Originally Posted By mark9000:
https://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-no-one-on-his-deathbed-ever-said-i-wish-i-had-spent-more-time-on-my-business-paul-tsongas-52-20-04.jpg

My career or lack there of is one the greatest regrets of my life. It has destroyed my health both physically and mentally along with whatever creativity I used to have. Frankly I am tired of corporate America and their bullshit. I was laid off for the 7th time about a month ago.

My Indian boss laid me off, told me my position was eliminated and than gave my job to another Indian. The joint was probably 80-90% Indian at this point. People say whites are racist, you havent seen anything till you have been around Indians.

I have been an IT corporate slave since I was 22, been working nonstop since I was 14. The IT field is a shit show today between the corporate bullshit, the offshoring and of course the Indians. The stress level is insane when you have a job between the crazy demands, the hours and the constant threat of getting laid off.

I am tired.

Originally Posted By fxntime:


Vacuum cleaner sales aren't any way to make a living.

Neither is slavery.

Originally Posted By ryandushku:
You're not alone. I lost my job of nearly 14 years last month, it sucks. I am struggling to get any traction anywhere I apply, I can't even get a faaacking intial interview for positions on paper I'm quite qualified for. It definitely beats a man down. I got a few months of severance so I'm not in the cold yet but this is definitely not going as easy as I initially hoped

Originally Posted By SnowMule:
Don't miss corporate life at all.  I should have left earlier.  
Staring at a computer screen 8+ hours a day.  Meetings.  Buzzwords.  Personalities.  
Office Space hit too close to home.  

My office view from yesterday.  "I left a desk job for this?"
https://photos.smugmug.com/photos/i-m4MxfXd/0/L/i-m4MxfXd-L.jpg

Originally Posted By hitchhiker:
Designed a new kind of rifle, am attempting to write patent for it, about to look for machine shop to build prototype parts, will soon hopefuly be making a living selling a rifle that I designed that I believe will have a fairly large niche.

Originally Posted By Pro_Patria_431:
I learned this too late. I bought into the bullshit of being "productive" and wasted most of my life being caught in the chains of comfort. I resent every minute of overtime I have worked. If I had it to do over, I would choose a path that could best be described as "bum". As it is, I will coast on the remainder of the time I have to work, as it is too late to make any significant improvement to my quality of life.

Originally Posted By woodsie:
I've got a bit of an alternative perspective on this.  

Someone has to do the shitty soulless jobs.  That's just a fact of life.  Every single man made thing we enjoy that we don't make for ourselves requires someone else to go to work to make it.  The world runs on a people who show up to work no matter how shitty the work is.  Until we perfect AI powered humanoid robots who fully duplicate human utility, there is no reality where everyone gets to live their best life 24/7.

The position you have to be in to even contemplate "breaking free from servitude" in the way OP is framing it is a pretty privileged position to begin with.  Those of us in that position are very fortunate even if we earned that position.  There has to be a little bit of humility in front of and gratitude for the people that aren't in that position and still have to go to work to make the world that we want to enjoy.

There is an unintentional consequence of the constant barrage of messaging people get from those in that position on internet forums and social media.  It makes people dissatisfied with lives that someone 100 years ago would have done anything to have.  It makes people who are currently unemployed and struggling seem ever further than ever from getting to where they want to be because they perceive a standard that is not realistic to begin with.  There is a fine line between seeing something and considering it an aspirational goal and seeing something again and again to the point where you think there's something wrong with your life because it doesn't look like what you see in the media.

My alternative advice would be that whether your job sucks or not, make sure you have something to show for it.  Don't live paycheck to paycheck, build your personal balance sheet, make sure that your job contributes to your happiness outside of work if you can't be happy in your work.

It's always better if you can do that thing you love to do and get paid for it but not everyone is going to get to do that unless you are one of those rare people who can find satisfaction even in the shit jobs.

Originally Posted By Pro_Patria_431:
I learned this too late. I bought into the bullshit of being "productive" and wasted most of my life being caught in the chains of comfort. I resent every minute of overtime I have worked. If I had it to do over, I would choose a path that could best be described as "bum". As it is, I will coast on the remainder of the time I have to work, as it is too late to make any significant improvement to my quality of life.

Originally Posted By MADMAXXX:
I looked at work like having to go to prison.
But I could either do 30 years with weekends off or do 20 years straight.
I chose 20 years of working all of the OT I could, 12 hours M-Sat and 8 hours on Sunday.
I made more in OT alone then I made in a 40 hour week.
I paid off all debt, invested heavily, and retired at 62.
Many of my work friends that took almost every weekend off to go to the lake or go hunting, fishing, whatever, are still working and will have to do so for over 10 more years because they pissed away all the time they could have used to made OT money, invested that money and made compound interest.
Living in paradise now I never looked back and say, I wish I had worked less.

Originally Posted By sirgilbert357:


Sorry to hear that man. Cool that you got a severance. I quit a job where I was well liked, was very good at my work and had a stable income, but no path upward. A recruiter contacted me out of the blue and offered me what seemed to be a better position, with about a 5.5% raise (which doesn't seem like much, but I had just received my annual raise, which was only 3.5% and was salty about it, so another 5.5% on top sounded good). The new job was a better title, with a promise of promotions in the future to positions that I have been aspiring to for a while.

The new job was a complete dumpster fire and my boss was a passive aggressive personality with zero communication skills, and no time to answer any of my questions or train me. I made it there 3 weeks and we ended up parting ways. I got told the day I got fired that they were expecting somebody with controller level experience... But the title I was given was senior accountant, so WTF? The job I quit I was basically an AP AR, billing coordinator combo role, which my new boss knew, or should have, if they read my resume. I don't know how they felt like they were being oversold on my experience, but that's the excuse I was given and they let me go. What's funny is everybody I know and have talked to, or got an advice from says I could have easily done the job if they had just given me the tools and time to get past the learning curve. I have the drive and the intellect but I wasn't given the chance. So now I sit here unemployed just trying to land a job and then contemplating going back to school at night to finish my accounting degree so I can show someone a piece of paper that says I'm smart enough.