Work sucks for you, too?

[Flip]

Now that most of us are older and out of school, what do you think of your job/the working world? I put it a lot of hours and dont really like much about it. Being a staff level is boring, you are unappreciated for the busy work that you do, and unchallended as you only get tossed busy work. Although, when i step back and look at my managers they dont seem to be doing interesting stuff all that much either. Only the partners have the good job as they just schedule, go to meetings, and budget.

Seriously, humans were not made to work this much, work shouldnt be life... once i get my CPA and another year of experience or so i'm off to find something i really like or a slacker job where i can sleepily put in 40 hours a week. I dont desire to be rich, just to get by and have time to do things i enjoy.

/rant

[Shellie]

Right now, I love my job.

I work in the tech support dept of a cable modem ISP. I used to be in a mgmt role (Lead) but that position went away. I had to either obtain a Supervisor position or who knows. I applied for the supervisor position, but didnt get it. I was however offered a new position, or rather a redefinition of my Lead position. No management responsibilities involved.

Now, I basically do what I had been doing in my down time as a Lead. I develop and maintain tools and resources (with the help of Sine's scripting) for our tech support, and now other departments in the cable company systems. I pretty much help out where needed as well....I still help the tech support reps if they ask me a question, but it really isnt my job anymore. Im working directly for the manager, who is awesome...she 's kind of intimidating, but knows what shes doing.

no more angry customer escalation calls, no more stress over making sure my team is on top of their goals, etc....its great.

Im doing what I enjoy. Ive been with the company for about 4 years. Sine also works here, but he works at the NOC, which is another location in town. Ive been wanting a position there, but we cant have the same manager and be married, so thats out.

I love the people I work with, and the company is great to work for. Free cable modem, free cable, unlimited sick days, no layoff policy..etc.

And now that Im not doing mgmt stuff, Im practially stress free.

[Zeus]

Now that most of us are older and out of school, what do you think of your job/the working world? I put it a lot of hours and dont really like much about it. Being a staff level is boring, you are unappreciated for the busy work that you do, and unchallended as you only get tossed busy work. Although, when i step back and look at my managers they dont seem to be doing interesting stuff all that much either. Only the partners have the good job as they just schedule, go to meetings, and budget.

Seriously, humans were not made to work this much, work shouldnt be life... once i get my CPA and another year of experience or so i'm off to find something i really like or a slacker job where i can sleepily put in 40 hours a week. I dont desire to be rich, just to get by and have time to do things i enjoy.

/rant

Flip, once we get our designations, we're on the gravy train. I'm 1 year away myself. Then, you go to a big corporation and you can do half the work for about 20% more pay and they think you're a God (for some of us, it's just a matter of them discovering that we're Gods :-). That's why this idiotic pain is worth it

[Flip]

Flip, once we get our designations, we're on the gravy train. I'm 1 year away myself. Then, you go to a big corporation and you can do half the work for about 20% more pay and they think you're a God (for some of us, it's just a matter of them discovering that we're Gods . That's why this idiotic pain is worth it

That is essentially what i keep telling myself, too.

[Anarky]

well still in college but I feel the urge to bitch.

I am a graphic design major (full time student), work 20 hours at Bestbuy (evil corperation full of tards and idiot customers), and a girlfriend (the biggest job of them all). All in all I really hope when I graduate life at work will be good.

[Tortolia]

I get my work done, I put in my 40 hours a week, and I'm able to leave work at work and enjoy the rest of my time.

It's not a fantastic job, it's not all that mentally challenging, but I could think of much worse things to be doing, and it's a decent enough stop in the road until I actually figure out what the fuck to do with myself.

Can't ask for much more than that.

[Nev]

My job life is hella unstable right now, but generally I love working in the videogame industry. Which isn't to say I haven't had my share of shit jobs, but right now I feel pretty damn blessed. Sorry you're not too thrilled right now though.

[the Gray]

I work for 2 Evil Twins that also happen to be my Father and Uncle.

yeah, work sucks.

Especially as there is a set of rules at our business for family, and another set for everyone else apparently.

I do however, get to work at my own pace and learn a fuckton about starting/running a small business. So it sucks now, but may get better. Or so I tell myself.

