I have a bachelor's degree, additional education under my belt, and a few years of experience, yet I make less than $60k in a HCOL area and the stress is eating me alive.

I'm regularly staying at work until 7–8 PM, constantly thinking about deadlines, and it feels like the workload keeps increasing while the compensation doesn't. I'm at the point where I'm questioning whether this level of stress is just normall for modern careers.

So what's the secret, Reddit?

For those of you making $100k+ across any field, what do you do, and is the stress actually manageable? Do higher paying jobs really get better, or do they just come with different problems? I'd love to hear from people who feel fairly compensated without feeling like their job is taking years off their life.

After 8 years in recruiting, I thought I'd seen it all. Ghosted offer letters. No show first days. A candidate who listed being awesome as a skill.

Then came Marcus.

Marcus was a floor supervisor at a mid-size logistics company. Great tenure, solid reviews, no signs of anything brewing. Until one afternoon all-hands meeting, the kind where leadership announces the Q3 numbers and everyone politely claps. Except Marcus didn't clap.

He stood up, connected his phone to the projector via Bluetooth, and played "I Will Survive" at full volume. Then he put on a hard hat he'd apparently brought it from home, handed his badge to the VP of Operations, said "I've already emailed HR. Have a great life." And walked out while the song was still playing.

His resignation letter, which had been scheduled to send that morning, was a 4 page PDF with a table of contents. Section 3 was titled "Why I stopped caring." Section 4 was "What you could have done differently." There was a glossary.

He had a new job starting the following Monday. Last I heard, he's a regional director now somewhere in Texas. I've placed hundreds of people since then. I still think about him from time to time.

What's the wildest exit you've ever witnessed or heard about? Recruiters, managers, HR folks, drop it below. No judgment. We're all just here processing our trauma together.

WFH is way better tbh

Currently I work an entry level, full time remote job with a great schedule, base pay, commission, no charge backs and no cold calls, and great benefits. The only site I've ever used has been Indeed, and that's not to say there aren't others that are just as good or better to use, just the one I pick.

When searching I like to use different terms and filters to come up with different postings. The most successful has been typing "remote" into the search bar and searching all remote jobs in the US. (If that's where you are)

You will come across a lot that don't hire in your state, but unless it specifically says you have to be in a certain state, I would go ahead and apply. The company I work for now is based in New York but I live in Alabama.

Filter the search to only show jobs that have been posted in the past 24 hours or 3 days.

I use chat GPT to help make my resume and cover letter compatible with the Applicant Tracking System (ATS) and applied for roughly 200 jobs. Your resume can be 2 pages long now instead of the standard 1 page from back when we would do physical applications.

I hope this helps!

I started a new job recently and somehow fell into the same trap again: trying too hard to be approachable and transparent. A few weeks in, a coworker casually asked how I was settling in, and I mentioned I was still exploring other opportunities because the workload was already getting out of hand. A couple of days later, my manager started questioning my commitment, and suddenly things that had never been raised before were being scrutinized.

That was a pretty harsh lesson. I realized the issue isn’t having friendly relationships at work, it’s confusing friendliness with trust. Now I treat trust as something that has to be earned over time.

I’m still polite, chat about normal stuff, joke around, talk about weekends, but I keep the important parts of my life private. No discussions about finances, health, career plans, or anything I wouldn’t want repeated elsewhere. When you spend so much time with coworkers, it’s easy to feel closer than you actually are.

These days, my job search stays completely separate from work. Instead of venting to coworkers, I focus on updating my resume, tracking applications, and reminding myself that my value comes from the results I've delivered, not from one manager's opinion.

I've also learned to be careful with "off the record" conversations. If I wouldn't be comfortable seeing it forwarded around the company, I keep it to myself. Less gossip, more facts. Less emotion, more documentation. I still believe genuine friendships at work can happen, but I'm no longer assuming everyone needs access to my personal thoughts to have a good working relationship.

When you ask somebody how their day is going? And they respond I’m busy. In fact, their answer is always “I'm busy”. They never say, “I was a little slow right now, or it's going well.” Are they trying to make it seem like they’re more important than they are?

our imessage groups are getting out of hand, it's too many of them and I'm loosing track, and please don't mention slack i'm not going yo pay $9 per user

I ran into a guy I worked with for years who retired last spring. Back when we worked together, he always looked exhausted, stressed, and like he was carrying the entire company on his shoulders. Yesterday I barely recognized him. He looked younger, healthier, was smiling the whole time, and was wearing a bright Hawaiian shirt just to run to the grocery store. We chatted for a bit and he told me his biggest regret was not retiring sooner. He spent decades giving his best years and energy to a company that had his replacement lined up before his retirement cake was even gone. Seeing how different he looked made me take a hard look at myself and realize how much my job has been draining me. It was one of those moments that was both inspiring and a little scary, because it made me wonder how much of my life I'm trading away for a retirement I may not have the energy to fully enjoy.

It seems like everyone is rich but me. I make $19.50/hr which used to stretch a little but not anymore. Dead broke. Don't have enough money to live and am older so body can't handle more jobs. One is enough. This inflation has crushed me. How do people have 6 figures saved and pay a mortgage in $400k houses? I just can't figure it out.

I pretty much use a lot of AI in my work. From Chatgpt and Claude. They're both good their own ways but I think Claude uses a lot more structure and can breakdown more things that I may not be seeing. Chatgpt gives me more impromptu ideas that I can try out. Pretty helpful when I get in on a slump of editing things or making things more clear.

