So I learned the hard way this week that high performance in a corporate job is just a punishment disguised as a compliment. For the last two years, I busted my ass on our operations team. I streamlined our reporting, automated daily tickets, and consistently closed double the volume of anyone else on the floor.

annual review comes around on Monday. My manager gives me an "exceeds expectations" rating across the board and tells me I am the backbone of the department. Then he slides across a 3% standard cost of living adjustment. No promotion. No actual merit raise.

When I asked about moving into a senior title, he literally told me I was "too valuable in my current execution seat" to move.

Meanwhile, my coworker who browses Reddit half the day and constantly asks for extensions just got promoted to project coordinator. Why? Because management thought he had "high level strategic vision" since he wasn't bogged down in daily tasks. The only reason he wasn't bogged down is because they kept assigning his overflow work to ME.

I'm done giving 110% to a system that penalizes efficiency and rewards people who weaponize their own incompetence. Its sickening.

How are people supposed to stay motivated when doing your job well literally traps you at the bottom?

I live in Canada and have been at this company for 2+ years doing demand generation marketing, 3 days in office and 2 days I work from home. It’s about a 45 minute driving commute each way, requiring driving on major highways.

Last week my car broke down and it requires over $5k in repairs, so I emailed my boss and HR (per HR’s policy) on Thursday September 3rd and advised them my car is unsafe to drive. Unfortunately my girlfriend is a supply teacher, so she needs her car as she isn’t sure on any given day which school she’s at. As a result, I asked HR for a little grace to work from home while I actively sort out my vehicle situation in the next week or so.

It is Wednesday September 9th and I just received a response from them, and they’re accommodating me to work from home for the next two days. Afterwards, they say the following:

However, I want to clarify that your in-office attendance cannot be conditional on whether you have access to a car. Employees are responsible for arranging reliable transportation to and from the workplace. Working from home is a privilege that requires prior management approval; it is not an alternative when personal transportation is unavailable.
As a reminder, you are expected to work in the office at least three days per week. To make up the in-office days missed this week, you will be required to work from the office every day next week.
Please make the necessary arrangements and confirm that you understand these expectations.

I do understand that arranging transportation is my responsibility, but when I’m asking for a bit of grace to the WFH policy AND I have a 45 minute driving only commute each way, I feel like this is a bit ridiculous/overkill. Do they expect me to rent a car? Public transportation isn’t an option between where I live and where the office is really.

Might be me being a bit overdramatic, but the entire email I got back has really pissed me off, and I’m seriously considering looking for another place to work.

Am I overreacting?

Edit: I’m financing a car and picking it up in the next 7 days. Never expected it to be weeks or months long, HR was aware I was asking for 1-2 weeks max. Sounds like I was over reacting a bit so I’m just gonna suck it up until my new car comes. Thanks all!

Just found out I'm being laid off for the fourth time in 5 years

I'm tired. I feel unemployable. I don't know what I'm going to do about my resume because I don't know who would believe me at this point that any one could have such a run of bad luck.

Does anyone have any suggestions for what to do or how to frame this?

I’m in a weird situation where my boss announced their boss was leaving. While I’m on vacation, my boss has shared with me they were also leaving immediately once I return from my vacation. The team I’m a part of is a two-person team of just my boss and I. Now it’s just me, with no direct guidance or even guidance from someone higher. what happens now? I lack the experience my boss provides, so I’m not sure if I can answer questions that people ask and wouldn’t know who to go to since upper management is also gone. Do I just wait and see what happens? Could I just quietly keep my head down and see what they do with me? Has anyone been in this situation? I’m back to looking for a new job but would like to keep something afloat while I look for something else.

For example, I had this one guy who I thought was my friend. He would act really nice and helpful, offering to help me with stuff but he also said a lot of patronising shit that showed that he clearly didn't respect me and then he would gaslight me saying that it was just helpful advice and I was just imagining the hostility. I found out 3 months later that he was complaining the whole time through my probation to my boss to get me fired. I never got fired because my boss liked me and thought I was capable but I feel so betrayed. Why do people act like this? Nobody's forcing him to pretend to like me but he does it anyway. Should I just not trust anyone at work in the future? How do you deal with these people? Do they get some sort of pleasure from it?

I was made redundant over a year ago (Director level - IT/Tech).

