Hey antiwork.
I (23M) am getting tired of doing the grind. I don't have it a fifth as bad as some of the other posts I've read. Salaried IT professional, 45-55 hours a week(no OT pay of course), pretty good salary, but a very small team of 3. Boss won't give me any remote work flexibility even though I can do my job 97% remotely with exceptions of hardware maintenance (of which I create a maintenance window on my own time afterhours). I've even suggested hybrid work but heavily in-office and its still a hard no.
When the pandemic happened, I took on the hardship of working a full-time job, full-time university (US btw), and preparing to get married all in the same year. I thought once I got my degree and got married, a big weight would be lifted off my shoulders. Things just got more complicated with my job at work. as time went on, I kept receiving more and more responsibilities outside of my job description (metering mail, intercorporate courier runs, even general maintenance like light-bulb replacing and responsibility of generators on-site). I can't keep up the day-to-day IT responsibilities anymore, it takes up so much time. The company has issues replacing people (including maintenance staff)
A big problem is I am working full-time for the company that hired me as an intern in college, and still feel like the intern as I was 4 years ago. I wish I established boundaries when I could of.
I have been on call the past 3 weekends with several calls. I can barely enjoy my weekend as I'm getting the “Sunday chills” on Saturday night. I've been actively looking for another job for 6 months, had about a dozen interviews, and I get dropped at either the 2nd or 3rd interview and get completely ghosted. Hoping I may of locked in a network engineer position this week. *fingers crossed*
Monday has me broken down in a bad mindspace. I've only been doing this for 3 years and I don't think I can make it till summer. My wife has a good job but if I quit we couldn't sustain on only her income, unless we heavily budgeted more than we are now. I would love to quit but I feel like I will lose my leverage of a good wage unless I keep my current job and continue applying.
I feel like all I need to be happy is a fulfilling remote IT job with a normal workload without BS random odd-job responsibilities.
I want to thank everyone in this sub for giving me content to read at work and give me the courage to post this myself. If you made it this far, I appreciate it.