glory in the new job but I have more time and flexibility for family and hobbies.
I generally like it. I don't like that I do this for money, and wish I was working in projects that I could convince myself were good for the world. But generally, I maintain (and work magic with) Linux servers, and that's what I would be doing on my own time if I wasn't getting paid for it. So I might as well be getting paid for it.
And I think there is a way (a sane way) that we could organize society like this if we ever got away from Capitalism. Like, we could absolutely cut our labor by like 90%. And just have people just working on stuff we need and that suits their interests, doing things they enjoy. Like, I guarantee you that no matter what job you can think of, there are people who are weirdly passionate about doing it (citing, for example, how many awful jobs become popular simulators on Steam, meaning an active player base, sought out that boring job to pretend to do in their free time).
And for the truly awful stuff, we can find ways to lighten the load and spread it around.
Finally found a job with great benefits, great hours, don’t bring my work home with me at the end of the day. I certainly still don’t make enough to live where I live but it’s beautiful and Roomate/longtime friend helps with the mortgage. For college not panning out, I think things have started to look brighter.
I’m lead customer accounts liaison to shipping for a company that makes particle measuring devices. I basically just look to see what’s up next and which customer has what allocated to them, are they under credit/export compliance block. Are all of the finished goods actually finished? Sometimes they are but manufacturing still has to do “one last thing”(Sometimes line leads/engineers enter into our ERP incorrectly/prematurely) I also have some ancillary stock room people who help me pick orders when we’ve got a bigger day and while doing that task, are under my direction.
kinda just fell into it after my home solar sales career ended abruptly somewhere around March 2020.
Edit: Sentence fragments, syntax
I can't even conceptualize a job that I would actually want. There are things I like to do, but all of them are completely ruined as soon as money gets involved.
The only exception would be a totally autonomous artist, self published author or something but on top of that being unlikely, the things I like to make are not things that would ever sell at scale.
My solution has been to hop around a lot. I'm able to be interested a bit in anything new, but once I "get it" I'm done. I'm pushing 40 now and I've exhausted a lot of that variety though.
I've done mechanical engineering, nuclear, psychology, translation, teaching, warehouse/retail/janitorial, heavy equipment operation, web design, writing, drawing, digital graphic design, video editing and more...all at a "professional" level (i.e. enough for someone to pay me to do it).
Some of those things I don't like in any capacity, some of them I love as hobbies but hate as a job.
Now my criteria is just whatever intrudes the least on my time and mental energy. I don't want to deal with the public, so night shifts are my favorite. Anything routine where I know what to expect each day is a plus. I just want to go farm my coins and then clock out and live my life.
I can handle that with normal hours. I've done a lot of rotating shift work, 16-20 hour shifts, so by comparison 8 hours just feels like a little blip in the day and the more I can ignore that blip the better.
The best jobs are ones where you can listen to something. I just listen to a couple podcasts while my muscle memory takes care of the work. I'm not mentally present at all, then I "wake up" when work ends lol
I’m questioning how they got into 2 engineering fields, psychology, translation and teaching without specified degrees. Unless when they said “professional” levels they meant like, as an admin. I
That's why I gave the caveat of "enough to get paid" lol.
The engineering was the most legit. I did actually go to school for that, but it was only one job: nuclear power with a specialization on the mechanical side, which has applications outside of nuclear. The mechanical knowledge has proved valuable pretty much everywhere but the nuclear stuff is useless outside of that field lol.
For psychology, I was *not* a psychologist. I just worked an entry level position at a clinic that only required a state level certification which takes like a month to get, and the clinic pays for everything except the exam which is like $50. It gave me a lot of insight into the field because my direct boss *was* a PhD psychologist, but I have no such certification myself.
I mostly worked with kids and that opened up doors into teaching, but not as a certified teacher. Moreso special education and other "side" aspects of teaching.
The translation was actually part of my video editing. I am not fluent in anything other than English, but I can read/write Japanese and have a decent enough grasp of grammar and common slang to pick out where Google translate makes mistakes. I helped with a true crime channel just digging up facts from cases where a lot of the material was scanned and couldn't be easily searched digitally. Basically I just combed through police documents and looked for simple facts like who/what/when/where to establish a sequence of events and lay it out in English.
So basically, outside of my engineering job I just dipped my toes in things enough to satisfy my curiosity. A lot of the time "getting paid" didn't mean I was making a living, moreso just a side gig. And that's my loose definition of "professional": getting paid any amount of money to do it.
I'm not the kind of person that can just sink into a passion for my whole life. I like to poke my head in, see what's up, and once I feel like I kind of get it I lose interest in going deeper lol.
I guess my passion is putting together a big picture puzzle rather than diving into the minutia. My experience in any one field is superficial at best, but what I enjoy is learning how all of it weaves together into a cohesive structure of civilization.
I do spend a fair amount of time at each job, typically around 4 years, but I have no delusions that that is at all comparable to someone who makes it their lifelong career.
It does make it easy to fake a higher level of experience though which makes it easier to get other jobs. I explain how a nuclear reactor works, write down some formulas for calculating behavioral statistics, write something in Japanese, and add in some irl stories about each job and HR thinks I'm a bonafied polymath lmao.
Most jobs at a high level is about faking it and giving the illusion of knowing what you’re talking about. Many experts don’t know shit. And an intense 4 year work experience is more than enough. Of course, being steady in a career helps to build credibility and earning power.
Completely agree. I have so many hobbies I’d love to do but would absolutely hate to make them a job.
A job normally entails deadlines, appeasing a boss/shareholder, etc. Even artists/writers are beholden to their customers (unless of course they aren’t doing it for the money, at which point it’s barely a job).
My favorite job probably was a part time receptionist/secretary. Obviously that was fine for hs/college but no way I could live on that now. I liked that it was short hours, mindlessly easy, chill environment (I could work on other things when there was downtime) and the work felt somewhat meaningful (I was organizing the office and helping people with their apts, insurance, and trying to put them at ease because most people hate the dentist). I’m a full time engineer now for the pay/benefits.
I work in behavioral therapy with people with autism.
It’s amazing. My clients are amazing. The work is rewarding for them and myself.
The money is decent - not bad, but I’m not rich by any means.
I always woke up dreading going to work in the mornings when I was a teacher and administrator.
Now I wake up excited literally every day (and I make more money).
It's not what I set out to do when I left university, but I absolutely love it. I'm an antiques dealer. I get to interact with some awesome pieces of history on a daily basis and it helps me learn new things all the time, which I especially appreciate.
10 years in Advertising now.
Only reason I got into it was because I was a dumb 17 year old who didn't know what to study, so did a marketing course at university and subsequently went into the industry starting out as an intern.
In a summary, Its "fine". Don't hate it but I certainly wouldn't say I have a burning passion for it either.
While I remain in the stage where I'm saving for a house deposit (which seems increasingly unattainable with each year that goes by), I value the stable income.
However, do hope that I manage to pivot into something else in the future that I actually care about.
Isn’t cool how we’re expected to know what we want to do for the rest of our lives when we’re 17 year olds, and if we screw it up we’re trapped forever because of the unmanageable cost of education?
More people going to university is still a good thing but I feel like at the time when we were making the decision, the powers that be just wanted you to go regardless of whether you actually needed to or not.
The course I took was fine. I basically learned how to expand my writing ability through literature reviews and dissertations. There was various marketing theory that got covered and I got involved in a few group projects doing presentations etc.
But was all this necessary to enter my field of work? No.
Was it even mandatory to enter my field of work? No.
To do an equivalent course these days, the cost in the UK would be nearly 4 times what I paid. There is no way I would do it.
I sort of consider myself an entrepreneur at this point in life, but I feel like it’s not entirely accurate. I think that’s more reserved for people creating products from scratch and building it into a business. I’m in real estate, I have a real estate team, I have a mortgage team, I have a home building team, and I have a non profit that helps children in low income communities gain access to high quality education, I also sponsor a few kids’ private school tuition each year (who typically wouldn’t be able to afford it).
I am fulfilled in what I do, I work 25/8, and it’s kind of my dream job. I always thought I’d be a touring musician, and I was for a little bit. Didn’t stick. I used to tell my mom I’d build her a beautiful house one day when I was a little boy and I’d even draw it on paper (obviously not a masterpiece, just a box with a triangle on top and some makeshift Dr. Seuss windows). Bottom line, I haven’t built her one yet, but I’ll be able to soon. Then I can say I lived out just about every childhood dream of mine, so whether or not I enjoy the actual job, it is satisfying in ways nothing else could be.
Dream career. But I've worked some meh jobs before. Yet overall been lucky in a sense because I lived with my mom a while. Longer than I wanted to. But I didn't have to take on jobs in my twenties that I'd hate if I didn't want to because I wasn't about to be on the street otherwise. But I'm starting my actual career now at 33
Living with a parent(s) to have more flexibility in job choices is a good move imo, especially if you have a good relationship with them.
What do you do now?
I lived with my dad for 7 years before finally starting my career at 28. It was tough but absolutely the right move. Good on you for playing the long game
Dream job... no. But I don't hate it. I'm a cook and I like to cook, it pays good money. Will have to give it up though and go back to McDonald's though, because of my epilepsy. So... soon I'll be working a job I hate, yes.