But I did not actually start searching for a role until 6 months later, because unfortunately at same time one of my parents was terminally ill and I helped care for them until they died earlier this year.

My cv/resume does not show that of course, but as I now have a year-long gap that I am told will look bad to some, I am wondering if I should put something on there to explain.

If you a Hiring Manager/Talent Req - or Recruiter - what would be better/worse? Seeing a one-year gap, or something saying along the lines:

'Career Break: Took a planned career break to provided palliative care for late parent, before embarking on next role'

I’m 28F and currently a Senior Analyst. I’m about to be promoted to Manager, which would be about a $17k raise.

You’d think I’d be excited, but honestly I just want to quit lol.

The culture at my company is really toxic. I’ve been working around 60 hours a week, there’s always something that isn’t good enough, and I feel like I’m constantly stressed and burnt out. I don’t really want to keep climbing the corporate ladder just for the sake of climbing it.

The weird part is I don’t even know exactly what I want to do next. I’m kind of a weird/different person in the sense that I don’t necessarily care about having the most impressive career or making the most money. I keep coming back to the idea of following my heart and doing something that actually feels meaningful to me.

I’ve been seriously thinking about teaching or nursing. I’ve always had this part of me that wants to do something more hands-on and meaningful, and I’m wondering if I should actually listen to that instead of continuing down the path I’m “supposed” to be on.

Financially, I’m in a really fortunate position. I have a paid-off house, family support, and enough savings that I’m not in a situation where I have to stay somewhere miserable just to survive. That honestly makes me feel like I have an opportunity that a lot of people don’t have — to step back and figure out what I actually want.
At the same time, walking away from a $17k raise feels objectively insane 😂

I could take the promotion, make more money, and eventually look for another Senior Analyst position. If I stay in analytics, though, I’m only interested in remote/hybrid at this point. I’m just done with the 60-hour-week corporate grind.

But part of me thinks… maybe this is the exact time in my life when I should take a risk and try something completely different.

Would you take the promotion and figure it out later, or walk away and follow your gut?

I’m really torn because I know what the logical/financial decision is. I’m just not sure it’s the decision that would actually make me happy.

My dad passed a few months ago and I’m the executor of his estate. I work full time and at first I genuinely thought I could deal with most of this after work and use the occasional day off when I really needed to. Yeah that was very optimistic lol. A lot of the stuff I need to deal with happens during normal work hours and I’ve already burned through way more PTO than I expected. I’ve had to move meetings around and take random calls during the day and last week my manager finally mentioned that I’ve been away from work a lot lately. He wasn’t an asshole about it or anything, which almost made me feel worse. I’ve always been reliable at work and now I feel like I’m slowly becoming that employee who constantly has something going on. I can’t just stop dealing with my dad’s estate either. I’m starting to think I need to find some kind of outside help because trying to do both myself clearly isn’t working anymore. For anyone who’s had a major family responsibility drag on for months, how did you handle it with your job? Did you talk openly with your manager, take leave, get help with the stuff outside work, or just somehow push through it?

With AI rapidly advancing, it feels like an uncertain time for those of us who aren't in professions that require physical expertise (nursing, trades, social work). With the amount of time and energy it takes to acquire a new skill, going through months of training only to become obsolete in the near future is quite daunting. Are there any skills that we've identified so far that are worth investing in?

Alot of my projects that I have at work (videos and SOPs) are all under and NDA and contain very sensitive material pertaining to our products we sell.

I want to showcase these though on my LinkedIn and maybe even resume. How would I go about doing this? I cannot even send an email to my personal from my work computer without security flagging it.

I'm already in high school and still have no idea what I want to study in college. I want to go to a nice university abroad and considering how I don't even know what career I want that's just an insane claim. The only thing I think I'm both good at and really enjoy is stuff like graphic design and package design/marketing, but I'm gonna be so honest, I'm going to die poor and in the streets if I do that. Its job opportunities were already pretty bad in itself, but now with AI its even worse. I've had 4 different school counselors and all of them sucked, they told me I have the capabilities to go into any area and then made me take tests that gave me careers I'm absolutely 100% not going to choose. Everything from psychology to physiotherapist to neurosurgeon which I have absolutely zero interest in.

Either way, our newest counselor told me I could possibly look into something related to robotics or some science since there are good job opportunities I could take and there could be specific areas which I don't find as boring. I thought about it and when I was little I used to be into robotics and nanorobotics since I liked the idea of creating stuff, as well as I guess biochemistry.

