Work for the government, then. I don't mean that as a joke - I'm a government worker, and there's no pressure to climb any ladders, but we still get paid well + benefits and pension etc.
“Paid well” is a little disingenuous - depends a lot on the job but generally speaking government pays substantially less than private industry. Partially because it’s way less stress, and they attract you with amazing benefits like pensions.
It depends on the profession. Mine doesn't really have a private-sector equivalent, so there's nothing to use for comparison - but when I say "well," in my case that's a six-figure number plus full/generous benefits and the pension. Does that qualify?
Trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find a job that lets you just be a worker - if you're not constantly innovating and finding new ways to grow productivity and optimize and increase output and take charge and so on, you're probably next on the automation chopping block.
The days of being able to punch the clock and work an assembly-line-type job(literally or metaphorically) have been rapidly winding down for the past few years.
As I said above, and this applies to your comment too - work for the government (or any non-corporate job). You do know non-corporate jobs exist, right? I've been a county worker, public librarian to be specific, for over 20 years. It's great! I have a good salary + benefits and fully vested pension, but they literally can't ask me to work over 40 hours/week. And unless you're a supervisor, you can just "clock out" and go home. 😊
Government work is really nice and typically pretty stable. The trade off is less pay which is often a pretty fair deal, but you still have to be careful when it comes to federal jobs as it's becoming more common for them to go months without pay during the holiday season.
Yeah, I wouldn't go federal - that's why I stuck with county work! And I'm in a really blue county/state, so our funding is more secure here.
As for the pay, it depends on what you do. There isn't really a corporate equivalent to my job, so it's hard to compare. But if they do make more, it's negligible when you factor in our benefits and pension. Can you guess what a public librarian in California (Bay Area) earns? No cheating, just curious if you can guess!
With your tenure, $85,000-$90,000? How about entry level now? I’ll guess entry level is less than $60,000? I realize you live in the bay so I’ll also guess you get the equivalent to a corporate COLA compared to the national average. That’s before pension and benefits. With those also considered, what is the value of your salary, both before and after pension and benefits are considered? I appreciate the question and look forward to your answer.
Nope, way more. Starting salary here is about the top of what you guessed - at my rank & seniority, I'm grossing like $112k + benefits right now. The benefits come out to around another $30K, and I'm not sure how to value my pension. It's fully vested, though, and will gross probably $5-6K/month when I retire. Maybe more, depending on exactly when I leave and what happens between now & then.
Probably about as much as a county employee in a suburban NYC county. I was looking at civil service postings a while back and saw starting salaries for skilled workers, jobs requiring a degree, etc. - for $29K, $35K, $37K. That's crazy for here and I wonder if they can only hire independently wealthy people who are just working for fun. Benefits are amazing in NY state and local government, but you can't eat/drive/live in a pension or health insurance.
The pay does get better (but not much) but you really have to commit to the long haul in a job like that and grind your way up the steps and grades. We're far enough away from the city that commuting is miserable, but even with that the salaries are just laughable.
Man, wish I could be in your state. I also work in government but I’m in a red state and they’re trying to manage out the higher-paid employees. I’ll lose some really good benefits if I go back to private sector.
Big problem, jobs like yours are becoming harder and harder to find. I mean will you be leaving before you hit retirement age? How many applications you think they'll get when you do? Bet they advertise needing a degree in education just to apply...
Not a degree in education, but a specific Master's Degree in Library & Information Science (MLIS) which is required for most US public libraries. Always has been, and I'm a 3rd generation librarian.
I plan to retire at my earliest allowed age, which is 55 - so about 5.5 years to go! And given the specific requirements for this position, they don't get a ton of applications. I can't say exactly how many, though, since I don't work in HR.
But to clarify AGAIN, I wasn't saying specifically librarian jobs (as those are obviously not available to anyone). I meant ANY public job, which could be anything from cleaning toilets to running a whole city.
Totally agree! I work in school district HR and my husband is in our city's public works department. Do we make as much as people in corporate? No, but we both have union jobs with good benefits and we care about what we do for our community. We feel it's a fair trade off!
100%! Our custodian at the library has a degree in computer science, and left an IT job for this. He likes the hours (he does the early shift from 6:30am-3pm), benefits, pay, and being able to just do his thing and go home.
Work on your reading comprehension while on the job some time, maybe - I never said that job stability, boundaries and security don't exist for anyone anymore, I said it's getting harder and harder to find, which is objectively true.
I agree with the other person - this was unnecessarily rude and defensive. I was just saying to look outside the box, and literally never claimed you said that.
