I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, mostly due to my 4% yearly raise. Im a CNC machinist in Denver. I chased my career here to work for a government contractor making satellite parts. Very quickly my gut told me to run, but I stayed for the “career growth”. Long story short, it fucking ruined me and left me with a lot of apathy about really growing and chasing my career (the passion and growth part at least). I left that job for something that was way beneath me, but paid more, and stayed for about 6 weeks before taking a few months off and dipping into savings.
But alas, I did find a shop that is the exact opposite of toxic environment. It’s relaxed as shit, my boss is a few years older and does show appreciation and value, you can talk to him like a friend, joke around, under stands my horrible sleep and doesn’t scold me for calling out or showing up late once every two weeks, and also I did have some growth here, but that’s reaching its plateau. It’s a small company that was bought out by a bigger one. You bet I see the original owner and CEO once every 4 months. They paid what I was asked when I started in July, and after finding out the yearly raises will be 4%, I kind of figured “well, my Denver options are very very few and far between, on to the next city when my lease is up”. But at what point should I take into account that it’s probably the best work environment I’ll ever have?
We all know the only way to get paid more is to job hop, and that’ll probably guarantee more money, but I know with almost 100% certainty finding this kind of chill ass environment is going to be a needle in a hay stack.
Where’s the balance? Is there balance? is it acceptance or just giving up the chase?
And just to put some numbers on it if I keep living the way I do (a dog, apartment, no car payments, zero social or dating life, maybe a Lego set or some distraction toy every now and again) I’m able to save about 800-1000 a month.