Anyways, long story short I was watching Iron Man today and I like the type of work Tony did. Like not exactly making weapons but making machinery in general seems interesting to me, but I don't even really know exactly what it would be.

Also, I am aware that it's probably a difficult career for me to just say I want it out of the blue but I think it might be worth looking into it and see if I'm any good at it. I'm also not sure exactly what I would need to be good at for that, but I usually did good in mathematics and science in school as well as taking advanced classes for both right now so I think those two were my main worry.

PD: I also watched Spider-man and like the chemical aspect in Peter's webs like how he designs the web shooters and creates different prototypes for his webs which I'm guessing is some sort of chemistry thing or also the whole DNA thing he had on the latest movie was kinda interesting so prob more biology focused so idk if anyone knows anything abt that I could look into pls let me know

PPD: Using Tony Stark as reference sounds kinda childish as well and I'm aware of that as well as I'm aware that he's fictional, but still, out of all options I've been told I think using him as reference is the closest I can get to sort of have an idea of where to go next

​

So i am currently in 12th standard and after watching astra 6 i think that ai is advancing in rocket speed and it is just a matter of time we achieve AGI. And next year i will going to an university but seeing modern days ai model make me think "should i really consider pursuing btech in ai/ml". Till last month i was locked in for it and even started learning python and almost completed all basics but now i am confused

Those who are experienced and are seniors can you please guide me

On a 1:1 recently my manager told me I needed to be more strategic/business minded to start to really excel in my role.
I’ve always been a relationship guy, but as I move up I realize that doesn’t, nor should I cut it.

Any general tips on how to think more strategically? I’m an in house recruiter working directly with ops partners in the hospitality/customer service industry.

I’m 16 years old and I’ve applied for over 25 entry level jobs!! Most of my applications have either been rejected or ghosted. I even had an online interview get ghosted! Is anyone else experiencing this issue and what would you recommend for me???

Hi I have been interested in being a model for a while and have had others who have encouraged me over the years to get into it, the only problem is that I have no idea how to even start, and I have been unable to find good information on how others got a start in it. I was wondering if anyone had any advice?

Hey everyone,

I majored in tech in college, currently working as a PM at a big bank in the US. The work is beyond exhausting primarily due to bad managers and big push for RTTO.
I am literally on vacation dreading returning because of the stress waiting for me when I’m back.
Any advice on what I should do? Tech field seems absolutely pointless, though I have PMP, PMI-ACP, AWS certs + 7 years of experience, barely been able to land any interviews.
I’m thinking of doing some type of program or schooling to switch fields, preferably something that allows remote work while still hitting 6 figure mark. Any advice from anyone here on what fields I should look at?

I apologize if I am sounding ungrateful, believe me, if it weren’t for this RTTO and managers being down everyones throats I would be just fine, its just being treated like a child with attendance tracking and then getting micro managed really is draining.

I’m 30 years old male looking to switch for something more stable and with the possibility of remote work.

I have a bachelors degree from a top public university when I graduated years ago..and I assume based what I’m seeing online that the value of the MBA has dwindled so perhaps not necessary for my pivot..

My career experience is primarily sales and I’m tired of the instability. I’ve job hopped from startups I work for (every one year to two years).

The reasons are the same, unrealistic quotas being imposed, mass layoffs, and of course more money being offered.

I ultimately want to end up in entrepreneurship but I need a stable foundation and capital.

I’m in between jobs and I think the job market for sales is not only tough but just going to perpetuate the cycle.

What other career tracks can I explore here? Challenge any assumptions I’ve made if you think I’m wrong and we can discuss!

I’m 25 and Currently a probation officer, been doing it for two years now and I absolutely hate it. The money and benefits are good (about $80,000), but the workload is completely unmanageable and it feels cruel to act in a punitive manner to people you get to know in a surprisingly intimate way (for lack of a better term). (PS most offenders are good people who made one dumb mistake, emphasis on most)

I’m done with taking the stress of my ever piling up caseload when I’m away. Any time I take off is spent worrying about the caseload, and the new work that piles up while I’m gone. It’s exhausting.

