In the past year I have had 3 jobs. My first job of the 3 was a bear… I did 60 to 80 hour weeks every week and was fucking miserable. I made about 65k…
The second job I worked for a branch of the government for a while as a contractor. I loved working for that branch too. It was the most rewarding and fulfilling job I had, I was doing something that directly benefited my country, had a positive impact on people, and I got to work from home quite a bit. I was making about 82k here. Honestly I was sad to go because I liked the government employees I worked with. I like the contracting team I worked with…. I just absolutely hated the contracting company. I will likely never be a contractor again because of my experience. The manager, for the contracting company, was out of touch with the demands of the contract, the demands on the employees, and what their role entailed… They would actively stir things up between employees, creating more problems than necessary. I had been threatened, as a salary worker, for accurately entering my time in their record keeping system. I had multiple pay checks fucked up… it was a disaster on the contracting companies side and they are a multibillion dollar company, who basically is just HR for contractors… payroll should not be hard for them.
One day when I was particularly upset with my manager, I went out and rage applied to a few jobs. One of them called back. Then I had an interview. Then another… Then the biggest job offer of my life making above 100k. My field is pretty narrow and jobs paying that much don't come around that often… and better is the organization I am moving to.
After I put in my notice, I got a series of email and chat messages from different levels of my company as well as the government branch I worked for. I spoke honestly, and I guess it was the straw that broke the camels back. The team I was with had already had high turnover issues and I was another, putting the turnover above 50% in a narrow field of candidates.
The manager I had had many issues with had been removed. So hopefully, the team I was with will see some quality of life improvement. So now I'm making ~60% more than I was like a year ago and in a much better place, not that the role I had previously was bad as far as the work went.
All that to say I wouldn't be here if I didn't actually pursue the job hops.. though I intend to stay where I am for a while now.