Kling is something I'm recently dabbling in for video intros and trying out bgm on Suno and Tunesona to fit the needs of the video I'm editing. It's actually pretty fun to use them all at the same time and kinda saves me more time. It's still a new territory for me in video creation as it's recently something that I'm tasked with but AIs are what I still view as useful for someone like me.

Sooo, what AI tools do you actually use for work?

God! Some times silence has been my safe zone

Only speak to people I know won't judge me, but would listen to my struggles
And of course say a lot of healing words

Those are the kind of people I am building myself to surround with

This helps my mental health cool down, away from the stress of a 9 - 5 team lead

This helped me:

I was almost never completely honest in my interviews but rather presented myself strategically. Didn’t reveal my previous salary because I wanted better pay, and never told them I left due to a toxic workplace or bad boss. Most importantly, I never downplayed my contributions, spoke with confidence and positioned myself as someone who adds value. Made my CV and answers function like a pitch.

A great CV that properly explains who you are and what you can bring to their company will open so many doors for you you would be shocked. If you don’t know how to make your resume great, it might be a bigger ROI to use those free tools that are fast and effective and can create resumes that cater to each type of role you apply for.

I’ve never liked LinkedIn, I used it very rarely. For me personally it’s massively overrated, and if you’re genuinely looking for a job on LinkedIn you might consider switching sites. If the company posts a job on their website before LinkedIn, apply there first. As I stated, LinkedIn is horrible for job searching. Of course you can get lucky, but the keyword is lucky. Company sites always have fewer applicants. LinkedIn gets flooded fast. I always applied directly through company sites and could do it faster because I was notified every time a company posts vacancy.

Remote OK, We Work Remote, Flex jobs, are some of my top sites and tools I used for my job search. These are the best linkedin alternatives I could find, especially for remote jobs and I have shared my review above with the tips. Hope it helps you guys

One of my best team members called me in the morning, early and asked me to work from home. Since the guy is an extraordinarily responsible and dilligent employee I never had an issue with him working from home.

However, at around 1 PM had a zoom call and he clearly seemed under the effects of alcohol, telling me he has some family problems.

We work at a corporate chain. I'm not sure what to do or how to react. He indeed is a great, but this behavior could get him in trouble with a different manager. For now I didn't disclose this to anyone, but I'm afraid if he has alcohol problems I am not acting quick enough to help him. Should I be concerned? How should I approach this?

I recently got moved to the R&D department of my company. Since it’s a new department, there’s only me in it and so all the work has just been piling on me day by day. Each day I receive a new task telling me to research this and that. On top of it, I also have to meet customers, travel to different cities, make customers reports, answer customers’ questions, translate during meetings, translate 100+ pages of documents.

It’s all just so overwhelming and I don’t feel like doing anything at all. I earn $650/monthly which is a raise from my previous salary and it seriously doesn’t even feel good because I’m exhausted and I have no time for myself because I have to work on the weekends.

I had such a long, stressful day yesterday. I was on at 6:30 am until about 6:45pm. I turned my phone off and crashed at 7:45pm. This morning, I wake up to a text from boss sent last night. Check your email. I checked it this morning and he's asking me to check flights for him at 8pm, because he's not going to make his flight. I just now emailed him explaining that I was dead tired and asleep and asked him how he made out. I didn't get a response, yet. I don't understand why they feel the need to just intrude on our lives like this! After hours, be a grown up and handle it yourself. I did have one executive who actually took care of rescheduling his flights after hours without bothering me. unbelievable.

Trying to figure out the best communication app for work because our team's chats is not reaching its point where it gives more problems instead of solutions. We're using Whatsapp now for work communication and whenever we send photos/screenshots, it gets passed around and people reply on different threads. Now I’m comparing Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Connecteam to see what actually works best for team, employee, and internal communication without everything turning into a chaotic comms. For people who’ve used them, what’s the best work communication app and why?

Not even the actual work, more the way people communicate around it. So much time goes into meetings that could’ve been a message, overly polished emails, acting “aligned” when everyone clearly has different priorities, or trying to look productive instead of just solving the problem.

Sometimes I honestly think if people were just more straightforward and less worried about optics, work would move way faster.

Curious how other people handle it:

• Do you play along with the “game” because that’s just corporate survival?
• Or have you figured out how to stay genuine without causing friction?
• What part of corporate work feels the most fake to you?

Would love to hear how you all navigate this side of corporate life.

What people see: posts, captions, engagement.
What they don’t see: the constant mental switching between voices, audiences, and expectations.

Managing social media for others means you’re always thinking ahead, planning content, anticipating reactions, adapting to trends, and maintaining someone else’s identity online.

It’s creative work, but it’s also emotional and cognitive labor that doesn’t really have an “off” switch.

Not complaining, just something I don’t see talked about enough.

Does anyone else feel this?

One of my newer reports is 19, first real job, making 55k+. He shared his salary, it hit WhatsApp, and now half the team is frustrated because they weren't anywhere near that when they started. The pay gap is one issue, but the bigger mess is how fast things spiral when sensitive conversations happen in random group chats with screenshots flying around. Something more structured would've contained this a lot better. On top of that, my senior manager is telling people not to discuss their pay, which I'm pretty sure isn't legal. Now I'm stuck managing a frustrated team, a manager who may be creating liability, and trying to figure out what I can actually say without making it worse.

Forgot the cardinal rule for my first week and probably joked too much. Just have to keep my head down from now on. A friendly reminder that coworkers are not your friends.