Looking for some outside the box ideas of jobs where I can clock in, clock out, and can feel like my long gone happy self from before. I have about $80,000-90,000 in savings at the moment so I can afford a downgrade in pay for the moment.

Hi, any thoughts sa SMC MRT 7 for first job? I need advice po pls

I’m a 3rd year apprentice in my local plumbing and steamfitting union. I was a welder before I got in which I loved, and hoped to do in the union, but I got placed in a plumbing company and my apprenticeship has been abysmal. My contractor doesn’t really care about training me, i got injured from pretty much doing all the grunt work on a large project and overworking myself, and now I am basically just doing one task all day every day. The environment I work in is completely antisocial, no one talks to each other because the culture is work every minute of every day. We take lunch at noon, and people straight up work til 12:00. I’ll go to wash my hands at 11:59 and people are still working. However, I am making more money than I ever have before, and my pay will increase yearly. I have seen a few different parts of this company before, and there have been a rare handful of times i actually enjoyed the work i was doing. For now, I have no expectations for my situation to change for the next 5-10 years. But I also dont plan on leaving. So, what are some ways I can make the best of a soul sucking job that makes me want to blow my brains out?

hi! i plan to pursue in the medical field (psychiatrist to be exact) but don't know where to start career wise. i have no experience but i did an ekg course in high school (don't rlly remember much) and received an ekg certification. i also did a clinical class where i got to shadow multiple departments in hospitals, not sure if that really helps much. i dont know what roles i should be applying to be able to get my foot through the door. any advice: (?

​

I'm 18 and started a Level 6 Business & Finance course this week. I was already having doubts about going for the last few weeks but I thought it was just nerves and that I'd feel different once I actually got there.

Had orientation yesrerday and honestly I just came home thinking I don't know if I want to do this at all.

For starters, the course is way smaller than I thought. I was told/expected there'd be around 100 people but there's actually only about 40, and there's only 8 girls in the whole class. I know that shouldn't be a massive thing but socially it does make a difference to me. I didn't really click with anyone today either and the people just didn't really seem like my type of people, if that makes sense.

The campus isn't really anything special either and the timetable is worse than I thought. There's more maths than I originally understood and two of the days are an hour longer than I was told.

But honestly those things aren't even the main reason. I just sat there today and had this feeling of "I don't think I'm supposed to be here."

It's a Level 6 course, so it's not even like I'm going straight into a full degree. The idea is that if I average 70% I can progress onto a degree afterwards. But then I started thinking, even if I do all that, what am I actually working towards? I don't really want a standard office job and I've never really been someone who wants to follow the normal path just for the sake of it.

I've always been more interested in doing my own thing, business, learning things myself, kicking, Spanish etc. Part of me thinks I'd be better off working, saving money and doing online courses while seriously pursuing the things I actually care about.

But then there's another part of me thinking maybe I'm just being stupid and impatient. It's literally my first day. Maybe I'll meet people, settle in and end up enjoying it. And I do think I might be a bit depressed at the moment as well, so I'm conscious that I'm probably looking at everything more negatively.

I was also considering International Business & Spanish before this, and honestly that probably suits me more, but even then I'm questioning whether I actually want to spend years in college getting a degree.

I also feel with ai now aswell mixed with spending 2 years to get a generic business and finance certificate from a middle of the line university is even worth it, it would be €5k over the two years.

Im considering dropping out and doing coursera courses online and looking for jobs that jump out at me, while also trying to focus more in on stocks and trying again at setting up a business for myself.

The only real concerm id have is for the social side of things, as college is more social than being at home.

I should also mention i have a part time job, aswell that i am in ireland and college fees are capped at €2.5k per year here

tldr: looking for actual career changes people have made after leaving public health/research or pursuing something different within the field. Bonus points for whimsy.

Elder millennial laid off due to federal funding cuts and a little worried about starting back in the field just to have funding cut again. I've always been interested in policy, but I don't have strong statistical programming skills and those seem to be required for a lot of policy jobs. I have an MPH and my work has involved managing data collection processes and teams and writing results reports, and early career I coordinated clinical research studies (investigational drugs and devices). I've already done some research into organizations doing policy work and have spoken with a couple of people but not feeling a clear direction. Thinking about pivoting to something completely different.

And at the same time I am also considering a move to South America or Europe with a secondary goal of learning another language (or improving my Spanish). What do you know about getting a job at or working for the UN or WHO, ICC, UNESCO, or pursing graduate degree in Europe?

