#JobMarketReality #TechLife #CareerChoices #WorkLifeBalance
Hey everyone! I’ve been noticing a trend here that I want to chat about. It seems like a lot of folks are thinking about quitting their jobs, even if they’re high-paying and offer great flexibility. But here’s the kicker — many are saying it’s just because they feel "bored" or that it’s "not their vibe." 🤔
Now, don’t get me wrong. I totally understand wanting a job that excites you or fits your passion. But let’s take a moment to consider the broader picture:
- Job Security: Many people, especially in tech, face tough job markets. Submitting 100-200 applications without a single bite is a brutal reality.
- Financial Responsibilities: For a lot of us, having a job isn’t just a choice; it’s a necessity to support our families. 💰
- Effort vs. Reward: Getting up at the crack of dawn for a demanding workload is no walk in the park. It’s not all about having fun — it’s about survival and stability.
So why are some able to casually consider leaving these jobs? What kind of luxury allows that?
📌 It’s important to differentiate between wanting to leave a job for boredom versus leaving due to a toxic environment. The latter is a valid reason to move on, and I wholeheartedly support anyone making that choice!
But for those who are merely "bored," have you thought about these points?
- Finding Passion Projects: Instead of ditching a steady job, how about exploring side projects or hobbies? Sometimes, a little creativity outside of work can reignite that spark. ✨
- Job Crafting: Is there a way to reshape your current role to include more of what you enjoy? Have those conversations with your manager!
- Networking: Get involved! Connecting with others in your field can open doors and make the work environment feel more engaging. 🤝
Now, I’m curious to hear from you all: What are your thoughts on this? Have any of you faced this dilemma? How did you handle it? Share your experiences or tips below! Let’s keep this conversation going!
I’m looking to quit my job because the culture sucks. However, like you, I have a family and obligations so I’m not going anywhere until I have something lined up.
I wake up miserable everyday knowing I have to go back in, and I don’t want to go to bed every night because I know that’s it and everything starts over, but I’ll suck this up as long as needed till I find something better.
I enjoy my current job quite a bit, but if I ever stop enjoying and feeling challenged by it, I’ll be moving on either to alternative internal opportunities or opportunities elsewhere. If you don’t enjoy your work, what are you doing? I get that entry level or unskilled work can be a slog, but if you’re at a level where you’re making decent money, likely have savings, and just aren’t feeling it anymore, there’s nothing wrong with moving on to something you feel more passionate about.
A lot of people, particularly in tech and SE/cs roles, work themselves to the bone because they’re motivated by a paycheck. Aside from my general hatred of coding, I just can’t understand that mindset. Burning yourself out early in your career so you can retire early never ends well, or at least I’ve never seen it end well. It’s the main reason why I have no respect for 99% of people in tech. You sell your younger years to a shitty valueless company for a paycheck, destroy your employability by forcing your way into a brutal industry/niche, and then have to restart after you burn yourself out. It’s why so many of my older software engineering friends are baristas and IT professionals despite having a pile of cash in their savings. At a certain point you need to find something you’re passionate about or your life will be miserable.
I don’t know about tec, but in my field (social work) we don’t do it for the money. I just left a job that paid 50k/year (CA) for a job that pays 48k/year, but I am significantly happier. Either way the pay is low, so I figured I might as well be happy. My rotating schedule of 8-4, 11-7, and 3-11 shifts make me feel like I have way more free time compared to a 9-5, but that’s just me. I understand the frustration, but there’s no need to bring anyone down for their career choices. Everyone’s definition of a work-life balance looks different, and it’s about finding something you can see yourself doing long term.
Keep in mind that it is some sort of survivorship bias what you are experiencing. You read about people wanting to leave apparently good jobs because these are the ones keener to write about it, while people don’t post usually about wanting to keep their good-paying job with flexible hours.
Easy. I quit because my mental health and private life are more important to me than whatever job I’m doing.
I don’t see why you would be upset. Let them quit, there will be a spot for you now to apply. They will learn valuable life lessons and you will get their job. Win-win
As a career counselor it’s very clear to me that people can’t just do anything. People are highly different from each other and so are work types. Most people go into a career for good reasons, but they become sick of it. I imagine some people get it wrong in the sense that they go into a field without asking themselves if it’s the right fit, but that’s not the norm. For most people, it seems hard to explain but it’s somehow unthinkable to keep going. The people who do keep going get burnt out, even if they have family to take care of. At some point the suffering isn’t worth it to them.