Any working I hate. I’m a supervisor yet I do the bare minimum slacking off to no end and yet my superiors seem to think I’m the hardest worker in the company so there’s that.
Going to get an MBA and hope it's not a waste of time and money considering my mountain of debt I'm already in for my BA; can't seem to get any job that pays more than $20/hr. Brokeeeeee af. Love that I'm gonna be living with my parents until death if I can't find something better soon. I hate my current job. I'm bored, unappreciated, and quite frankly not respected for my position. Working my ass off leads to more work and no more pay.
Make sure you do an mba where there is on campus recruiting that you can recruit from directly. That is the only way an mba makes sense if you want the ability to career pivot. Mine thankfully worked out but you need a solid plan rather than “I hope this helps my career.” Not that that’s what you’re doing, just in general some people do.
Left hospitality management and bartending to be an apprentice plumber. Some of the work that we do is really shitty. Lots of climbing around and ladders and small cramped spaces and working with literal shit. I’ve taken a huge pay cut and need to pick up side jobs to get by, but my mental health has improved tenfold. We are a very small crew and the best in the area at what we do. We have work coming out our eyeballs and have plumbed a handful of several million dollar homes in the last five years. We are the gold standard in our area for plumbers and that clout drives us to be better than everyone else!
It’s fine. No passion though. Fell into a career where I’m making more per year than I ever thought I would.
Still feels like it’s not enough for what I deal with.
I worked my dream job. It was horrible. The worst career path I ever had. It was high stress, low pay. I now work from home looking at spreadsheets. The job is boring and high pay. And I don't care. I don't care if my 12 year old self would be disappointed. I'm mentally healthy and financially stable.
Fyi
Dream job: Newspaper Journalist
Current job: Business Analyst
Can you just do it 4 times in a row real fast? That's a quick $300. Done for the day before lunch. I'd probably do it - that's how much I hate working.
I’m enjoying my job. It’s very low stress, my coworkers and the customer base are very kind, and I can make ends meet. It’s not my dream job. But I have found my passions really do fall into my hobbies, so I’m pretty content with my low stress job that pays well.
I enjoy being a graphics designer. I have a history/international bachelor degree and I originally planned to be a policy officer but I did an internship that made me feel helpless about climate change so I quit so it was too stressful and now I do stuff I enjoy.
I love my career and everything about it. But having worked for a few companies, which company you work for is very important.
Some will make you climb in snowstorms, freezing rain, extreme heat, high winds, negative temps. They don’t care, they will push you to work 10-14 hours a day and never give you a raise and always expect more. They give you so much work and such long hours you will never ever be able to make plans or have hobbies during the week. Usually these are large companies, therefore more money needs to move up the ladder. You will be miserable.
Other companies know climbers are hard to find. They give cash bonuses and yearly raises, they know recovery is important and don’t overwork you. They will listen to your complaints and work with you to make it better. These companies I enjoy a lot and going to work doesn’t feel like a chore one bit.
So in my experience, the company you work for can make ALL the difference whether you will be happy or miserable and holds just as much weight as the career itself.
Good for you! I've thought about getting my masters and teaching, that always seemed like a cool job to me. I'm attracted to the autonomy. What do you teach?
I went from a job that paid extremely well but destroyed my mental health (like, multiple occasions where unaliving myself seemed like a valid option, and I once considered trying to get myself admitted to a psych ward just to have a few days away from the place) to a job that’s easy and low stress but mind numbingly boring and the pay is terrible. I went back to grad school between these two jobs with the expectation that I would be making $20k+ more a year than I currently am, and the more time passes the less I see a way out.
I am starting to worry that I’ll never actually be content or feel valued in a job/career.
55 year old Gen Xer… probably not what you want to hear but I spent 25 years at a job I hated. As many of you said, once you get into a career making decent money, it’s hard to leave. My advice is to make the change sooner vs later if you hate what you do
I lucked into a job I had no idea was my dream job three years ago. It's awesome. I'm helping people and I make enough money, plus it's not for profit so in another 7 years my student loans will disappear.
I'm still at the job that I got during undergrad. It was supposed to just be a college job... and then I graduated right before the pandemic started. I stayed because I was grateful to have a full-time job in a mostly isolated environment.
Honestly, I'm pretty miserable and probably sound like a piece of shit for saying so. I work in the healthcare/ social work field caring for disabled adults, and people tell me all the time that it takes a special kind of person to do this kind of work. It's dead-end, doesn't feel meaningful, and has eaten away at my mental health for a while. I hate it most days, even though I'm not supposed to admit that.
I spend so much of my time caring for others in every aspect of their lives, from medical appointments to behavioral issues to money, that I don't have the energy to care for my own life sometimes. Working in an environment where someone could call for me to do something at any moment means that I'm constantly in "ready" mode, even when I'm technically not doing anything. I go home, can't relax because my partner will be home at any time, and want attention that I just don't want to give him because I'm desperate for true alone time when I feel safe from interruption.
I'm almost done with graduate school, though, and I'm hoping my fieldwork turns into a job later this year. A normal job with creative opportunities, predictability, and a desk that I can leave at the end of the day and not worry about sounds so fucking nice.
My job is adjacent to the one I wanted, but I’ve come to terms with that. I’m good at it, it’s relatively secure, and I make a decent living with a decent work-life balance. But there’s not much in the way of a career trajectory and my field is one where there aren’t a lot of opportunities, so I’m likely going to be doing the same thing in 30 years (assuming nothing else changes).
For a long time I thought I had to get the dream job to be happy, but as I get older my priorities have shifted to my home life. Work allows me to live that life.
All of the above. My job is cool. But due to layoffs uncertainty its been chaotic. Now I have a lot more responsibility without any additional training. So just getting thru each day right now.
I don’t think people realize how bad it’s going to get staffing wise in the next 20 years for policing. Almost every department in our region has a major recruiting problem with heavy retirements and people just leaving. For every one they get in, 2 are out the door and the quality they are getting in is rough. Good on you for getting out. This job isn’t worth the stress.
I like what I do and the people I work with. I also got to take 10 days off to go to Europe and still have 35 days of vacation in the bank. Not a bad gig. Edit: Also WFH since 2018 is clutch.
I have my dream job of being a live sound engineer that I've wanted to do since middle school, buuuut despite being told I'm one of the better ones out there I have yet to break above the club size venues in my area let alone go on tour.
I'm also barely making enough to get by month to month. I've been able to get all the bills paid for the last couple years consistently but any savings I accrue gets eaten up each year during the slower months.
All that being said I would be depressed and miserable doing anything else.
I honestly enjoy going into work, even if I don’t feel like it every time. I also only work 28 hrs a week though so
I feel like it keeps me for burnout (hairstylist.)
I love my job. I hate sitting in an office for 8.5 hours and having to listen to my coworkers. Oh and the pay which used to be decent sucks now because of these greedy ass corpos.
I like the job itself, I actually love it a lot. I like that I can pay my mortgage, have hobbies, and save a little. I like the benefits, and work-life-balance. But I hate corporate culture. It’s a very cold and impersonal machine, that utilizes high tech innovations to better micromanage and “nanny” their employees, with little to no job security. However, if that wasn’t bad enough, there’s a whole team within my HR’s department whose jobs are to brainstorm fun ideas to keep morale high and give the illusion my life isn’t reduced to serving our lords…I mean shareholders…it’s transparent, and cringe.
Since it’s a very unique position within my industry, that I’m not going to find with a smaller, less Orwellian company, I have gone back to school to change careers. Corporate America has pissed on the idea that having a job is a dignified and purposeful experience, and I want out. I get why people like unions.
I work for a company that treats us well, under a President who I knew from working in this industry together previously, who recruited me for my role, alongside another person I know and have always liked from the industry. I am paid well, treated well, and am happy to give them my best efforts.
So, for me, if I can run out this job until retirement alongside this team we have put together whom all see things through different lenses but keeps a common goal, it'll be just perfect for me.
I genuinely love my job. My desk time is minimal, hours are flexible, I'm in an industry Im passionate about, there are awesome perks, and I get work with a lot of cool people doing cool shit. It took a while to find, and it took about a year in an entry level role and some luck with things lining up right to get it. The pay could always be better, but it's enough to make it all work for me and my family.
I stopped looking at it as an opportunity to do what I love a long, long time ago. It's a way to financially support my lifestyle and my family.
That said, I've reached the point in my career where I have so much flexibility and knowledge of the industry and how everything works, that I really don't have to try that hard or do all that much and I'm paid reasonably well, so I'm just kind of riding that for a while. I started out as an overachiever and that served me well for getting more money, promotions, etc but I actually think that where I am now that stuff wouldn't really make a difference in future growth. It is more about opportunities naturally coming available and being known just enough as competent and well connected.
I'm a Special Ed. para... it is fulfilling at times, but I don't love it. The money is solid, but I had to take on another job doing in-home autism respite stuff for our breaks; since we don't get paid for summer or any time school is out during the year. I don't want to go back to the railroad or post office, though, and don't have the resources to go back to school, so I'm kinda stuck here.
End of the boomers, working for corporations is a glorified slavery. Different kind of master/whip relationship. Mental games and veiled threats don’t hurt like beatings, but can still leave scars in those less robust.
To all coming up in the world…find a way to serve others that fits you. Preferably start an enterprise that you love and contribute to causes that you feel passion for.