[Zeus]

well still in college but I feel the urge to bitch.

I am a graphic design major (full time student), work 20 hours at Bestbuy (evil corperation full of tards and idiot customers), and a girlfriend (the biggest job of them all). All in all I really hope when I graduate life at work will be good.

You mean your girlfriend doesn't have a job with you yet? :-)

[Zeus]

I work for 2 Evil Twins that also happen to be my Father and Uncle.

yeah, work sucks.

Especially as there is a set of rules at our business for family, and another set for everyone else apparently.

I do however, get to work at my own pace and learn a fuckton about starting/running a small business. So it sucks now, but may get better. Or so I tell myself.

Been there, done that :-)

[Manshoon]

At the moment, I love my job. There's plenty of opportunity to learn new stuff, and I get along great with pretty much everyone at the company. About the only complaint I have is dealing with the periods where I literally don't have any projects to work on (thankfully that's a thing of the past now). But even that is a far cry from the shit I had to deal with over a year ago as a CompUSA service writer. If it weren't for the fact that I'm hoping to leave the state in around 2 years I'd consider staying there long-term.

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

I get my work done, I put in my 40 hours a week, and I'm able to leave work at work and enjoy the rest of my time.

It's not a fantastic job, it's not all that mentally challenging, but I could think of much worse things to be doing, and it's a decent enough stop in the road until I actually figure out what the fuck to do with myself.

Can't ask for much more than that.

Ditto that, exactly.

[Kupek]

I have a demanding job that pays horribly. But if everything goes according to plan, one day people will address me as Dr. Schneider, so maybe it will even out in the end.

But maybe not. I'm rather jaded and disillusioned, but I find that's true of most graduate students.

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

But if everything goes according to plan, one day people will address me as Dr. Schneider, so maybe it will even out in the end.

Hey, I'll call you that right now if you want :).

[Torgo]

I can't really say I've entered the real world yet. I'm still in school, I'm doing some entry level job, and I still live with my parents. I basically do stock at the local Macy's. It's very repetitive, and a bit more physical than I'm used to, but I could use the experience. I just do my shit then pick up my paychek at the end of the week. I don't plan on doing it for long, just until I find a job that I can stand that pays moderately well.

I also have a little side job as a process server. That pays much better, but I don't get enough opportunities to rely on it for money.

[EsquE]

I like my job...I'm kind of just below management right now, which suits me fine. I turned down a promotion last year which would have pushed me up to management. It would also push me up to salary, which sucks. Now, I pretty much have as much overtime as I want, which allows me to actually make more than my boss while doing a job that I personally find quite easy.

I'll probably have another promotion opportunity before the end of the year which I'll probably take, which gives me two years before I automatically become salary. By that time I'll have my affairs in order and can afford the loss in overtime pay.

[Ishamael]

Now that most of us are older and out of school, what do you think of your job/the working world? I put it a lot of hours and dont really like much about it. Being a staff level is boring, you are unappreciated for the busy work that you do, and unchallended as you only get tossed busy work. Although, when i step back and look at my managers they dont seem to be doing interesting stuff all that much either. Only the partners have the good job as they just schedule, go to meetings, and budget.

Seriously, humans were not made to work this much, work shouldnt be life... once i get my CPA and another year of experience or so i'm off to find something i really like or a slacker job where i can sleepily put in 40 hours a week. I dont desire to be rich, just to get by and have time to do things i enjoy.

/rant

Aaah, a favorite topic of mine. I see it hasn't taken you long to become disillusioned. Took me less than a year. If your thinking was anything like mine, you probably wondered how after 16+ years of schooling, you ended up as an uncreative cog in some corporate machine doing a job that you probably had the intellectual capacity to perform in high school if not before. All to be a "good productive member of society". If you're really lucky, you may be working for a huge corporation where you get to compete with the other rats for increasingly fewer opportunities; the farther up the ladder you go, promotions are more and more based on quid-pro quo BS or being a slimeball, and less on aptitude.

And you get to look forward to 40+ more years of this (Don't worry. With advances in medical technology and a few blessings, it's probably more like 50+ for many of us). Yeesh.


