30s. Earning well, no issues yet.
Being good to the people around me and those in my community isn't an act. It's just how I feel I should be.
I now work on projects I'm passionate about, and spent years prior swinging a tool.
Everyone's path is different. I was lucky, but I didn't act a certain way because I was trying to put up an act. It's just how I conduct myself.
I am constantly reminded that knowledge isn't free. We live in a world where everything could be so so so much better if information were shared, instead it is locked up and sold as a product. So to answer the question, every single day, I'm still hopeful that a positive change could happen.
Let you know when it happens.
For the most part the more active and nicer you are the happier you will be. Yeah yeah you get taken advantage of, you know the same result if you are a lazy asshole.
Your insurance company is going to deny your claim, your stuff is going to break down, you will be ripped off, you will be injured, you will be robbied, and eventually you will die. All of this stuff will happen in your existence and there is fuck all you can do about it.
What you can do is stay active and stay giving. You can surround yourself with people who very much want you to be happy in life and your happiness almost completely depends on it.
So go ahead and make your decision. Do you want to pass judgement on a world that doesn't care what you think about it and rot with whatever pathetic little you have or do you want deep connections and a lifetime of achievement.
Way, way later than I should have. Or wish I had.
Jokes on you, i never had a plan
I was about 25. I did actually work my way up through sheer knowledge base within the first 6 years at the company. But after several years of going for a more technical position the boss slept with a new hire who was new to the industry and gave them the position.
I promptly left the company and heard that the person who gain the position through I'll gotten means not only messed up a lot but also injured themselves doing stupid shit anyone who's been in the industry would not do.
28 when they try to fire me during abrunout after doing 14h a day for 6 month while fighting for custody.
33 - After burning out from taking too much on 😅
When my angel of a tee totaling mother who would cry from the stress of working unpaid OT, making every family member custom holiday sweatshirts, or hosting other little girl's birthday parties at their lazy mother's request, died rather quickly from a brain tumor after her quack therapist ignored her months of aphasia. Selflessness guarantees nothing.
I was 21yo. I am thankful mandatory internships taught me that much.
1st internship at 20yo. Completed 2 full-fledged programming projects in 8 weeks, while I was supposed to complete 1 project in the entire 10 weeks. Spent the last 2 weeks unboxing and reboxing hundreds of products all day. Was paid 500€/month (minimum legally required). Worked my ass off from 8am until 18am. No one ever invited me to go for lunch with them. Boss treated me like an idiot. He once shouted at me at 8am because he didn't like my handshake and I didn't smile, I didn't look motivated and grateful enough to his liking.
2nd internship. 4 months long. Still paid the 500€/month minimum. Did my job alright, completed the tasks that were given to me and nothing more. Spent most of every Fridays just chatting with coworkers and drinking coffee. "Oh, it's 15:55 already! I better pack my things and leave". They loved me, told me they will have a position for me after I finish my studies. Colleagues offered me presents on my last day.
3rd and last internship. Applied the same principles. They offered me a job starting at 54k€/year (as a reference, other offers I got at the time maxed at 34k€/year).
I am thankful for this lesson. Be nice and socialize. Just do your job well with the time your are paid for and absolutely nothing extra. I have been nothing but successful in my career so far :)
P.S: all internships were in different companies
I was pretty young when I knew this in my brain.
I was way too old before I really believed and felt it in my soul.
Then: Work hard and you'll be rewarded for your efforts!
Now: HaRd WoRk Is NoT vAlUAbLe WoRk. EfFoRt DoEs NoT eQuAl OuTcOme!
At least we're being honest now.
Don't be a doormat, but be nice and take a little time to be a bro at work. I've been given many great opportunities because I tried to be nice. As long as you're competent and you care, you don't even need to be competitive.
The sad thing is that I was significantly younger when I realised it vs when I knew how to change myself (into doing the "wrong" thing).
My wife is in her mid 40s and hasnt figured it out yet. Constantly pissed at the company she works for screwing over people in her position with more and more responsibility for no pay increase. An opportunity came up and it was going to be rather inexpensive to open a competing business three miles down the road and it would have screwed over the company she works for, and she won't even let me look into it. She will never get by at her current job.
26 late enough not to make me completely cynical... enough to make me highly cynical hehehehe
sadly enough, it was my own fam taking advantage of my good will that flipped the switch for me
Oh, way too young. Grade school. I didn’t give up on the nice part, but I realized that extra work got a brief notice - and you constantly had to apply more effort to get that notice, the rest of the time you were the same as anyone else. So why work extra all the time for little reward? Guess I’m not very approval- or reward-driven.
Been in union gigs for decades now. You do your work, do it right because that’s what you do, and you get paid pretty well. Generally nobody’s in your business offering or retracting rewards based on how they feel about you or your work.
Funnily enough, I was well aware of this while I was young, and planning on not participating and dying young. Somehow I still got suckered in for 10 years of service before I woke up again.
Well, my original plan was "time to go to college now, this should be just as easy as school was up until senior year, but I was just coasting and certainly that won't be a sign of things to come"
Narrator: it was
Not sure of the exact age, but around 2 years from when I started working.
I think I was in my early 20s, at my second dev job. It was early enough in my career that it helped.
When I was getting burned out and started asking to be scheduled enough time to get my weekly tasks done, so they "silent fired" me by taking away all my tasks and putting me exclusively on the new hire jobs.
Professionally? When I got my first non-Union job.
Personally, weirdly enough it actually has worked for me
I think I was 17 or 18.
When I had to have a tiny mental breakdown over getting a single day off after spending the year prior doing favours for the store manager like driving the delivery truck and being the pillar that kept the fresh departments standing. Ohh and I hadn't had a holiday for 2 years.
Now I work 4 days a week by choice, I come in do my work well enough then sign off. I constantly remind them that if I'm not being actively paid by the company I see myself as unemployed and free to do what I want.
You need to toot your own horn until you can find someone who will toot it for you. Sometimes that means going above and beyond, but make sure the right people know what you did.
Nobody is going to give you what you don’t ask for.
Aligning action with these two things in mind will take you far.
I think 23 or 24.
16, I was in highschool when it happened
Mowing the yard for my dad as a pre-teen. I was trying to earn some extra cash and so went way above and beyond.
He acknowledged it and did pay a little more than we’d agreed to, but in no way commensurate to the extra work I put in.
I don’t mind working hard or doing extra, but I do it for me now. If interested, passionate, and engaged, then I dig deep and do more. Otherwise it’s the agreed upon work and no more.
29
13 or 14
Pretty damn old. I’m too embarrassed to say.
I still do it, but I ask and get
Still haven't figured it out yet
Oh I figured that shit out in 3rd grade.
6 days ago. I was fired from a private school for not demanding $100 from a single mom on food assistance when we're getting over $10,000 to support her child from the government. The higher ups know exactly what I did and are appalled that I got fired but won't intervene because "it's not their role".
.
Never thought so
Way too damn old.
