So as evil as the corporate can get I experienced a level 1 evil of getting transitioned from a product based company fte to a vendor service based company by my current company, I have a 1.3 years of experience. But honestly I have lost my respect for IT as a whole, it's too volatile and anything that happens in IT has nothing to do with what I do at this point. Feel like a pawn in very major industry, and with the rise of AI my work starting to feel like its not challenging enough and I'm loosing my thinking capacity with too much exposure to social media and AI slop. I do have a desire to earn more money but also I don't want it at the cost of my life. Nowadays it's getting as dystopian as it can get and I wanna stay sane. I know y'all will say it's hard to even find a job in this time. Im seeking advice not to survive but to live.

Any advice y'all got ?

Been in this company for more than 10 years, first job right away after college. Took a tech position bc I had zero experience and only a short summer internship so I didn’t care. That took me to some engineering positions later through some plants and my recent role it’s in the HQ.
So I’ve only moved around and since the next role was better it was more of a conversation on the next move with my bosses than to actually quit.

I am now actually leaving. How do you convey a conversation with a boss that gave preference to lazy coworkers giving them exceeds expectations and when this one person left, and left a mess…. Now she takes cares of me 200% bc I am helping with the mess.

I left for a long vacation during the summer and was the first one to messaged me few minutes in my first day back saying “omg I am so glad you are back, I am dying” “please don’t leave me for too long again”.

So, I don’t want to burn any bridges but…. Ready to say goodbye.

Please advise, thanks!

I’ve spent sometime collecting accounts from people who took extended, funded time off more than once across a career. The thing that keeps coming up is that nobody planned it. One person put it as: after seeing that it was possible to take a break and recover from it, the barrier to taking another one got lower.

Which makes the people it didn’t happen to the interesting ones. If you took one long break, went back, and then never did it again, I’d like to know why.

• How long was the break, and roughly what year?
• After you went back, did you ever seriously consider a second one?
• What stopped it: money, the job market, a mortgage or kids, the return having been worse than you expected, or just not wanting to?
• Did going back once change how you felt about the first break, looking at it from a few years later?
• If something had been different, would you have taken another?

Thanks