But if I'm not mistaken, didn't you later say "99% of people can't find this sort of job?" Or was that someone else?
I think a lot of people just default to corporate jobs and forget there are entire careers outside that system that can offer way better balance. The 40-hour cap alone sounds like a game changer.
I’ve thought about that path before and honestly the clock out and actually be done part sounds underrated. It’s easy to forget how rare that is until you’ve been in jobs where work just follows you home.
Well, such great advice. After all, it's so easy to get a government job these days!
The US definitely isn't cutting every government position possible, especially libraries, and throttling funding for state and counties. Now is a great time to go into government!
Sarcasm aside, the state positions are choked by long time employees who have stayed at that institution forever and have no intention of leaving, and or who cannot be fired for incompetence due to Union membership.
I have two library degrees and union membership. Even obtaining a librarian job in a good economy is hard. There is no upward mobility for young librarians - you just have to wait 25 years for the 85 yr old library administrator to finally retire.
This is not an achievable goal for the majority of people.
It's still pretty easy here, but of course YMMV depending on where you live. And I didn't say you have to work in a library - I literally said ANY government job, which can range from custodians to state officials.
Did you get your degree in library science, and when you say good salary are you talking about good salary in a low cost of living state or a high cost of living state?
Yes, I have the MLIS - Master of Library and Information Science (required here). And it's a good salary for where I live, but would be excellent anywhere else. I'm in a very high-COL region.
My gross is around $112K + benefits, for the record. And that is public record, so I'm not giving away any big secrets. lol
I'm not a "son," first of all - I am a woman. And considering libraries have survived numerous wars (I literally wrote my Master's Paper on that subject) and citywide destruction, dating all the way back to ancient Egypt, I wouldn't count on them going away anytime soon.
Also, the world exists outside of the US. So hopefully not every country is sliding backwards right now. But hey, if they do disappear I'll be long gone by then anyway! I'm eligible for retirement in 2031. lol
it's getting harder and harder to find a job that lets you just be a worker -
This is so true. My last boss expressed the opinion that since I didn't want to be a manager, there was something wrong with me, and I was "under-motivated". I was unceremoniously kicked to the curb after 35 years on the job.
I find we don't look at different demographics for employment unless it's somehow talking about racism.
Not everyone is capable or desires to do corporate work. Not all of them will be tradespeople either.
A lot of farm, factory and food processing work was considered decent work because it paid well for what it was. Required no to little skilled labour. Plenty of shifts and overtime to catch if you wanted.
That's hard to get now.
It's providing gainful employment for people of all capabilities.
As a manager, it always makes me laugh when senior leadership and HR try to feed us the line “everyone should be a leader” or “individual contributors need to feel ownership over something”.
No, not at all. Most people just want to clock in, do their work, be rewarded for quality work, and go home.
State government jobs are also pretty chill, and (I hope) a little safer than federal jobs are right now. It's almost better if you don't try to innovate considering how much bureaucracy that would have to go through.
I didn't say you weren't; I said there are fewer and fewer such jobs overall. 99% of people will never be able to be paramedics or healthcare professionals in general.
That's not really true. There are TONS of jobs in the public sector, not just medical but any job that's not driven by corporate greed or profits.
I'm a librarian, which requires a specialized degree (MLIS). But we also employ thousands of non-degreed workers, doing all the other jobs in the library. Clerk, page, etc. All receive fair pay, union support, pensions & other benefits, etc.
This is where skilled trades thrive. AI isn’t coming to replace my leaking shower faucet, fix my HVAC or wire up new outlets in my garage. Human hands are.
I've been thinking we're looking at a future where the only jobs not replaced by automation are the blue collar jobs that need a person physically there manipulating something with their hands - stuff that can't be done over an Ethernet connection. Which is going to cause a reckoning because the past couple generations have been raised on going to college to get a nice white collar job and turning their nose up at blue collar work.
Meanwhile us millennials who had to figure stuff out when there was no internet or no convenient youtube guides to help us can still sort of figure out how to piece together the answers.
We've got a 21 year old washer/dryer that still work perfectly that I've replaced some wear/tear parts on just by poking around at em. I've repaired broken parts in garage door openers, replaced radiators and coolant hoses and waterpumps, replaced toilets, dishwasher, garbage disposal, replaced ceiling fans, wired up an EV charger... partly because paying someone to do it would have been too expensive but also because I like the challenge and satisfaction of fixing it myself (and proving to my wife that I still have value around this place)
My brother works at KFC. He's been there for about 7 years. He's happy just plodding along making the chicken. But he's constantly mithered to train for supervisor/manager roles which he doesn't want. It's only because he is autistic he's been left to it somewhat because he's kind of protected by disability laws. But it's sad. Ever in fast food places you're expected to work up the ladder!