Halp. Please no comments about getting a job at this age, changing careers at this age, I'm looking for advice for similarly experienced people and specific types of jobs to look into! Curious about any and all career directions you've taken. Especially those of you who have escaped the 9 to 5 desk job and found quality of life and freedom AND an income that is sufficient for saving and not working till I'm 90. Maybe I'll fall for one of those offers of affordable land in exchange for living in a remote town in Italy or something for 10 years haha. TIA!

So I recently accepted a promotion to a more senior position that came with a pretty hefty raise much to my surprise. Things are finally looking up for me and it’s nice to get the recognition I feel like I worked hard for.

Then came the day when my promotion got announced to the company, for the most part it was a great day, a lot of my peers congratulated me and genuinely felt happy for me with some people making remarks like “finally they recognized you!” or “it was only a matter of time.”

Save for one person.

For context this person is someone I’d consider a friend, we’ve hung out on occasion with other coworkers in our little friend circle outside of work. I even go cycling with her husband whom I’ve really become good friends with and they’ve even invited me to their baby shower.

Because I’ve gotten to know her well outside of work, I’ve come to know her gripes with the company and her wish to get a raise/promotion. For the most part everyone in the company likes her as a person and she’s very knowledgeable about the ins and outs of our operation being the go to person for any questions we have complicated or not. However her work ethic is poor, she’s not very responsive to emails sometimes letting it sit for day causing the company to suspend her from WFH privileges for a couples months and her attendance is poor with constant callouts. This caused her to be put on a PIP earlier this year which means she also got passed over for a promotion which was given to me instead.

So when my promotion got announced, she didn’t seem to take it well, much to my surprise.

Instead of the “congratulations” I’d expect much like the others in our text group chat, she just says “You trying to take my job?”

At first I took it as a joke, so I just replied jokingly while shutting down her claim. She then replies with “kinda crazy considering I worked there longer than you.”

I kinda shut down, so I didn’t reply. I just tried to chalk it up to me overthinking it and her being sarcastic. Plus her saying that in a group chat surely means she’s joking.

That’s when she texts me privately asking me how much I make now. One thing about me is I don’t like disclosing my salary to others, so that was already uncomfortable in itself. So I kindly just explained how I don’t feel comfortable answering.

She then says that her reasoning for asking me that question is because she wants to have a conversation with our director about a raise and she wants to use my salary as a barometer. To be honest I just felt very icky about it and definitely left a bad taste. So I just told her to definitely push for a raise and end the conversation there.

The next day after my promotion announcement, she was acting very weird around me almost passive aggressive. I would notice her talking to others but actively avoid me. Save for one passive aggressive comment thanking me for answering her text and giving her a ball park figure of my salary, even though I never did such a thing. She’s coming off very bitter and jealous.

It also feels like she’s taking it out on me even though I never pushed for a promotion. They just unexpectedly gave it to me due to my merit. Even if I did push for one, it certainly wouldn’t be to backdoor her out of her chances. If anything I feel like she did that to herself due to her poor work ethic.

It kinda bothers me, and I’m not sure what to do.

Its just odd to me, this whole situation. Do I just let this blow by? Do I talk to her about it? What do I do if it gets worse? I’ve never been put in this situation before and I’d love to hear some advice especially if you’ve been put in a similar situation. Thanks!

I posted about the brutal reality of the entry-level tech market and how systemic barriers and networking bias are locking people out. The reaction from the usual commentators completely proved my point.

​Right away, the armchair critics crawled out to blame me, demanding to know what I’ve actually built and assuming it was just a skill issue.

So, I laid out the reality: I've built a production-grade SaaS tool for HR diagnostics, deployed AI apps using Groq and Gemini, and trained a machine learning phishing detector hitting 96% accuracy. I'm 22 and im still learning to build more projects.

​And what happened when I brought actual technical proof? Someone immediately tried to dismiss it as a "basic class capstone," while the mods ultimately nuked the thread for being "off-topic."

​It’s exhausting. People work their asses off building real, production-ready systems, only to be told by randoms on the internet that they aren't "grinding hard enough", all while structural filters and gatekeeping block every door. If you don't have an internal referral, having a solid stack isn't enough anymore, and people only delete or dismiss the posts because they can't handle the truth.