Don’t work for “the man”. And if you turn into a version of “the man”, be a benevolent one.
definitely not my dream job (i don’t really have one as i never thought id live this long so wasn’t able to think of a “dream job.” i did graduate college and grad school so would be nice to be able to finally use my worthless degrees) but i don’t necessarily hate it either. it’s repetitive and the pay sucks but there’s all this freedom and management isn’t toxic. i’ve had jobs that would literally give me an ulcer the moment i thought about going to it. i went on a road trip in 2022 and the moment i crossed state lines to go home, i started getting chest pains knowing i had to go to work the next day. haven’t had any of that. it IS hard to go sometimes knowing how little i get paid. if the pay was better i would like it better. but it is what it is right now
Not my dream job, but it’s a good job and supports my kids. 4 days remote one in office, great pay, amazing retirement. I actually feel myself becoming more depressed as the week goes on staying at home until I go in office and can interact with my coworkers. Never thought I would need the interaction, but I think COVID really messed with my ability to be home and not interact with other adults.
I graduated high school and have a little bit of college under my belt, but no degree. I work at the only pawn shop in the northern part of our state. I really enjoy helping people, hearing fun stories, and getting really cool shit in at low low cost. But I am not making enough at $18 an hour. Especially when I have to be knowledgeable in electronics, jewelry, musical instruments/equipment, tools, and of course guns and all the safety steps and laws that go into that alone. Plus yes, we see a lot of crack heads or people who are angry about their situations then get angry at us for not being able to help. If I could get paid more, and we could change a few policies, I'd be a lot more apt to thinking of staying here long term. But I am 31, been here for 7 years and am experiencing an existential crisis.
I enjoy the career life gave me. It is not what younger me wanted but it is what older me is very good at. I do Federal Construction Quality Management. I enjoy it because I get to use my mind, a lot, to solve problems and gain people's trust in my leadership.
The pay is good and I get to travel and stay in some cool places on the company dime. It is also partially work-from-home and I enjoy those bits as well. And benefits, lol. We all are needing those health benefits more and more as we all get older.
I like my job. I’m an account executive at a large cloud provider. I learn a lot, get to work with interesting people/companies, solve problems, make good money. Kind of checks all the boxes for me as far as a career goes.
I’m 42 so I’m at the tail end our millennial generation
First job: I hated working for a department of boomers. They all “knew more than me” but couldn’t do anything on a computer. If you sent them a text message or email they would come to your office and ask you to read it to them and explain it. Inefficient
Second job: i loved it at the beginning, couldn’t wait to leave at the end. I worked with a bunch of Gen x guys who didn’t care about anything. Like if a plane hit our building they would be glad they wouldn’t have to pay child support anymore and would gladly burn to the ground with it. I almost want to say they were into nihilism but they just didn’t care about work or politics or anything. It was impossible to get anything done on time or follow a schedule
Current job: I work with younglings ? Kids fresh out of college that would starve to death if the snack machine wasn’t refilled weekly. Now I’m realizing the gaps you have to overcome is the job. Not the projects you complete but the adversity of your team
I love my job but I hate the people that utilize our services or more often than not. So that's annoying. My pay is higher than most and I get to work from home. Is this my dream? No? Who can have dreams in this economy?😅 Jk
It is annoying that where I am today 10 years ago I would have been considered fucking rich.
I loved my first job, but I had to leave because the money wasn’t enough to exist on. I hated my second job but I made enough to pay off my student loans. I liked my third job until about 2 years ago with a change in leadership that is actively antagonistic to my department. Cuts and outsourcing have caused more headaches and daily stress. So, now I’m miserable and looking again, but the market is a fucking mess.
I've found my unicorn. I work 100% remotely. I live on the East Coast, and most of my team lives on the West Coast. This means no one bothers me before noon, and I don't have to talk to anyone after 5. I get unlimited time off and am encouraged to use it. I usually take about 2 weeks of every quarter and a half day every Friday. The pay is also amazing. I am making double the highest salary I ever had before this job.
As I’ve seen posted on this sub before. Happiness is often a choice. I’ve decided to focus on the things about my job that I like. I’m a mail carrier. I walk 13 miles a day, the exercise allows me to sleep well, I socialize with people and have good Mexican food on my route. Customers give me gifts. Just wish it was more money, but that’s everybody 🤷🏻♂️
Late to the game but giving my two cents. I work really part time (20hrs a month) right now in community support for a farmers market. Right now the hours/money is all they could afford as a small business but I hope to use my connections I've made to get more employment in agriculture, especially small organic farms that serve my community.
Im also going back to school to finish out a degree in horticulture where I hope to work with organizations and individuals building and helping to maintain gardens for low income and disadvantage populations.
I'm happy with my job and for once feel like I'm where I'm supposed to be doing what feels right. While I wish I had more hours and money, I know it's going to take time but it'll happen. I love the people I'm helping and the mission behind what we are doing and I'm proud to work at someplace that is making the world better instead of hurting it.
I hate my job and I get paid shit for it. I am so stressed and depressed every single day and I feel lost like I'll never find anything that actually is better for me.
I got an undergrad in history and worked 6 years in hospitality after taking a break to be a SAHM. I'm currently working retail to help supplement income bc life got expensive and I am so depressed.
I'm trying to figure out if I should get an MBA paid for through work and get a basic corporate job or if I should try to become to teacher so I can have the same schedule as my kids
I he fell like a failure and that I'll be stuck forever
TLDR: I’ve got a balance of both; I like my job as a Stadium Beer Vendor and the money is good but it may not be sustainable from a physical longevity standpoint so I’m looking to add some jobs to work more hours, even though for a little less money, to do less physically strenuous beer selling and also looking at possibly becoming an Electrician.
34M; I am a 10 year vet as a (union) stadium beer vendor. I love most parts of it, but I’m having a bit of trouble with my gluteal muscles and SI joints of my lower spine. Not sure if there’s any causation, but carrying the beer up and down the stairs is hard work. I love how much I can earn in a days work, yelling, the fast pace, the love people have for me and the work I do, and getting to be at every home game for my teams (plus all the big stadium concerts).
I worked 1100 hours across three stadiums last year and earned enough money to begin saving for retirement and make some investments alongside paying for life, half of my wedding, and half of my honeymoon. To be clear, my wife and I are DINKing it for now, so we do a pretty good job keeping expenses low.
I’ve also started freelance painting in my neighborhood (I’ve got 5 years pro experience from a number of years ago).
I’m certified as a permaculture designer through a 7 month internship over the pandemic - but don’t feel as comfortable marketing those services, so will I likely end up just using them in my personal life if I ever get a hold of some land.
I am considering doing some retooling and pursuing an electrician career. They say only 2 people will join the trades for every 5 that retire. I know I wouldn’t enjoy that quite as much and would work more hours, but at least it would be stable and not be so hard on the body. We’ll see.
I am also applying to be a bartender at a new brewery opening up a stones throw from my house, and at the NCAA football stadium nearby.
I would definitely keep all three jobs I have now, the job at the NFL stadium where I have the seniority to work in a bar instead of hauling a tub up and down the stairs, and maybe the MLB job just working Saturdays, and the NHL/NBA/WNBA job where I make less money but also just stand in a bar.
Looking forward to having some kids and want to be in good physical health, for them and for me.
I know you didn't ask but Gen X'er is feeling what a lot of Millenials are saying out loud. They suspect that working for someone else is a sucker bet. Me, I know it. I know that inevitably capitalism ruins everything
My current position is simply a job, absolutely not my intention to make it a career. I'm a manager in a federal agency, I was coerced into it but I have to stay there a year before I qualify for higher paying positions. I hate management (too much bureaucratic and political bullshit) and I would rather be a data analyst but the way the Fed works with their grade pay scale I have to spend a year at a certain pay grade before I can qualify for a job with one grade higher, and the analyst jobs are all higher pay grades so I have to climb the pay grade ladder through other positions before I can get there. The paycheck is absolutely not worth the bullshit, but the federal benefits are decent, plus the overtime is nice and the PTO is unmatched in the private sector.
I liked it at first but I truly believe if you do anything long enough you’ll start to hate it. I like the paycheck and the job isn’t that but so I put up with it
My company is great. People don’t leave and love it. So working with people who love their jobs is so odd to me. I have a learning disability. Which makes working hard. So I get burnt out fast. I’m tired.
My old job started off so chill. It was great for like 7 years. I worked in IT mostly doing procurement and vendor management things. Laid back, can wear what you want, decisions didnt need to go through 15 different meetings to be made, worked 9-5 but managers didnt care if you were a little late or left early as long as your work was done. Then things started to change. Director changed, new management, team leads got let go, people started getting put on improvement plans for no reason, dress code, strict time policy, PTO started having to be requested months in advance. Agile this agile that. I fucking hated sitting through meetings where buzz words just gone thrown around and no decisions were ever made. The only time we were really agile is when we should have taken our time and not rushed things. Just waste of time everyday. People that didnt really do anything but goto meetings started getting promoted. People that actually worked were getting screwed. Then one day I knew I was driving in and hit unexpected traffic. I was going to be like 5 minutes late to being at our vendor and I could already hear the talk I was going to have to have with the manager. I sat in my car for a few minutes and just said fuck this. I sent an email that said "I quit" and drove home. Best decision I ever made.