A lot of the issue is they get too much work and too little time to do it, and they don’t really know if it’s the case elsewhere, but they become very suspicious of that, they tend to generalize a whole field to a few bad experiences. It’s never absolutely right, but it’s not always wrong.
Sometimes the issue is bad relationships with HR for example or colleagues and they also tend to generalize how people think and behave in a whole field of work. It’s an emotional thing, it’s like they become disgusted with that workplace and it creates an association with the whole field.
Totally get that you’re having a hard time and I feel for you, but this is career advice. There are a lot of folks who are employed and want to find something else. Yes it’s a luxury, often hard won or worked over. But those folks aren’t thinking about your situation, they don’t care if it’s an amusement park or not for you. It’s their situation and this is yours, and everyone here can come for career advice. Being mad that others are in a better situation than you are looking for other opportunities didn’t do anything for you.
The way I see it, let them leave, it creates an open position for someone like you or me to try for.
I’m sorry you’re in that position, but I promise I want a better job for personal reasons, not because it’s hard for you to find a job. While I feel for you, I don’t know why I’d stay at a job I don’t like just because you need a job. And shouldn’t you be rooting for us to leave our jobs so you can take one of them? Maybe you’ll enjoy it more than we do.
It’s easy to judge when you haven’t walked in their shoes. We all have different needs and priorities.
After leaving my last full-time job, I found a part-time job,that’s amazingly flexible and free,I have a lot of time to do whatever I want and the salary at least can cover my bills and part of travel fees,now I can totally focus on my own thing, and I’m thinking of never finding another full time job,either part time job or start my own business.
I get bored and my mind wanders. If I get 2-3 years in and there’s no upward potential in sight with a company, I cannot just sit around and do the same things forever.
“Why don’t you have my standards for job hunting?”
Lame question, next.
It’s a lot easier to talk about getting a new job when you have one. As you’ve experienced, most likely these people will have a hard time locking down a new gig. But when they make these posts, it’s without clarity on how tough the job market is.
Human suffering is very relative. The pain some feel being unemployed is not super different than the pain it may feel to languish in a job, feeling like you’re wasting away your prime years. The only difference is you have the wisdom to know that it can get worse. I promise, they aren’t making these posts with the perspective of potentially being unemployed. Wasted human potential and not feeling fulfilled for 40-50 hours a week is a legitimate emotion.
They can afford to quit.
Some sort of back up plans. The husband or wife makes money. House is paid off. Saved a quite a bit of money to almost retire. Still live with the parents. Whatever the case maybe, they can afford to not work and still able to feed themselves and not be out on the street.
and,,, some people, just magically can find a job without any delays, I’ve seen that too, but those guys line up a job way before leaving a job.
Be more bitter? This isn’t a genuine question and isn’t worth a serious response.
When you think about quitting all the time it can make you even more miserable. I have learned over the years it is better to look for the positives rather than focus on the negatives. Have a toxic co-worker? Just make it a challenge to be nice to them and help them. Don’t like what you do? Invent ways to build your skills by fixing broken processes or improving something. Make mini challenges for your weeks and focus on those instead of the toxic stuff. Find ways to make yourself better through it all. At the end of the day if you are paid well and have some sort of work life balance – the toxic side can be worked around with a change of perspective.
Obviously this advice is not universal. But it has helped me over the years.
I’m looking to quit my job because as a young woman entering her career, I’m shocked at how lazy everyone is. I have been told several times that I care “too much”. I totally get it. Everyone’s tired. No one wants to be here. There is such a stigma around Gen Z’s work ethic but I am flabbergasted at how many folks can’t even read an email or pretend to care. I don’t feel like I have something to prove, I have proven myself and it’s wild how little intrinsic motivation or problem solving skills people have.
Folks, it’s cool to care. It’s cool to be responsible and take accountability. Lord!
I get it must be frustrating when you’re unemployed and you see others “casually flirting” with their unemployment. But, not every industry is tech, and not every industry is halting hiring. Personally, I still have recruiters reaching out to me every 2-3 weeks. I had the opportunity to earn almost 80% more, but I’d have to do 21/7 rotation in the middle of nowhere and a bunch of OT…and that doesn’t suit my lifestyle.
I’ve also had another recruiter reach out and could probably earn another 20-40% more (if I got the job). But, I suspect the company they’re hiring for is one I’ve already interviewed for, received an offer for and rejected them, so I’m not really interested in doing that dance again.
Generally folks who are in that situation are not responsible for their own living expenses. They won’t lose their homes and transportation if they go without income while job hunting. It’s a lot more complicated for the rest of us.
Living in a high-scarcity environment changes how you think about a lot of interactions. It pushes a lot of your timelines that you’ll reason about into much shorter windows.