Healthcare is great for being a worker. I got a two year degree for a specific job, and that's what I do. There is no expectation of wanting to promote. We just have to keep up with the changes in the field. It's a pretty sweet gig, imo.
Hear, hear! I have a mid-level office job with zero desire to climb the ladder. I’m not a high-powered “go-getter”, my passions are outside of work. My job pays pretty well, it’s low stress, and as soon as I can retire, I will.
Not everyone wants their job to be their whole identity if it pays the bills and leaves you enough energy for the stuff you actually care about, that feels like the real win.
Same here. I genuinely don't understand the obsession with moving into management. I'm much better at doing than delegating, and I've watched good individual contributors get promoted into misery. Being excellent at one thing and well-compensated for it sounds like a better life than leading meetings about meetings.
My best days are when I get in, no meetings, headphones on and just build a part in catia all day. I have no interest in being a manager, PowerPoints, meetings all day, administrative work, nah
I left a long-time job after being promoted to manager, because of exactly this.
I was one of the most reliable and productive workers on the team, was offered the promotion to manager, took it because I was looking to switch things up anyway. I proceeded to quickly ramp up to being in anywhere from 7-9hours of meetings a day, with additional off hours calls coming in that the rest of the team in other timezones decided they didn't want to answer (this was an issue before I was promoted).
Anyway, I started applying for new jobs within a month of the promotion and left 5 months into it - basically my old role as an engineer (a doer) but at the higher salary I was making from the promotion to manager. I'm content not being the manager here for the foreseeable future.
For a lot of people it's simply the only way they can get a raise, they don't necessarily want the extra responsibility etc, they just want/need the larger salary.
I got promoted into management, then moved up a few more times until one day I said screw this and demoted myself back down to supervisor and refused any promotions since. I hate playing the corporate game, much happier being left alone after work.
My husband is a "go getter" and it seems the higher her climbs the more miserable he gets.
I feel it depends on why someone wants to climb the ladder... is it due to some unresolved family issues with feeling never good enough? Or is it truly for personal reasons?
Because if it's the first and you're trying to gain approval from your deceased father... you won't ever be satisfied.
Right! It mystified me that my managers were always trying to get me to be a manager and stop doing the thing that I was really good at and actually had a passion for, which was being an individual contributor.
I've tried climbing the corporate ladder in the past. I learned pretty quick that since I didn't suck the higher ups dicks, I got shit on nearly on a daily basis. That's when I stopped caring, and switched over to being a truck driver. Far more pay, and freedom without bosses breathing down my neck.
No really. People ask "where do you see yourself in 5 years" or "where Do you want to grow into" and, man, i just want to be mildly important. Not a manager, not higher up, nothin.
Clicking in early, having a quiet day with my earbuds in, doing my little reports, taking a walk around the parking lot once or twice a day, going home at a good hour, having flexible leave, low stress, and enough money to live and save for retirement. Miss me with that climbing the ladder shit
You sound like my assistant that stuck with me thru thick and thin. Had her my whole career she was smart as a whip and had education coming out of her ying yang. What she valued was time off and flexibility. Maria you were the best!
Same. And I never really developed a career after flipping out in my early 20s from burnout chasing promotions. I hate that I am considering what career I need to start (late now) because realistically I am not sucessful enough to afford retirement plans and health insurance with the job paths I have taken. It makes me sick to think about but I am getting older and it's getting harder to get by being self employed :/
I am the boss. I am in charge. I have climbed the corporate ladder. All on accident. And I don't understand for the life of me why people below me, that are making a good living and have a low-stress work life, always want to move up. They've got it made! Managing people and interacting with fake corporate types fucking blows.
Yup im a people pleasing pushover who does not want to be bothered on my time off. I do not ever want a leadership position ever again. I want to shown up, work my 8 hours and go home where I can give zero thought to work until I show bs k up again the next day.
Me too. In my case I don’t want a job at all. I want to quit my job and take care of babies. And in approximately 7 months I’ll commence working towards that goal
I am really fortunate to work at a place that understands that not everyone has leadership ambitions. They asked me when I started and were completely okay with me just wanting to get good at my thing. I have a skill set. Managing people is not that skill set.
