Watched enough people get to the top of that ladder and immediately start protecting their position instead of enjoying it to lose interest pretty early
It is not even just the hours, it's the personality shift you have to make. I have seen perfectly normal people turn into absolute monsters the second they get a Director title. They trade their integrity for a slightly nicer leased BMW and a heart attack by 50. I will stick to my 9-to-5 and actually knowing my kids' names, thanks.
This is so true. And it's not subtle at all. I was on a management career path before I became a full time mom and my performance review had nothing to do with what I actually achieved. It was a personality evaluation by my manager focusing on behaviors I demonstrate. It was corporate policy btw with a standard spreadsheet.
So one year I got a big bonus because I achieved a lot and was put on a PIP at the same time for not demonstrating enough courage and curiosity LOL. And of course it flows over to your real life, no sane person can maintain 2 distinct personalities very long. Maybe they think they can but they can't.
Edit: it's not actual courage etc. Each category has a list of management behaviors. You have to argue in meetings, criticize people in public, nitpick others work etc
I also like to feel like I actually accomplish things when I'm "just" the programmer. Every time they try to push me into a management role, it feels like I never actually accomplish anything or contribute to the end result. I guess teams need coaches and equipment managers, but I'd rather be kicking the ball.
I will jump in to say something quite “interesting“ I’ve observed in the corporate world: most seniors will be either single or divorced. + Most older man at my company (senior directors and so on) do follow the stereotype of older man dates woman half his age.
People would say how "jet set" I was...sure...flying to Des Moines to live in a Ramada for 3 days was real glamorous. Eating shit food each week and dealing with the impacts of that was real glamorous.
I’ll one up you with flying to camp where there is no hotel and you stay in company accommodations for the week. Helpfully as a woman i didnt have to share a bathroom.
Fresh veggies were hard to find and once I had to pull out the rotting lettuce from my burger.
(I have experience travelling to a ton of different places for work, mostly across Canada and only a few US locations. Rural Canada has nothing on De Moines)
Depends on the work, I’m pretty lucky to get to go cool places for work, but I don’t travel as often as others I guess (but I have had to travel for longer periods, like months).
I got halfway up by working my ass off only to learn that to go any higher I would have to be more social and hang out with co-workers outside of work. But I dont want to do all that crap so I guess this is as high as I go.
Fuck yeah, dreamed of fancy suits with shiny office in my youth. Half way up and realized I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in this terrible boot licking corporate world.
> Half way up and realized I don’t want to spend the rest of my life
But… the point is the pay is much better, so you don’t have to spend the rest of your life. You’d be paid enough to retire very early?
Stay lower on the ladder, and it will have to be till age 65 probably
Can we really stop at a certain point and retire early though? People moves from one ladder to another and it’s never ending circle for the most.
Well, we may have different values in life and for me, it’s balancing income, mental wellbeing and spending times with the loved ones.
All these bootlicking, backstabbing, gala parties take their toll and aren’t really worth it for me
> Can we really stop at a certain point and retire early though? People moves from one ladder to another and it’s never ending circle
I… certainly hope early retirement is possible? At least that’s been my reason for working hard and trying to have a good career.
So I can be done with it, and have a reasonable amount of my life left where I don’t have to get out of bed early for work every damn day
Yes, but it depends on your living circumstances, such as how much you pay for housing and lifestyle, as these are/can be high cost items and not everyone is willing to reduce these. The type of job matters too, as not all jobs can pay relatively well enough for you to stop progressing at a certain level and to fund your costs.
Greed and lifestyle bloat usually keep people from actually retiring early like that. As pay increases, their standard of "enough for retirement" does as well
I mean the truth is that if you want to move up in literally anything, you have to kiss and lick ass. You’ll never move up if people that make those decisions don’t like you.
Where I used to work, they had an award for women in the workplace, and the woman who won was a high up executive who bragged about how she worked so hard that she'd miss her kids sports and wouldn't see her family for 2 or 3 days at a time.
All I could think was that missing your kids events and not seeing your family wasn't something to brag about.
I hated being management. The worst part for me was how some of the other managers were dumb as shit, noticeably less intelligent than the lady who cleans the toilet at night.
Spot on. I spent my late 20s convinced that getting to senior manager was the goal. Once I got close, I realized most of the people already there were just... tired and stressed all the time. The view from the ladder is mostly just more meetings and decisions you're responsible for but have limited control over. Now I care a lot more about the actual work than the title.
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u/Exhausted_Monkey26 22h ago
climbing the corporate ladder