A really common thing that you’ll run into around here is the idea that you should *never*, under any circumstances, take on additional work at your job without seeing a direct and immediate raise in compensation for that additional work. That’s a high-scarcity mindset. The only thing that matters is what you’re getting out of the interaction *right now*.
That kind of mindset makes it very difficult to build a career. It’s very hard to invest in the kind of skills you need to build for a high-quality career in the long term without being willing to take some risks that it won’t pay off. If you demand that it pay off immediately, you will likely find yourself stuck in the same role for long stretches, because that’s not how careers work.
That’s why there’s such a disconnect between people who have comfortable, long-term careers and wondering if they should take risks to put themselves in better positions, and people who are struggling to get by. Someone who is struggling to get by sees someone making a decision that could be really negative for a couple of months and wonders how they could possibly be so stupid. Because the next couple of months are the only timelines they can think about.
Someone who has built that career isn’t thinking about a timeline of months. They’ve likely already been doing this for a decade or more. A few hard months in exchange for better years down the line is a worthwhile trade. They’ve made that trade many times before.
That doesn’t make that person better or worse than you. They just have a very different outlook on the world. If you keep working and investing in your career, there’s a very good chance that you’ll find yourself in a similar situation some day.
I want to quit because I was suckered into my current job. I asked explicitly during the interview process about what’s happening now to me, and if this role is stuck with the admin assistant kind of tasks, because my career focus is the technical and wet lab side of things, and the answer was what I wanted to hear. The reality? The exact opposite. I am wasting my valuable morning hours doing ABSOLUTELY nothing but tasks you don’t even need to know basic English to do. It’s devastating. I would rather take this on a night shift when I can do things in the autopilot, or have a fake job for the insurance and benefits, but unfortunately, that’s what I turned down for a fake day shift job. It’s crushing to see everyone either learning or earning or both, while I am actually losing money by being in this HCOL area, burn through my savings to afford rent, and hopelessly waiting for a magic (in this case, something else to pan out, among all of the spaghetti I have thrown at every wall around me). My credit score now is in the 400s. Not sure what to expect, and they just announced network-wide layoffs. So, here we are!
well in some fields finding a new job is pretty easy. nurses tend to basically hop around until they find the right niche for them. I do feel you though. I’m at a job i don’t necessarily vibe with, but i’m not going to leave it without good reason. Especially with the way the market is right now.
Why do you care so much? If you have the ability to quit your job on a whim and get a new job that’s more suitable to your lifestyle – wouldn’t you? Let people live.
743 job applications, 2 interviews, both offered jobs after the fact.
Shit ain’t sweet
Money isn’t everything..
Just make sure you have money saved up or another job lined up
Jobs lately have been getting bad, bad bosses etc, at least from my perspective.
Some people live off their parents whod rather have their kids hostage because that means they get a free caregiver in a few years
Others live off of their partner and work, again, IS a choice
Some are retired and ARE bored or trying to stay in shape for a little extra change
Some have a business, side gig, or illegal hustle and are funding it with a bs job they got tired of
I had exactly the dream job with flexible hours, fabulous pay, close to home, 40 hours, almost everything but health benefits! I was almost handed the job out of graduating college.
Trigger warning – mental health
.
.
.
I burnout so bad, to the point I had to admit myself to psych hospital before I committed to unaliving myself. A office of 6 people, there’s no set HR with strick guidelines. It’s always your word against someone else’s no matter how amazing and irreplaceable you believe you are. My co worker had threatened me and my job but they used to be the owner so I wasn’t better than shit on a shoe. I was micro managed. I was harassed for taking breaks. I was repeatedly blamed and told I wasn’t good enough. And one morning (after coming back from 3 weeks of rest after a surgery and then losing my 16year old pet) I came back to work to the “HR” woman who also was the previous owners wife… tell me they were looking for someone to replace me. On top of all that, they illegally fired because I did have to go to a psych hospital.
I woke up every morning for months crying and telling myself I need the check, I have to suck it up! I lived alone, paid my own, and rarely took time off. I knew deep down they were going to fire me! But I had to choose literally my life!! Or a check and a status.
Taking care of your mental health is NOT A LUXURY! If you don’t understand this by now, you haven’t hit rock bottom. And I hope you never do.
I was going to get fired anyway. No matter how responsible and attentive I tried to be. My efforts were in vain.