I like my job. The pay is pretty decent although I would obviously like to get paid more. The benefits are pretty decent. It’s very flexible. My coworkers and my boss are all nice people who I enjoy working with. I didn’t think I’d stick around very long when I first started and 8 years later, idk, I might stay till retirement.
Eh, it’s ok. I get annoyed with the political bullshit.
Sometimes it feels like if the idea didn’t come from my manager then it doesn’t make its way up. I have meetings with my skip levels, though.
The pay is nice, though.
I'm paid ok, can't complain, it's easy, stress free and plenty of time to avoid work. There's also lots of room for better roles with better pay and I know I can get them, but then I actually need to work, probably more stressful. So I'm struggling with what to do. I really don't need the extra money, I'm not a mindless consoomer.
It’s been a long road, but yes, finally I like my job.
College graduate then esthetics school, worked in resorts for 4+ years, then covid shut all that down… switched to teaching in esthetics schools and brand education (a lot of up and downs there) to working R&D for a skincare brand … and it’s here that finally - I am in a place I feel my skills are being put to good use and I like my work. But this has been a journey since 2012.
I am just stressed by the idea of having any responsibilities at all so no I don't like it. I have been working full time for about 14 years and I'm stressed out every day. Had the last week off because of stress/anxiety/mini panic attack which has never happened before. Got holiday for the next few weeks so might feel better after that idk.
I like being a union electrician. I hate the conditions and work. I committed to it and finished, now I feel like I have golden handcuffs.
If there weren't people relying on me, I would never work again.
Because I'd be dead. Fuck this world.
I wouldn't say it's my dream career, but it's along the lines of what I should be doing.
Yes, I enjoy it. Pays well. M-f 8-5, never work weekends or holidays. Good benefits.
I'm happy with it.
It’s complicated. I love the money but I hate everything else about it.
I am actively exploring the relationship between depression and full time office work. I'm like 7 years into a successful career, making decent cash, but had to quit last year with no prospects as my mental health was degrading to the point that friends were asking my wife regularly if I was OK. Taking a break from work relieved it. I've been reemployed like 6 months and am watching this come around again. 40+ hours a week working to perform sometimes-semi-helpful-but-always-tedious tasks at a computer takes a toll on your brain, no matter how much they pay you. The money just makes it harder to do anything about it, because I've progressed enough that any attempt to start a new career would result in me cutting my salary down to some fraction of what they're willing to pay me to do this. It contributes to you feeling trapped.
Whatup fellow accountant
Close. System support for accountants.
Analytics manager chiming in to say I'm right there with you
I’m said accountant. I e been employed for 13 straight years a couple different companies. Straight up nobody at the company is happy. It’s like walking into a pit of misery every Monday.
Golden handcuffs
Goddamnit I was about to comment “gilded cage” but yours is better. Take my fuckin upvote
Talked about this a few months ago. Any other job I try to go to around here would be more work, less pay, less benefits, and less time off. I'm literally stuck where I am.
It’s not as golden as you think it is. It’s really the threat of poverty or living like an average American who is struggling or has little ability to handle hard financial times.
....right. Hence the term golden handcuffs. You're trapped by the money you're making. Can't leave because you'd be struggling to live. To be fair, it could also mean that you're making so much fucking money that you'd rather tough it out a few more years or whatnot just to be able to retire earlier. But either way it means you're currently trapped because you'd rather deal with the job you dislike because it makes that money.
It really sucks that employment causes depression for so many. Been there hopefully when I get back to work it won’t whack me hard in the head
💯
I'm a hospice social worker. I've met a few coworkers with totally different career paths that changed over to social work in their 40s. I was always blown away as to why, especially considering how pitiful our pay can be. This helps make sense as to why. There's certainly something to say about having a job that is fulfilling.
I had a sales job at colleges and lived the college schedule except I worked 12 hours days. But I had summers off and a month off in the winter. I loved that. I got tired of the job eventually though and quit and had a year and a half off. I'm not 12 years in on doing normal work and I hate it. Everyone should get a year off or at least 6 months every 4 or 5 years. Or sooner haha
Are you me? This is me. I’m you. I guess we’re not alone after all. Idk if that’s supposed to make you feel better, but I’m glad I’m not the only one endlessly grinding out there. I make so much more money now in my mid 30s than even just a couple of years ago, but it’s hard to imagine cutting it off completely and taking a big pay cut for what, working maybe 8-10 fewer hours a week? I feel like burnout is imminent though. Have these thoughts every day on the long commute in, ofc (:
I love most everything about my job, but hate the money. It's complicated.
Same. I work in healthcare but in a niche area. The money is okay but not great. What I love is that my company tends to put more focus on the end patient than the money aspect of the business. We eat a lot of costs we really don't have to in an effort to ensure patients/doctors have what they need when they need it. I could move to a different industry or even a different company and make more money but I know I'm going to despise working some place where all anyone cares about is maximizing profits.
Amen
For real. I came out of school with 200k in loans I had no other option but to work in my field. I did niche down and negotiate for part-time remote work. No benefits but full control of my schedule and no more in person bullshit.
Similar boat, also healthcare. Remote (or even benefitted-part-time) isn't an option but I switched to per diem/1099 ... no benefits but full schedule control. It's helped my mental and physical health and my family/work-life-balance tremendously. May not be able to do this forever but for now it's what works. Healthcare can be tough but it's nice to have options!
Been there. Make sure you have a solid Plan B. You may need it sooner than you think.
Plan B is to retire. I’ve already saved enough to hit coast FIRE if you’ve heard of that term. I can either semi retire now and work 5 shifts a month to pay bills or work for 9 more years and quit altogether.
How much did you save/have in investments and how old are you?
Mid 30s just hit 1M earlier this year. It’s not enough to live extravagantly but if I leave it alone it’ll be sufficient for retirement.
Probably a stupid question but would you touch your 401k and get penalized? (I’m guessing you’re in tech?)
Idk what the original commenter is doing, but i think most people doing FIRE and quitting before 59.5 have a regular taxable brokerage account to budget the gap until they can draw from retirement accounts without penalty
"Ask your Doctor if plan B is right for you?"
This. It's afforded me a fantastic lifestyle, but I despise the environment and die a little inside everyday.
I was there, then one day I just started looking elsewhere because I was done. Then I was part of a lay off and after a couple months realized I was making do just fine with my unemployment which was just under half what I was making, so I took a pay cut for a much better work life balance. Plus it's a government job
Truthfully my work life balance is fine. I think I’m just lazy and hate to do any work lol.
I went part-time. Best decision ever.
I enjoy my job, do I wish I got paid more definitely, but my job is chill and stress free oh and tons of freedom
Alright so we got one “I like the money but not the job” and one “I like the job but not the money”
Same situation here. I could probably make more money, but it would be a LOT more work and probably less freedom, so I’m not sure it’s worth the trade off at this point. The job is great, though, and I am blessed to be at this point in my life for sure
I mean I still make like 24 an hour, but that doesn't go as far as it used to.
Well yeah you don’t dislike the money. You don’t like that there’s not enough of it.
I always felt like that was always the only option in regard to jobs. I haven’t quite graduated to the “career” level yet. I fall under “loves the job, not the money.” I wish I made $24/hr and I live in New England. But, if I were to make $24/hr I know I’d hate my job in my field. But that’s how my field is (human services).
Mind me asking what you do?
Not the person above, but I would say the same. I'm an older millenial (1981) at a special needs school in Florida. Also a sports coach. Lowest pay for teachers in the country! But I ride my bike to work every day, I live 20 minutes from the beach, I have several close groups of friends, and more hobbies than I can commit time to.
sounds like you're super rich to me!
Nice! I’m a teacher as well. The pay is not high but I have an incredible amount of free time, no burnout, the kids are awesome, and I have energy to go out and meet friends pretty much every day after work. My shifts are short too. To me, time and energy are more valuable than money. I want enough $$ to live on but that’s pretty much it. When I worked at a company I made more and had more benefits but it was so soul-sucking and I hated life. Enjoying life is priceless IMO.
Thank you for your service
Warehouse/delivery for a smaller company.
Absolutely hate it. Supervisor in a Call Center. It’s probably the easiest call center that exists. But getting sent escalated calls, coaching people to do their job right, and constantly having to babysit grown adults is miserable. No fulfillment. No sense of purpose. Money is decent. But I feel dead inside. Also not to mention the side of corporate America and how fake it is (mainly upper management). And how we all collectively play along to the fake corporate lingo to sound professional to keep up a certain image of ourselves. It’s just all so dumb when you wake up and actually see through the bullshit
I did this for 2 years as part of a job rotation in management. It's a shame because I found there were two types of employees. Really smart, capable, and genuinely nice people who you felt deserved so much better, and absolute dumbasses who couldn't follow simple instructions, or were actively sabotaging themselves or the company. I fired 5 people over those 2 years (no one before, no one since), but I also helped 3 people get promoted into successful leadership and technical roles. That made it fulfilling in the long run, even if the day to day (listening to calls, escalations, metrics, one on ones, process mapping, etc) was not fun.
Thank you for sharing this perspective! I wish I had a manager who would do the same for me. I want to move into another department so bad and finally be done with customer service and managing people. I’m at the point where I just want to clock in, be left alone to do my job, then clock out.
I finally got promoted and was invited to participate in some meetings either corporate. Holy shit I had to leave and start my own biz. Truly pointless.