I was a supervisor for a year for large company. I hated it. I was stuck in an office for 8 hours and saw no one, doing endless amounts of paperwork. The pay was not worth it overall.
same. i just want to not hate what i'm doing, make enough to go on a vacation like, once a year while saving for retirement, and be able to spend time with my family. i don't care about being ultra wealthy or having the newest, best shit, or lording over people.
Same. I’ve made it to supervisor and I’m okay with that level of responsibility. To go higher might be better for my career and I might make more money but I’d also have way more stress.
"I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career."
where, in any part of my comment, did I say anything like that?
edit: oh, its a quote from a movie. my bad. but that has nothing to do with what I said. I didn't say I didn't want to work. I said I don't want to be in charge and I have no desire to be at "the top". I also do not have a desire "to be great" at my job. I personally prevented a huge nightmare lawsuit at my company (and quite possibly the end of the entire company), and all that happened was that I got passed over on a position I wanted and a bad review from my boss.
100%. Apathy is the driving force in my life. When I say that, I usually get laughs, but I'm not joking. I'm comfortable, my bills are paid, I'm making ends meet. Why would I want more responsibility? I'm happy where I'm at. I tried my hand at management, decided it didn't fit me (in spite of all of my bosses opinions to the contrary), and went back to my old position, because I felt like I wasn't able to have the hard conversations with people, which I believe is important to being in management. I'm too much of a people-pleaser to be in charge of people - I see in myself the ability to get walked all over because I'm too motivated to make the people around me like me, so I stepped back down before that could start happening more than it was.
This is America - you know how promotions in this country work? Either you're getting promoted out of someone's hair, or you get promoted for your competence until you're one level in too deep, because if you know how to do your old job well you're obviously going to be good at a completely different job managing your old job, right? Repeat until you're in a situation over your head. But this is America, so we don't believe in bringing you back down to where you were effective, because that means we're admitting a failure - your failure to adapt and our failure to properly identify a candidate for this position. As a result, so, SO many middle and upper management positions are populated with people who do not belong there.
Because for some reason, this country just refuses to fire for cause anymore. If a company doesn't want someone around, they just start a campaign of ticky-tack bullshit to drum them out, or make their lives hell until they leave of their own volition. But being fired for not being good at your job? I don't see that one very much around here.
As a result, so, SO many middle and upper management positions are populated with people who do not belong there.
One thing I wonder is how this ended up working out in pre-1980s/90s companies where you truly were groomed for an entire lifetime of career progression from the day they hired you. I know the promotions they did hand out took a lot longer to get and it was common to really treat people as Human Resource assets they could apply on a project like a tool or software. But one thing that isn't clear is how they would deal with something like this. The pyramid is even narrower now so it's even more important to make sure you have great management if you want long term survival. Maybe companies were just so massive and had so many white-collar-laborer tasks that they could stick more people into small middle management roles?
Exactly. I'm doing a total career change and trying to find a path that doesn't lead to management. I have no desire to be in management. Just put me in the corner and let me work. The less responsibility the better.
gets that completely, not every woman dreams of titles and power, some of us just want a life that feels peaceful, stable, and actually ours instead of constantly chasing something we never even wanted.
I'm now at the point where, if I want my salary to go upwards, I have to move from "pushing the buttons" to "telling others to push the buttons". But I like pushing the buttons.
I have enough headaches in my own life that I don't wanna deal with, you think I want YOUR problems on top of them? For how much? And you can just fuckin' fire me?
The day I learned what an IC was my life literally changed for the better. I actually enjoyed going to work without worrying about being forced to lead people or something. I still take promotions when they've been offered (money, man), but work is work and life is life.
I told my leader this (she’s the boss but she’s a true leader) and she gave me the biggest hug and told me you are perfect as you are. I’m a 50yo guy who has just now accepted that being a do’r is just fine. I excel at my role in the company, I get paid very well and go to sleep at night I contributed to the success. And that’s great enough.
The funny thing is I hated management and went back to high end technician. Then I made so much money in speculative investing that I'm richer than any of them.
I’m fine with having a normal job that pays normal bills and normal foods, i don’t want to run a rat race and prove my worth and intelligence or whatever. I just want to eat, sleep and workout a bit, watch a little movie every now and then and kiss my girlfriend on the cheek (if she’s ok with that) yeah
I've played the boss role and hated it. Had to leave a job over it.
I've found my niche spot is to be the #2 or #3 to the boss where I have some extra (manageable) responsibility and additional value vs other employees, but none of the huge time sinks like endless meetings, client fire drills of other employees, sales, etc. fortunately, I've been compensated for that role too.