I don’t even want a particularly high paying job, I just want a job that covers my bills with a little left over that I don’t despise going to every day… unfortunately I find it to be management/co workers that make a place insufferable and those kind of people are found in EVERY role… unless you work alone of course… so it’s a hard risk to take leaving for a ‘nicer’ sounding job when the people there could be just the same or worse as the people at my current one…
I’ve come to realise I don’t really hate much work to be honest, I hate people.
From the outside looking in it can look like things are amazing. And it may be amazing for someone else who aspires to be in my position. But for me there are several factors as to why I will be looking to leave.
I’m making $190K + 20% + I’m eligible for a $400K bonus when we hit a set of metrics. I also recently got a $50K retention bonus. Most people would say that’s fantastic, but they don’t see the same reality that I do.
– I’m underpaid. My skillset and experience should get me $225-250K + 30-40% + 100-200K stock PER YEAR. And as the market shifts back in my favor I will likely leave for something along those lines unless my current company gets with it and adjusts. I’m basically holding out for that $400K bonus.
– I’m overworked. I’m the finance head of our largest/most important division, but I was previously only working regionally across multiple divisions, but on a smaller scale. They let go of my overseas counterpart and a reorg put me in the position I’m in, but they didn’t take away the other divisions, I got them globally as we looked to fill out those positions. It’s been over a year and I’m just getting people in those spots.
– I was passed over for a spot I wanted. Not just passed over, they fired my mentor who was awesome to work with and hired his replacement before even doing so. I never even got a crack at it. The new guys a fucking retard and doesn’t know shit. So everything comes to me and he tries to take credit. Luckily my reputation and assertiveness keeps him from doing so.
I could keep going, but the point is that just because the grass looks green from your side of the fence doesn’t mean it is.
I think it is like the pyramid of fulfillment. If your basic needs (food, shelter…) aren’t being met, you will take and put up with most anything. Then, once that has been awhile, you look for the next level of needs fulfillment.
If you have x amount of experience in y field you might possibly have the chance to get a job instantly.
I feel like that is the case, at least for the people that have an intact brain and up-to date knowledge of the job market.
Or the job isn’t as good as it looks to be.
I got to work at 8am yesterday and didn’t stop working until 2am.
Yeah, I don’t get that either. I’m not part of the culture of job hopping, I never was and never will be. I also see a lot of these people say “That’s what my savings is for …” No, your savings is to be there in cases of emergency or so that if shit really hits the fan, out of your control, you have something to fall back on for a bit, not to use up 90% of it just cause you’re 6-figure job isn’t your vibe.
I can see your frustration, and it’s a valid point. Many people don’t realize the challenges of job searching in today’s market. It’s easy to take for granted the stability a good-paying job provides, especially in a tough economy. While boredom is a real feeling, it’s crucial to weigh the pros and cons before making such a significant decision. Your perspective highlights the importance of considering the broader implications of quitting, especially when so many are struggling to find work.
I think you have to remember that social media invites spur of the moment posts.
And on any given day, it could be 5 minutes after a difficult call at work, someone gets angry or whatever.
And then…They ask, “Should I quit?”
I don’t think they always mean to quit. I think they are just expressing themselves for reassurance to not quit, or they just want to rip on their jobs for a while. I get it.
Truth is…I worked for a job board that required a subscription purchase between 2007 and 2013.
Do you know when most purchases took place? Between 12am & 4am
Why? That’s people waking up, worrying about things, and trying to find solutions so they can go back to sleep.
The Internet is like this: It all appeals to our needs for impulsive decisions, closure, and comfort. And…yes…dopamine hits from b*tching about a job and getting lots of upvotes. ha! It’s all good. Just people expressing themselves.
I’ve quit jobs because “they’re not my vibe”. And I am thankful I did because in those environments my mental health really decompensated. I’ve quit jobs because they’re boring… “boring” after reaching the pinnacle and now I need a new challenge.
Well humans just cannot be satisfied, that’s the reality. You may have the perfect job and trade it for something that’s your vibe and still regret it. Maybe there are good reasons or maybe they have underlying issues they failed to address and jumped the gun.
Every case is different but I get your annoyance
I am working till I get laid off. I like having consistent income and not having to worry about interviewing.
I completely agree, work is work. I think there are a lot of young people who are just figuring out that they were wrong in expecting their career to be their main source of fulfillment and identity. I used to be obsessed w my job too, then i realized at the end of the day Im just an employee and my family/personal life is way more important. Also, anyone who wants to quit bc they’re bored… clearly doesnt have a firey insatiable passion already. Otherwise theyd already be trying to break into that field and wouldnt be posting about boring vibes. My advice to my younger self would be do a good job at work then CLOCK OUT and pursue actual hobbies and interests in your free time.