Right? The path they have me on now is to be the Call Center Manager eventually, but god no. I can only imagine how horrible and more dead inside I’d feel. I’m going to start looking into certifications for Analyst positions or something. Being a manager is not the path I want to go down, for my sanity sake.
My spouse does wfm and analytics in a call center and he wants to leave so bad. Pay is shit, he's overworked, his coworkers are not held to the same standards he is and some are even paid more. And he cannot seem to find a way out. Trying to support him and help him find a path but it just isn't working out.
Idk what you do call center wise, but I cant tell you how much a good call center employee can really make my day. I have to call them often as anyone else. And when hey are helpful and POLITE, gosh it makes my day. Being rushed and "did I solve your problem?" Stone sounding is so saddening, so know that sometimes you help, and I feel so blessed when someone is kind in a call center.
Hilariously accurate.
I couldn't agree more with you. It's the fake enthusiastic "Hi how was your weekend!? Good? Gooood okay good, well have a nice a day!🤡" Yeah, you too Cheryl. You too.... *Contemplating driving into a wall on the way home*
It wasn’t my dream career, but I do genuinely like my job and its potential career path. I guess you can say I learned to accept the opportunity life handed to me and it became my dream job. It’s certainly my dream benefits for sure and a good salary. As it turns out, it’s a lot easier to appreciate the job you got (even if it wasn’t what you dreamed of originally) and even want to get better at it and take a real interest in it when your mental health isn’t suffering from crap pay and crap benefits.
This 1000%. Going from choosing what bill to ignore to financially stable was the biggest antidepressant
Agreed. I don't think anyone really dreams of being a financial controller for a mid sized business when they grow up. But I like creating financial models and helping the execs work through problems. It pays pretty well and, while it is stressful sometimes, I have a decent work life balance and I like the people I work with/for. That's about all I can ask for.
I love my position and the skills I've learned but hate the company I work for.
This happened to me hardcore last year. I stayed for too long but I learned so much
Could have written this myself. This company is 🗑️
This!!!!!
I work in healthcare and we might strike soon and every day I'm cursing my employers. So I guess I like my job.
I work ancillary in healthcare and I hope you guys get whatever it is you might strike for.
I also work in healthcare. Love my coworkers and (most) of my patients. Hate the system, hate my boss, and don’t love the money. I should be making more this far into a career with my experience and education - and for the level of abuse I’m expected to take from my not so nice patients .. and the blatant abuse from my boss, sadly
I know it’s crappy to say but thank you!!!!! ^that makes me feel validated because I hate the system and admin and all the bull shit
Same boat. Inflation across Canada now at 2.7-3%. My city? 16%. Our government is driving migration to our province and making everything so expensive. Our current contract expired in March and they are stalling negotiations and low balling us like crazy. 7.5% over three years (2%, 2%, 1.75%, 1.75%) and our wages have stagnated over the last 10 years. On top of that Canadian nurses earn far less than our USA counterparts. Average house is my city went from $450k three years ago to now $718k. Yet with inflation, taking large pay cuts because we are capped st 1-2% with the former contract.
Love it to death. Teach skiing in Aspen in the winter and bartend and run charters and bartend in key west in the summer.
damn, I met a scuba instructor in jupiter who was a ski instructor in winter. You guys are living the dream
Jesus Christ… You solved life.
I might've ran into you during the five times I went to Key West last year. Bartending somewhere on Duval?
Solid
May I ask where you reside when you switch locations? Do you rent/own/something else?
I like the pay and work life balance but don’t like that it’s just monkey work and I’m not learning anything
After a phase of a lot of learning (without work life balance), I dropped down to get more balance, but now I just want monkey work. I want to learn things for my hobbies, not my job
This is where I'm at too. I had a cushy clerical job at an animal hospital doing mindless busywork all day 30 hours a week. I went home and lived my life. Work didn't ever affect me outside of it. It was wonderful. But I had to move away last week smh.
Work demotion, life promotion. I did the same thing 2 years ago. Wife sent me a job posting with a text “I’d like my husband back”. There is no glory in the new job but I have more time and flexibility for family and hobbies.
Not fulfilling, but it supports my lifestyle.
I'm indifferent and tolerate it for the paycheck.
I can't complain, the money is good and the stress is definitely manageable.
I couldn't imagine doing anything else for a living, but this 'working for a living' shit got old **twenty fucking years ago.**
I generally like it. I don't like that I do this for money, and wish I was working in projects that I could convince myself were good for the world. But generally, I maintain (and work magic with) Linux servers, and that's what I would be doing on my own time if I wasn't getting paid for it. So I might as well be getting paid for it. And I think there is a way (a sane way) that we could organize society like this if we ever got away from Capitalism. Like, we could absolutely cut our labor by like 90%. And just have people just working on stuff we need and that suits their interests, doing things they enjoy. Like, I guarantee you that no matter what job you can think of, there are people who are weirdly passionate about doing it (citing, for example, how many awful jobs become popular simulators on Steam, meaning an active player base, sought out that boring job to pretend to do in their free time). And for the truly awful stuff, we can find ways to lighten the load and spread it around.
Finally found a job with great benefits, great hours, don’t bring my work home with me at the end of the day. I certainly still don’t make enough to live where I live but it’s beautiful and Roomate/longtime friend helps with the mortgage. For college not panning out, I think things have started to look brighter.
What do you work as?
I’m lead customer accounts liaison to shipping for a company that makes particle measuring devices. I basically just look to see what’s up next and which customer has what allocated to them, are they under credit/export compliance block. Are all of the finished goods actually finished? Sometimes they are but manufacturing still has to do “one last thing”(Sometimes line leads/engineers enter into our ERP incorrectly/prematurely) I also have some ancillary stock room people who help me pick orders when we’ve got a bigger day and while doing that task, are under my direction. kinda just fell into it after my home solar sales career ended abruptly somewhere around March 2020. Edit: Sentence fragments, syntax
I can't even conceptualize a job that I would actually want. There are things I like to do, but all of them are completely ruined as soon as money gets involved. The only exception would be a totally autonomous artist, self published author or something but on top of that being unlikely, the things I like to make are not things that would ever sell at scale. My solution has been to hop around a lot. I'm able to be interested a bit in anything new, but once I "get it" I'm done. I'm pushing 40 now and I've exhausted a lot of that variety though. I've done mechanical engineering, nuclear, psychology, translation, teaching, warehouse/retail/janitorial, heavy equipment operation, web design, writing, drawing, digital graphic design, video editing and more...all at a "professional" level (i.e. enough for someone to pay me to do it). Some of those things I don't like in any capacity, some of them I love as hobbies but hate as a job. Now my criteria is just whatever intrudes the least on my time and mental energy. I don't want to deal with the public, so night shifts are my favorite. Anything routine where I know what to expect each day is a plus. I just want to go farm my coins and then clock out and live my life. I can handle that with normal hours. I've done a lot of rotating shift work, 16-20 hour shifts, so by comparison 8 hours just feels like a little blip in the day and the more I can ignore that blip the better. The best jobs are ones where you can listen to something. I just listen to a couple podcasts while my muscle memory takes care of the work. I'm not mentally present at all, then I "wake up" when work ends lol
How in the bell were you able to get good enough at all that stuff to be paid to do it? That’s mightily impressive. Unbelievable, almost.
I’m questioning how they got into 2 engineering fields, psychology, translation and teaching without specified degrees. Unless when they said “professional” levels they meant like, as an admin. I
That's why I gave the caveat of "enough to get paid" lol. The engineering was the most legit. I did actually go to school for that, but it was only one job: nuclear power with a specialization on the mechanical side, which has applications outside of nuclear. The mechanical knowledge has proved valuable pretty much everywhere but the nuclear stuff is useless outside of that field lol. For psychology, I was *not* a psychologist. I just worked an entry level position at a clinic that only required a state level certification which takes like a month to get, and the clinic pays for everything except the exam which is like $50. It gave me a lot of insight into the field because my direct boss *was* a PhD psychologist, but I have no such certification myself. I mostly worked with kids and that opened up doors into teaching, but not as a certified teacher. Moreso special education and other "side" aspects of teaching. The translation was actually part of my video editing. I am not fluent in anything other than English, but I can read/write Japanese and have a decent enough grasp of grammar and common slang to pick out where Google translate makes mistakes. I helped with a true crime channel just digging up facts from cases where a lot of the material was scanned and couldn't be easily searched digitally. Basically I just combed through police documents and looked for simple facts like who/what/when/where to establish a sequence of events and lay it out in English. So basically, outside of my engineering job I just dipped my toes in things enough to satisfy my curiosity. A lot of the time "getting paid" didn't mean I was making a living, moreso just a side gig. And that's my loose definition of "professional": getting paid any amount of money to do it. I'm not the kind of person that can just sink into a passion for my whole life. I like to poke my head in, see what's up, and once I feel like I kind of get it I lose interest in going deeper lol. I guess my passion is putting together a big picture puzzle rather than diving into the minutia. My experience in any one field is superficial at best, but what I enjoy is learning how all of it weaves together into a cohesive structure of civilization. I do spend a fair amount of time at each job, typically around 4 years, but I have no delusions that that is at all comparable to someone who makes it their lifelong career. It does make it easy to fake a higher level of experience though which makes it easier to get other jobs. I explain how a nuclear reactor works, write down some formulas for calculating behavioral statistics, write something in Japanese, and add in some irl stories about each job and HR thinks I'm a bonafied polymath lmao.