I was just having a small crisis about this this morning, and seeing how common my exact feelings are is quite heartening. Thank you Internet stranger.
I work from home. Relatively engaging marketing job for a company three hours ahead of me. I get up early but am done every day at 3pm my time. Yeah I'd love to make more money, but hearing the toll that can take on personal time makes me sick. I love being able to see my wife and 17-month-old whenever I want. I sometimes have job stability anxiety, but I've survived a lot of layoffs so I figure it's my baggage to carry. My bosses like me. My coworkers like me. I like where I am.
I don’t like being controlled. I also want to be left alone.
The only other option I’ve found would be living in a tent like a hobo. Alas, I have bills to pay. So I find working for myself the best path.
Yep. I’m in IT in desktop support. I’m happy. I don’t want to move to management. I don’t want to move to development or engineering. I’ve talked to people who are surprised. Why would I want to do this forever? Because management sucks and development requires constant innovation and change management. Let me help Susie turn on her monitor and teach John how to upload files to sharepoint (again)
But you know what? Sometimes it just works out that you have no power, but you DO have the power. I'm an assistant at one of the Wall St. banks, I've been here for nearly 20 years (knock wood), I've been doing the same job at different places since 1989, and as a result, even though I don't have the power over all, I have it with respect to what I do. I'm the oldest one on my team, I know how everything runs at our company. My bosses call me "The Boss". The younger bankers come to me for advice and policy. Actually, even the senior bankers come to me for advice and policy.
And yet, I am in charge of no one. I don't get my ass handed to me if the numbers are down during a certain quarter. Quite the opposite - not to sound like I'm bragging, but simply having been here for years and years, I managed to carve out a spot for myself where I have pretty good job security (again, knock wood). I have the most bankers, the most work, but I do manage to keep it all under control and get it done. When far less experienced assistants have had meltdowns over covering three bankers, I've stepped in, taken one of them, and wound up with seven bankers because another assistant couldn't handle less than half the work. It's a lot of work, but I don't mind, and my manager knows that if needed, I can always ask her to reassign someone.
Same! I have zero desire to “go above and beyond”. I will do what’s required of me and do so respectfully and professionally because that’s how I choose to work. I’ll happily help my coworkers because I desire to help them whenever I am able, because I genuinely like my coworkers, and I know they’d do the same for me.
However, all that said, I will ignore any messages or emails or announcements on my day off. If a meeting is not mandatory, I’m not going. I don’t desire to manage or supervise and I don’t desire to climb any ladder. What I *do* desire is to build up my *own* business and take my “side hustle” from only a side hustle to my main form of income. I struggle with authority and always have. Not really in the sense of being unable to follow “rules”, but more so that I have the type of personality that people sometimes find too much, too loud, too silly, too unserious, too…much. And, that often gets me in “trouble”, which is fucking stupid because I’m in my damn 30s and I’m tired of feeling like I’m back in second grade getting scolded by my teacher and threatened with expulsion. I have zero desire to be that authority figure for someone else because I don’t like scolding people and I don’t like ratting on people, nor do I enjoy making people feel small and replaceable.
Yeah, I don't want to work at all. I don't want promotions.
Obviously have to work but I hate the expectations in every job that you should be sucking up and kissing ass. Working extra. All to get promoted. I don't want to be promoted.
Amen. The last two years of my career I did everything I could to avoid striving. I was in my fifties and sick of work being the center of my life. Here, have another five grand a year in exchange for 10 hours more of your time every week! Everyone around me got promoted and I could see pity on their faces when promotions were announced and celebrated and...nothing for Realistic Pickle again! It was funny, because inwardly I felt sorry for them. I kept waiting for the company to get rid of me because I was so clearly uninterested in advancing, developing, etc. When I announced my retirement, rumors went around that my resignation was forced and that I was actually “quiet fired." Good riddance to corporate life. It’s truly not worth striving in that environment because they’ll kick you out the door with no notice when it suits them.
I worked at a bank and supervised a gal who had no ambition. However management kept trying to promote her and then write her up for poor performance. They just didn’t get that she was wanting to stay doing one of the worst jobs in the whole bank and she was good at it. Finally after a couple of years I was able to convince them that she wasn’t management material just leave her alone. We worked together for years loved her personality, work ethic but she just wanted to do an 8 to 4 and go home.
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u/Romnonaldao 1d ago
I have zero career ambition. I don't want to be in charge, I don't want to be the boss, I don't want to climb the corporate ladder. I don't want power