I finished my Master’s of Engineering at age 23. I’ve been in my industry for 4 and a half years, and boy does it suck. I make around 100k salary with a 10% bonus now, and just finished paying off all my student and car loans by essentially not having a life for the last 4 and a half years and putting every penny towards that.
Anyways, this is my second job with the same company. I worked my first job for 3 years, and was promoted once during that time period (went from 58k to 78k salary). After I was promoted, they expected me to work 50-60 hour weeks on a routine basis to get all my work done on time, and I couldn’t do it anymore. I started applying for other internal roles.
Got a new job (current role) within a month of applying and started making 90k. Got a 7% raise after that, and now I’m back in the same position I was at my old job where my boss expects me to be the workhorse for the department and work 50-60 hard hours each week. This week I’ve nearly had a breakdown every day, and I just can’t do it anymore. Meanwhile, everyone else in the department is doing alright, but they have no problem with me shouldering most of the challenging work. This is probably irrelevant, but I’ll also note that I’m the only man in a department of 11 women.
I don’t care that I make decent money, I hate that my job always ends up becoming my life because “this is our new normal” for our company in our industry. And our company is one of the best, too. I wish I could quit and just take a year off to clear my head and find a new direction in my life. I have friends in other similar companies who’ve experienced similar issues.
Not to mention, both of my bosses had absolutely zero compassion for me, or perspective on how overloaded I was/am all the time. They just keep piling it on until I inevitably find a new job, which will be happening soon again. This is how corporations work: they suck as much as they can out of you until you burn out and want to kill yourself, then they hire the next schmuck and repeat the process. It’s pure evil.
TLDR; 2 soul sucking jobs over the last 4.5 years makes me want to change careers, or just quit working altogether.