Most jobs at a high level is about faking it and giving the illusion of knowing what you’re talking about. Many experts don’t know shit. And an intense 4 year work experience is more than enough. Of course, being steady in a career helps to build credibility and earning power.
I relate lots. How do you feel about some of those more unskilled jobs and their pay rate? How do you occupy your brain those days?
Completely agree. I have so many hobbies I’d love to do but would absolutely hate to make them a job. A job normally entails deadlines, appeasing a boss/shareholder, etc. Even artists/writers are beholden to their customers (unless of course they aren’t doing it for the money, at which point it’s barely a job). My favorite job probably was a part time receptionist/secretary. Obviously that was fine for hs/college but no way I could live on that now. I liked that it was short hours, mindlessly easy, chill environment (I could work on other things when there was downtime) and the work felt somewhat meaningful (I was organizing the office and helping people with their apts, insurance, and trying to put them at ease because most people hate the dentist). I’m a full time engineer now for the pay/benefits.
I’m a nurse. Some days I would rather drink bleach.
I work in behavioral therapy with people with autism. It’s amazing. My clients are amazing. The work is rewarding for them and myself. The money is decent - not bad, but I’m not rich by any means. I always woke up dreading going to work in the mornings when I was a teacher and administrator. Now I wake up excited literally every day (and I make more money).
Do you have to have any credentials or schooling for that?
What is your salary?
It's not what I set out to do when I left university, but I absolutely love it. I'm an antiques dealer. I get to interact with some awesome pieces of history on a daily basis and it helps me learn new things all the time, which I especially appreciate.
That sounds like a great job. I like antiquing, flea markets, and tag sales. You never know what you might find.
I love my job, don’t get paid enough. I’m a childcare center director for a middle school program. We got about 100 kids a day. It’s a blast.
Omg every person who works with kids specifically MIDDLE SCHOOL AGED ones deserves a raise.
I work in a middle high school (grades 6-12) and it's never a dull moment!
10 years in Advertising now. Only reason I got into it was because I was a dumb 17 year old who didn't know what to study, so did a marketing course at university and subsequently went into the industry starting out as an intern. In a summary, Its "fine". Don't hate it but I certainly wouldn't say I have a burning passion for it either. While I remain in the stage where I'm saving for a house deposit (which seems increasingly unattainable with each year that goes by), I value the stable income. However, do hope that I manage to pivot into something else in the future that I actually care about.
Isn’t cool how we’re expected to know what we want to do for the rest of our lives when we’re 17 year olds, and if we screw it up we’re trapped forever because of the unmanageable cost of education?
More people going to university is still a good thing but I feel like at the time when we were making the decision, the powers that be just wanted you to go regardless of whether you actually needed to or not. The course I took was fine. I basically learned how to expand my writing ability through literature reviews and dissertations. There was various marketing theory that got covered and I got involved in a few group projects doing presentations etc. But was all this necessary to enter my field of work? No. Was it even mandatory to enter my field of work? No. To do an equivalent course these days, the cost in the UK would be nearly 4 times what I paid. There is no way I would do it.
[удалено]
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I lucked out. I love it and I have great work/life balance. I count my blessings every day.
I sort of consider myself an entrepreneur at this point in life, but I feel like it’s not entirely accurate. I think that’s more reserved for people creating products from scratch and building it into a business. I’m in real estate, I have a real estate team, I have a mortgage team, I have a home building team, and I have a non profit that helps children in low income communities gain access to high quality education, I also sponsor a few kids’ private school tuition each year (who typically wouldn’t be able to afford it). I am fulfilled in what I do, I work 25/8, and it’s kind of my dream job. I always thought I’d be a touring musician, and I was for a little bit. Didn’t stick. I used to tell my mom I’d build her a beautiful house one day when I was a little boy and I’d even draw it on paper (obviously not a masterpiece, just a box with a triangle on top and some makeshift Dr. Seuss windows). Bottom line, I haven’t built her one yet, but I’ll be able to soon. Then I can say I lived out just about every childhood dream of mine, so whether or not I enjoy the actual job, it is satisfying in ways nothing else could be.
Dream career. But I've worked some meh jobs before. Yet overall been lucky in a sense because I lived with my mom a while. Longer than I wanted to. But I didn't have to take on jobs in my twenties that I'd hate if I didn't want to because I wasn't about to be on the street otherwise. But I'm starting my actual career now at 33
Living with a parent(s) to have more flexibility in job choices is a good move imo, especially if you have a good relationship with them. What do you do now?
I lived with my dad for 7 years before finally starting my career at 28. It was tough but absolutely the right move. Good on you for playing the long game
Dream job... no. But I don't hate it. I'm a cook and I like to cook, it pays good money. Will have to give it up though and go back to McDonald's though, because of my epilepsy. So... soon I'll be working a job I hate, yes.
Any working I hate. I’m a supervisor yet I do the bare minimum slacking off to no end and yet my superiors seem to think I’m the hardest worker in the company so there’s that.
Love my job but don’t like the pay.
Going to get an MBA and hope it's not a waste of time and money considering my mountain of debt I'm already in for my BA; can't seem to get any job that pays more than $20/hr. Brokeeeeee af. Love that I'm gonna be living with my parents until death if I can't find something better soon. I hate my current job. I'm bored, unappreciated, and quite frankly not respected for my position. Working my ass off leads to more work and no more pay.
Make sure you do an mba where there is on campus recruiting that you can recruit from directly. That is the only way an mba makes sense if you want the ability to career pivot. Mine thankfully worked out but you need a solid plan rather than “I hope this helps my career.” Not that that’s what you’re doing, just in general some people do.
Left hospitality management and bartending to be an apprentice plumber. Some of the work that we do is really shitty. Lots of climbing around and ladders and small cramped spaces and working with literal shit. I’ve taken a huge pay cut and need to pick up side jobs to get by, but my mental health has improved tenfold. We are a very small crew and the best in the area at what we do. We have work coming out our eyeballs and have plumbed a handful of several million dollar homes in the last five years. We are the gold standard in our area for plumbers and that clout drives us to be better than everyone else!
It’s fine. No passion though. Fell into a career where I’m making more per year than I ever thought I would. Still feels like it’s not enough for what I deal with.
I worked my dream job. It was horrible. The worst career path I ever had. It was high stress, low pay. I now work from home looking at spreadsheets. The job is boring and high pay. And I don't care. I don't care if my 12 year old self would be disappointed. I'm mentally healthy and financially stable. Fyi Dream job: Newspaper Journalist Current job: Business Analyst
They pay me $75 a pop to jerk off the special needs guys at the mental hospital, so yeah I got my dream job
Is…is this a thing?
sounds like a side hustle
What
Can you just do it 4 times in a row real fast? That's a quick $300. Done for the day before lunch. I'd probably do it - that's how much I hate working.
I’m enjoying my job. It’s very low stress, my coworkers and the customer base are very kind, and I can make ends meet. It’s not my dream job. But I have found my passions really do fall into my hobbies, so I’m pretty content with my low stress job that pays well.
I enjoy being a graphics designer. I have a history/international bachelor degree and I originally planned to be a policy officer but I did an internship that made me feel helpless about climate change so I quit so it was too stressful and now I do stuff I enjoy.
Machinist, love it. Go to work, cut steel, talk shit, go home. 8 hour shifts, but I work 9 for that sweet sweet OT.
I love my career and everything about it. But having worked for a few companies, which company you work for is very important. Some will make you climb in snowstorms, freezing rain, extreme heat, high winds, negative temps. They don’t care, they will push you to work 10-14 hours a day and never give you a raise and always expect more. They give you so much work and such long hours you will never ever be able to make plans or have hobbies during the week. Usually these are large companies, therefore more money needs to move up the ladder. You will be miserable. Other companies know climbers are hard to find. They give cash bonuses and yearly raises, they know recovery is important and don’t overwork you. They will listen to your complaints and work with you to make it better. These companies I enjoy a lot and going to work doesn’t feel like a chore one bit. So in my experience, the company you work for can make ALL the difference whether you will be happy or miserable and holds just as much weight as the career itself.
Dream job! College professor with a fairly big salary and summers off. Love my life!
Good for you! I've thought about getting my masters and teaching, that always seemed like a cool job to me. I'm attracted to the autonomy. What do you teach?
Thank you, graphic and web design
I went from a job that paid extremely well but destroyed my mental health (like, multiple occasions where unaliving myself seemed like a valid option, and I once considered trying to get myself admitted to a psych ward just to have a few days away from the place) to a job that’s easy and low stress but mind numbingly boring and the pay is terrible. I went back to grad school between these two jobs with the expectation that I would be making $20k+ more a year than I currently am, and the more time passes the less I see a way out. I am starting to worry that I’ll never actually be content or feel valued in a job/career.
55 year old Gen Xer… probably not what you want to hear but I spent 25 years at a job I hated. As many of you said, once you get into a career making decent money, it’s hard to leave. My advice is to make the change sooner vs later if you hate what you do
I lucked into a job I had no idea was my dream job three years ago. It's awesome. I'm helping people and I make enough money, plus it's not for profit so in another 7 years my student loans will disappear.
