Antiwork

I am a project manager at a startup near Boston MA, in biotech. I joined in Q2 2021. This year, I was rated 4.85/5 on my annual review. I singlehandedly built systems fo capture project metrics, sales cycle metrics, any metric you could dream of. I drove our projects to success all year. I hit every one of my personal goals. I’m consistently told how wonderful my work is, how lucky they are to have me, how they couldn’t do their work without me. This past Monday, I found out that cost of living adjustments (COLA) were going to be 5% for everyone in the company. Not too shabby, when we see 1-3% at some companies. Ok. I naively also thought there would be raises for those of us who exceeded expectations. BUT NO. Just the blanket COLA. Which, today, I found out that they had the audacity to PRO…

I think this community will understand. I live in the U.S., told my employer during the interview that, “I already have a job I can stay at, they have incredible work/life balance, and that is an important thing to me. Is that something you can offer if I take this job?” He told me, “Yes, honestly I don't think I've worked more than 50 hours any week since I got here.” I took the job. Fast forward 5 months. My boss is ALWAYS on until like 10pm. We hired a guy below him and above me who is often in at 8AM and leaves around 7PM. There always seems to be an emergency. I tried to “kick it up” and work longer for a couple weeks, but I quickly realized it's always “emergency time” and that will never stop, so I started going home at 42.5 hours every week regardless…

For context, I’m am looking into switching jobs. I am applying at jobs that claim to be “entry level”. Things like customer service and office admin etc. I have 7 years of experience with Microsoft applications and especially excel. However I only have 2 years of experience in a traditional office setting. Most of my older experience was in a lab setting in a factory but my job was still heavily (90%) on a computer. I keep getting denied for interviews saying I’m not qualified, yet I meet the qualifications listed on the job posting. I’m so frustrated. I even had help revamping my resume. All these companies claim they are in need of workers now but I’m not considered.