My advice is to do what many are doing (including some of you here it seems). That is, do the absolute minimum amount of "work" you have to do until you find something you love, then pour all of your energy into that.

A couple of good reading resources:
1. http://www.changethis.com/sp-4.SlackerAtWork - Nice manifesto from the guys over at ChangeThis. Quite a few good ones.

2. http://www.whywork.org/index.php Some good reads from these guys too. I like the Buckminster Fuller essays(the brilliant geodesic dome guy from the early 20th century).

[SineSwiper]

I am soooooo glad I dropped out of college, especially after hearing your stories. I'm working at Insight NOC, like Shellie said. I love it. It's really nice to be in a job that combines my programming knowledge with my experience with servers and networking. If there is busy work to be done, I script my way out of it. (Or "working hard to be lazy".) I'm usually surfing the net or scripting something so that I can surf the net. (Sometimes, I actually do script something proactive, just because I get an idea somewhere. And actually, there are plenty of periods when I'm swamped with work; I'm just mostly caught up now.)

Right now I'm 3rd shift, so the workload will probably be a little bit more when I switch to 2nd next month (as well as the pay being a little bit less), but it shouldn't be too bad. My only gripe is the NOC taking over management of the telephony network, which is backwards and arcane as hell. Fucking 15-year-old technology is hard to script through.

I think today I'm going to script an ANSI interface to Net::Telnet to get past all of this menuing crap on their OPC interface.

[Nev]

I have a demanding job that pays horribly. But if everything goes according to plan, one day people will address me as Dr. Schneider, so maybe it will even out in the end.

But maybe not. I'm rather jaded and disillusioned, but I find that's true of most graduate students.

I've seen a few comics to that effect. Life in Hell had one I particularly remember. I ought to mail you a collection I have of Stanford's old P.h. D (Piled Higher and Deeper) comic strip too - like most things graduate-level at Stanford it's pretty awesome. Wish I could say the same about undergrad...

My favorite character is Mike Slackerney. In one of the strips, the first-year grad students ask him how long he's been there to settle a bet between themselves, but he agrees to tell them ONLY on the condition that if all of them guess too low, he gets to keep all the bets - so I'm sure you can guess how that works out...

"H...h..how can that be? I wasn't even born when he started here!"

[Kupek]

I've seen a few comics to that effect. Life in Hell had one I particularly remember. I ought to mail you a collection I have of Stanford's old P.h. D (Piled Higher and Deeper) comic strip too - like most things graduate-level at Stanford it's pretty awesome. Wish I could say the same about undergrad...

Every grad student I know is familiar with the strip. It's become a semi-succesful online comic: http://www.phdcomics.com/

[Imakeholesinu]

I'm unemployed right now. Hopefully I'll go back to the bar in STL and cook 40 hours a week like I used too, but if that doesn't work out then I guess I'll have to find something else.

[Ishamael]

I am soooooo glad I dropped out of college, especially after hearing your stories.

Well, I think the stories are more related with the work related world, not with college per se. College can be a valuable resource and I'd never advise against it...but you can get along fine without it too for many things. Passion is key. You have to find something you love doing or just be satisfied with working for The Man or doing something in the daytime that you care nothing about to support whatever other hobbies you have.

[Flip]

I am soooooo glad I dropped out of college

I would defenitely not say that. I'm a staff level and it sucks, yes, but i know eventually (with the help of the degree) i will not be staff forever. If i worked for this company without a degree it would still suck, and it wouldnt get any better.

My wife's brother gave me The Purpose Driven Life as a gift for Christmas and i am getting around to reading it now. I'm not very religious at all (kind of undecided), but the author makes good points about needing a purpose for things to matter. Its not that i am overworked, its that i am working for no purpose, i just dont care. Of course, he parallels this with how our purpose should be to God to prepare for eternity, yadda yadda, but like i said he makes good all around points.

[Imakeholesinu]

Yeah, I'm back that the bar now. 9 hours today, 9 hours tomorrow. I'm going to be racking in the dough, but I've got to put up with some serious bullshit at work now. After my surgery I'm going to try and find a more comfortable enviornment.