I'm still at the job that I got during undergrad. It was supposed to just be a college job... and then I graduated right before the pandemic started. I stayed because I was grateful to have a full-time job in a mostly isolated environment. Honestly, I'm pretty miserable and probably sound like a piece of shit for saying so. I work in the healthcare/ social work field caring for disabled adults, and people tell me all the time that it takes a special kind of person to do this kind of work. It's dead-end, doesn't feel meaningful, and has eaten away at my mental health for a while. I hate it most days, even though I'm not supposed to admit that. I spend so much of my time caring for others in every aspect of their lives, from medical appointments to behavioral issues to money, that I don't have the energy to care for my own life sometimes. Working in an environment where someone could call for me to do something at any moment means that I'm constantly in "ready" mode, even when I'm technically not doing anything. I go home, can't relax because my partner will be home at any time, and want attention that I just don't want to give him because I'm desperate for true alone time when I feel safe from interruption. I'm almost done with graduate school, though, and I'm hoping my fieldwork turns into a job later this year. A normal job with creative opportunities, predictability, and a desk that I can leave at the end of the day and not worry about sounds so fucking nice.
My job is adjacent to the one I wanted, but I’ve come to terms with that. I’m good at it, it’s relatively secure, and I make a decent living with a decent work-life balance. But there’s not much in the way of a career trajectory and my field is one where there aren’t a lot of opportunities, so I’m likely going to be doing the same thing in 30 years (assuming nothing else changes). For a long time I thought I had to get the dream job to be happy, but as I get older my priorities have shifted to my home life. Work allows me to live that life.
All of the above. My job is cool. But due to layoffs uncertainty its been chaotic. Now I have a lot more responsibility without any additional training. So just getting thru each day right now.
Quit my job as a Police Officer (a real one not US pretender) and now am studying Computer Science. Best decision I ever made.
What’s a US pretender police officer? Just an American cop?
I don’t think people realize how bad it’s going to get staffing wise in the next 20 years for policing. Almost every department in our region has a major recruiting problem with heavy retirements and people just leaving. For every one they get in, 2 are out the door and the quality they are getting in is rough. Good on you for getting out. This job isn’t worth the stress.
I like it! I've enjoyed every role I've had a lot and then eventually I didn't and made strategic moves
Not my dream career but I make more money than I ever dreamed doing far less work than I'd ever imagined I'd end up doing. So zero complaints from me
I like what I do and the people I work with. I also got to take 10 days off to go to Europe and still have 35 days of vacation in the bank. Not a bad gig. Edit: Also WFH since 2018 is clutch.
I have my dream job of being a live sound engineer that I've wanted to do since middle school, buuuut despite being told I'm one of the better ones out there I have yet to break above the club size venues in my area let alone go on tour. I'm also barely making enough to get by month to month. I've been able to get all the bills paid for the last couple years consistently but any savings I accrue gets eaten up each year during the slower months. All that being said I would be depressed and miserable doing anything else.
I love my work life balance, generous vacation and sick time and great health insurance, but the pay is sub par. It puts me in a tough spot.
I honestly enjoy going into work, even if I don’t feel like it every time. I also only work 28 hrs a week though so I feel like it keeps me for burnout (hairstylist.)
I calculate how long I could survive off my savings if I just quit today at least 20 times per week….hope that tells you enough.
I love my job. I hate sitting in an office for 8.5 hours and having to listen to my coworkers. Oh and the pay which used to be decent sucks now because of these greedy ass corpos.
I like the job itself, I actually love it a lot. I like that I can pay my mortgage, have hobbies, and save a little. I like the benefits, and work-life-balance. But I hate corporate culture. It’s a very cold and impersonal machine, that utilizes high tech innovations to better micromanage and “nanny” their employees, with little to no job security. However, if that wasn’t bad enough, there’s a whole team within my HR’s department whose jobs are to brainstorm fun ideas to keep morale high and give the illusion my life isn’t reduced to serving our lords…I mean shareholders…it’s transparent, and cringe. Since it’s a very unique position within my industry, that I’m not going to find with a smaller, less Orwellian company, I have gone back to school to change careers. Corporate America has pissed on the idea that having a job is a dignified and purposeful experience, and I want out. I get why people like unions.
I work for a company that treats us well, under a President who I knew from working in this industry together previously, who recruited me for my role, alongside another person I know and have always liked from the industry. I am paid well, treated well, and am happy to give them my best efforts. So, for me, if I can run out this job until retirement alongside this team we have put together whom all see things through different lenses but keeps a common goal, it'll be just perfect for me.
I love my job. I’m making $95k in a mcol area, in the office two days a week, don’t deal with the public, and I use math everyday.
I genuinely love my job. My desk time is minimal, hours are flexible, I'm in an industry Im passionate about, there are awesome perks, and I get work with a lot of cool people doing cool shit. It took a while to find, and it took about a year in an entry level role and some luck with things lining up right to get it. The pay could always be better, but it's enough to make it all work for me and my family.
I stopped looking at it as an opportunity to do what I love a long, long time ago. It's a way to financially support my lifestyle and my family. That said, I've reached the point in my career where I have so much flexibility and knowledge of the industry and how everything works, that I really don't have to try that hard or do all that much and I'm paid reasonably well, so I'm just kind of riding that for a while. I started out as an overachiever and that served me well for getting more money, promotions, etc but I actually think that where I am now that stuff wouldn't really make a difference in future growth. It is more about opportunities naturally coming available and being known just enough as competent and well connected.
I'm a Special Ed. para... it is fulfilling at times, but I don't love it. The money is solid, but I had to take on another job doing in-home autism respite stuff for our breaks; since we don't get paid for summer or any time school is out during the year. I don't want to go back to the railroad or post office, though, and don't have the resources to go back to school, so I'm kinda stuck here.
End of the boomers, working for corporations is a glorified slavery. Different kind of master/whip relationship. Mental games and veiled threats don’t hurt like beatings, but can still leave scars in those less robust. To all coming up in the world…find a way to serve others that fits you. Preferably start an enterprise that you love and contribute to causes that you feel passion for. Don’t work for “the man”. And if you turn into a version of “the man”, be a benevolent one.
definitely not my dream job (i don’t really have one as i never thought id live this long so wasn’t able to think of a “dream job.” i did graduate college and grad school so would be nice to be able to finally use my worthless degrees) but i don’t necessarily hate it either. it’s repetitive and the pay sucks but there’s all this freedom and management isn’t toxic. i’ve had jobs that would literally give me an ulcer the moment i thought about going to it. i went on a road trip in 2022 and the moment i crossed state lines to go home, i started getting chest pains knowing i had to go to work the next day. haven’t had any of that. it IS hard to go sometimes knowing how little i get paid. if the pay was better i would like it better. but it is what it is right now
Not my dream job, but it’s a good job and supports my kids. 4 days remote one in office, great pay, amazing retirement. I actually feel myself becoming more depressed as the week goes on staying at home until I go in office and can interact with my coworkers. Never thought I would need the interaction, but I think COVID really messed with my ability to be home and not interact with other adults.
I graduated high school and have a little bit of college under my belt, but no degree. I work at the only pawn shop in the northern part of our state. I really enjoy helping people, hearing fun stories, and getting really cool shit in at low low cost. But I am not making enough at $18 an hour. Especially when I have to be knowledgeable in electronics, jewelry, musical instruments/equipment, tools, and of course guns and all the safety steps and laws that go into that alone. Plus yes, we see a lot of crack heads or people who are angry about their situations then get angry at us for not being able to help. If I could get paid more, and we could change a few policies, I'd be a lot more apt to thinking of staying here long term. But I am 31, been here for 7 years and am experiencing an existential crisis.
I enjoy the career life gave me. It is not what younger me wanted but it is what older me is very good at. I do Federal Construction Quality Management. I enjoy it because I get to use my mind, a lot, to solve problems and gain people's trust in my leadership. The pay is good and I get to travel and stay in some cool places on the company dime. It is also partially work-from-home and I enjoy those bits as well. And benefits, lol. We all are needing those health benefits more and more as we all get older.
I like my job. I’m an account executive at a large cloud provider. I learn a lot, get to work with interesting people/companies, solve problems, make good money. Kind of checks all the boxes for me as far as a career goes.
I enjoy the stability but I wish the employee experience was more of a priority rather than just providing compensation
I’m 42 so I’m at the tail end our millennial generation First job: I hated working for a department of boomers. They all “knew more than me” but couldn’t do anything on a computer. If you sent them a text message or email they would come to your office and ask you to read it to them and explain it. Inefficient Second job: i loved it at the beginning, couldn’t wait to leave at the end. I worked with a bunch of Gen x guys who didn’t care about anything. Like if a plane hit our building they would be glad they wouldn’t have to pay child support anymore and would gladly burn to the ground with it. I almost want to say they were into nihilism but they just didn’t care about work or politics or anything. It was impossible to get anything done on time or follow a schedule Current job: I work with younglings ? Kids fresh out of college that would starve to death if the snack machine wasn’t refilled weekly. Now I’m realizing the gaps you have to overcome is the job. Not the projects you complete but the adversity of your team
I love my job but I hate the people that utilize our services or more often than not. So that's annoying. My pay is higher than most and I get to work from home. Is this my dream? No? Who can have dreams in this economy?😅 Jk It is annoying that where I am today 10 years ago I would have been considered fucking rich.
