I have to vent a sec here. I'm 36 at $150,000 USD salary in IT. I'm at about 12 years of experience, spread across a lot of domains (Linux, cloud, Python, etc.), which makes me a nimble “generalist.” I'm good at working on problems quickly, but I'm not a super deep expert in any one particular thing.
I feel like I've hit a wall in career growth, and have become so disillusioned, I'm thinking of quitting my job cold turkey and taking a month off to re-evaluate my life. (no financial risk here, spouse also works full time, enough saved, etc.).
I started in a large insurance company. Fortune 500 stuff. Some project spends 2 weeks talking about a firewall request, then it takes 3 more weeks to get it implemented. That sort of thing. Early in my career, I didn't know better, but over time (really abbreviated my career here) have moved on to the startup world. And there's absolutely no way I could ever go back to big corporate. I like to work hard and fast, and startup is much more my style.
However, even in startup, I've run into the same problem again and again. And in the classic fashion of, “if everywhere you go smells like crap, look at the bottom of your shoe,” I've come to the conclusion and accept that the problem must be me. I did a lot of soul searching on this.
And I've realized it: I'm a pragmatic & realist. I hate small talk. I speak in objective facts, and I question when people talk bullshit. Recent example is we have a product we're about to launch, but we're looking for customers in the market to try the product out. The product manager has his head so far up his ass with this huge fake smile about how everything we do is “for the customer,” “nothing matters except customer acquisition and adapting to their feedback,” etc. And, the guy's not wrong. That is actually where we need to be focusing. But it's like hoooooly shit dude, stop with this like obvious “I'm mr. sophisticated leader manager man.” He was talking this way because the CEO is there. It's like high school or something, like holy shit. And then I had the audacity (I guess, because it really pissed him off, lmao), to ask, “so what is your customer acquisition strategy for this? How are we tracking leads?” –> tl;dr, guy ain't doing shit, probably playing games on Steam all day, and my only guess is he felt threatened by my question. Meanwhile after that shitshow I went back and within 30 minutes in our internal software ecosystem created a janky ass CRM database where we can start entering customer info, lead status, etc.
But for some reason, it's that guy (and guys like him) who get the money, the promotions, the praise, etc. Somehow I'm the asshole for not playing ball in the dick measuring popularity contest. Even though I took that conversation and went and did some practical and productive, it's unlikely anyone will even use it, just because it came from me whom people find frustrating and annoying because they would rather sit around and smell each others' farts all day long, whereas I would prefer to stick to practical solutions.
Don't even get me started on the whole LinkedIn thing, hooooly shit. Like that whole subculture is just insane. I scroll through that festering wasteland every day and question what humanity did to deserve such egotistical vileness masked with smiles and everyone just patting each other on the back.
The ultimate problem is is that I've been lingering in this salary point and position of “new manager, but people are hesitant to give me responsibilities because they're afraid I'm going to go rock the boat and not just be a dipshit 'yes man.'” I feel like there's no where else to go. It's either like I have to sell my soul and act like these clowns, or just perpetually remain at this level.
The only thing that gives me hope is that occasionally I will see people older than me and more experienced, who everyone hates because they're supposedly huuuuge assholes that people dread in meetings, but whenever I'm in there I'm always thinking like, “wow, this is the only sane person in here, lmao,” because that person will be the only realistic one that's actually trying to get to the bottom of problems in any sort of “down-to-earth” fashion. The only hope I have is, those people, rare as they are, must have fought through this, stuck to their guns, and eventually came out on top.
I'm almost starting to wonder if I should just double down and truly embrace myself. In other words, stop fighting what I am. People perceive it as being an asshole, but I perceive it as “just shutting the fuck up and getting shit done.” One of the things that's shooting me in the foot right now is that I'm hesitating on going further with that, and I think people smell the blood in the water, that hesitation. Maybe I need to stop occasionally retreating and just double down on just embracing what I am — become the true so-called “asshole” and stop fighting it, and just start stomping on these clowns.
Only other thing I can think is that, maybe I need to like start my own company, become self-employed, maybe go full freelancer, etc. I just can't with this shit anymore, this Office Space, “yay go team” bullshit.