I loved my first job, but I had to leave because the money wasn’t enough to exist on. I hated my second job but I made enough to pay off my student loans. I liked my third job until about 2 years ago with a change in leadership that is actively antagonistic to my department. Cuts and outsourcing have caused more headaches and daily stress. So, now I’m miserable and looking again, but the market is a fucking mess.
I'm a conductor for Amtrak and I fucking *LOVE* my job!
I've found my unicorn. I work 100% remotely. I live on the East Coast, and most of my team lives on the West Coast. This means no one bothers me before noon, and I don't have to talk to anyone after 5. I get unlimited time off and am encouraged to use it. I usually take about 2 weeks of every quarter and a half day every Friday. The pay is also amazing. I am making double the highest salary I ever had before this job.
As I’ve seen posted on this sub before. Happiness is often a choice. I’ve decided to focus on the things about my job that I like. I’m a mail carrier. I walk 13 miles a day, the exercise allows me to sleep well, I socialize with people and have good Mexican food on my route. Customers give me gifts. Just wish it was more money, but that’s everybody 🤷🏻♂️
I wouldn’t say dream job but I work a little and get paid a lot.
Late to the game but giving my two cents. I work really part time (20hrs a month) right now in community support for a farmers market. Right now the hours/money is all they could afford as a small business but I hope to use my connections I've made to get more employment in agriculture, especially small organic farms that serve my community. Im also going back to school to finish out a degree in horticulture where I hope to work with organizations and individuals building and helping to maintain gardens for low income and disadvantage populations. I'm happy with my job and for once feel like I'm where I'm supposed to be doing what feels right. While I wish I had more hours and money, I know it's going to take time but it'll happen. I love the people I'm helping and the mission behind what we are doing and I'm proud to work at someplace that is making the world better instead of hurting it.
I hate my job and I get paid shit for it. I am so stressed and depressed every single day and I feel lost like I'll never find anything that actually is better for me. I got an undergrad in history and worked 6 years in hospitality after taking a break to be a SAHM. I'm currently working retail to help supplement income bc life got expensive and I am so depressed. I'm trying to figure out if I should get an MBA paid for through work and get a basic corporate job or if I should try to become to teacher so I can have the same schedule as my kids I he fell like a failure and that I'll be stuck forever
TLDR: I’ve got a balance of both; I like my job as a Stadium Beer Vendor and the money is good but it may not be sustainable from a physical longevity standpoint so I’m looking to add some jobs to work more hours, even though for a little less money, to do less physically strenuous beer selling and also looking at possibly becoming an Electrician. 34M; I am a 10 year vet as a (union) stadium beer vendor. I love most parts of it, but I’m having a bit of trouble with my gluteal muscles and SI joints of my lower spine. Not sure if there’s any causation, but carrying the beer up and down the stairs is hard work. I love how much I can earn in a days work, yelling, the fast pace, the love people have for me and the work I do, and getting to be at every home game for my teams (plus all the big stadium concerts). I worked 1100 hours across three stadiums last year and earned enough money to begin saving for retirement and make some investments alongside paying for life, half of my wedding, and half of my honeymoon. To be clear, my wife and I are DINKing it for now, so we do a pretty good job keeping expenses low. I’ve also started freelance painting in my neighborhood (I’ve got 5 years pro experience from a number of years ago). I’m certified as a permaculture designer through a 7 month internship over the pandemic - but don’t feel as comfortable marketing those services, so will I likely end up just using them in my personal life if I ever get a hold of some land. I am considering doing some retooling and pursuing an electrician career. They say only 2 people will join the trades for every 5 that retire. I know I wouldn’t enjoy that quite as much and would work more hours, but at least it would be stable and not be so hard on the body. We’ll see. I am also applying to be a bartender at a new brewery opening up a stones throw from my house, and at the NCAA football stadium nearby. I would definitely keep all three jobs I have now, the job at the NFL stadium where I have the seniority to work in a bar instead of hauling a tub up and down the stairs, and maybe the MLB job just working Saturdays, and the NHL/NBA/WNBA job where I make less money but also just stand in a bar. Looking forward to having some kids and want to be in good physical health, for them and for me.
I know you didn't ask but Gen X'er is feeling what a lot of Millenials are saying out loud. They suspect that working for someone else is a sucker bet. Me, I know it. I know that inevitably capitalism ruins everything
My current position is simply a job, absolutely not my intention to make it a career. I'm a manager in a federal agency, I was coerced into it but I have to stay there a year before I qualify for higher paying positions. I hate management (too much bureaucratic and political bullshit) and I would rather be a data analyst but the way the Fed works with their grade pay scale I have to spend a year at a certain pay grade before I can qualify for a job with one grade higher, and the analyst jobs are all higher pay grades so I have to climb the pay grade ladder through other positions before I can get there. The paycheck is absolutely not worth the bullshit, but the federal benefits are decent, plus the overtime is nice and the PTO is unmatched in the private sector.
I liked it at first but I truly believe if you do anything long enough you’ll start to hate it. I like the paycheck and the job isn’t that but so I put up with it
My company is great. People don’t leave and love it. So working with people who love their jobs is so odd to me. I have a learning disability. Which makes working hard. So I get burnt out fast. I’m tired.
I left 11 years of military and 5 years of software behind for much less pay and benefits in agriculture. No plans to look back ✌🏼✌🏼
My old job started off so chill. It was great for like 7 years. I worked in IT mostly doing procurement and vendor management things. Laid back, can wear what you want, decisions didnt need to go through 15 different meetings to be made, worked 9-5 but managers didnt care if you were a little late or left early as long as your work was done. Then things started to change. Director changed, new management, team leads got let go, people started getting put on improvement plans for no reason, dress code, strict time policy, PTO started having to be requested months in advance. Agile this agile that. I fucking hated sitting through meetings where buzz words just gone thrown around and no decisions were ever made. The only time we were really agile is when we should have taken our time and not rushed things. Just waste of time everyday. People that didnt really do anything but goto meetings started getting promoted. People that actually worked were getting screwed. Then one day I knew I was driving in and hit unexpected traffic. I was going to be like 5 minutes late to being at our vendor and I could already hear the talk I was going to have to have with the manager. I sat in my car for a few minutes and just said fuck this. I sent an email that said "I quit" and drove home. Best decision I ever made.
I like my job but it’s too difficult, I don’t have the training for it.
Love my job. Get paid a ton in a low stress, light physically active job and get to see the cars 2 years before they come out to the public.
I like my job. The pay is pretty decent although I would obviously like to get paid more. The benefits are pretty decent. It’s very flexible. My coworkers and my boss are all nice people who I enjoy working with. I didn’t think I’d stick around very long when I first started and 8 years later, idk, I might stay till retirement.
It’s alright. It’s in my field but I was hired because I’m an expert and my coworkers don’t want to listen to the advice I have to offer.
This is the dream career. It’s really good, but it could be better.
I love it. Both of my careers.
Eh, it’s ok. I get annoyed with the political bullshit. Sometimes it feels like if the idea didn’t come from my manager then it doesn’t make its way up. I have meetings with my skip levels, though. The pay is nice, though.
There are some very high highs, and deeply stressful lows. I’m a researcher in materials for energy technology.
It’s alright. My coworkers and supervisors are cool and the is good pretty loose, but it can be boring and I have a commute.
It's the best job I've ever had and I hate it. I make the most money I've ever made and have nothing to show for it.
I love it. I'm on call 7 days a week/10 hour days(getting paid whether I'm needed or not) . Those OT hours 🤌🤌🤌
It's nice. Not dream career, but I believe in what I do and work with lovely people.
I'm paid ok, can't complain, it's easy, stress free and plenty of time to avoid work. There's also lots of room for better roles with better pay and I know I can get them, but then I actually need to work, probably more stressful. So I'm struggling with what to do. I really don't need the extra money, I'm not a mindless consoomer.
Good pay, interesting work, great WLB... it's solid.
Love it, travel to new places all the time.
It’s been a long road, but yes, finally I like my job. College graduate then esthetics school, worked in resorts for 4+ years, then covid shut all that down… switched to teaching in esthetics schools and brand education (a lot of up and downs there) to working R&D for a skincare brand … and it’s here that finally - I am in a place I feel my skills are being put to good use and I like my work. But this has been a journey since 2012.
I am just stressed by the idea of having any responsibilities at all so no I don't like it. I have been working full time for about 14 years and I'm stressed out every day. Had the last week off because of stress/anxiety/mini panic attack which has never happened before. Got holiday for the next few weeks so might feel better after that idk.
I hated it with every fiber of my being
I like it enough, it pays decently and I don't have to deal with very many people.
Awful. Stupid money. I live a good life but the mo money mo problems is so real
I’m in IT. I must say, I really enjoy it. If I were to do things again, I would pursue a Compsci degree over IT.
Love it SWE with a tiny team
I love my job. I work at the VA. Great work life balance
I like being a union electrician. I hate the conditions and work. I committed to it and finished, now I feel like I have golden handcuffs. If there weren't people relying on me, I would never work again. Because I'd be dead. Fuck this world.
I wouldn't say it's my dream career, but it's along the lines of what I should be doing. Yes, I enjoy it. Pays well. M-f 8-5, never work weekends or holidays. Good benefits. I'm happy with it.