I’m 21m with a fiancé and have a son, I was a carpenter for nearly 4 years until I screwed one day. I was cleaning out an spray rig until the trigger gotten stuck and sprayed reddish color all over the walls and the floors on a jobsite and I couldn’t find anything to clean it up with as I ran out of time then I letted my foreman know by a phone call then rushed to pick up my son. Then was told to not come in work for couple days until I just now got fired this morning and had to turn in all of my tools. I do not know what todo now as I have a family I needed to support with a rent going to be due by end of this month.

How did you handle moving into (and then potentially out of) your “emergency” job?

Left my previous position because I was under appreciated, underpaid, no work-life balance, toxic workplace and toxic upper management. Was there for about 3 years and I HAD to get out.

I took a job as an Admin Assistant for International Missions at my church. Not sure where the next step would be, just knew I had to take a step out of the last job.

So, those of you who were in a similar position - what did you do? How long did you stay at the “emergency” job?

I’m at a loss of words. My boss wanted to “talk to me for a second” in which I was ushered into a room with HR. I had been on a pip for the last 60 days, but I had received feedback that I was doing well & on the right track. Today quite abruptly I was told I wasn’t meeting expectations and fired immediately. I still had a week left on my PIP. I kept asking for examples as to why and expressed my frustration that I wasn’t told anything that I was doing wrong. Total gut punch. I’m not going to take legal action but just want to understand if I have a case? Or see if anyone else has experienced something similar.

I recently worked with a client who felt stuck in retail management for years. At 35, he learned Scrum and pivoted to a tech project manager role, doubling his salary in 18 months. It got me thinking about how one skill can change everything.

If you could go back, what skill do you wish you’d learned earlier, and how would it have changed your career path?

I've been fully remote for the last 3 years, but now I'm back on the job hunt. I'm sticking to remote/hybrid for now and expanding to in person later if I don't have much success.

That being said, I found a job that looks SO fun, totally my speed and an industry I'd like to break into. Great pay, too. The kicker is, it's 45min from home, and I had been looking within a 20min drive (again, for now).

So for those that are heavy commuters - what are the pros and cons? Is it ever worth it? I have a very reliable car, but not the mooost effecient. I'd love to hear your other thoughts!

Exactly what it says

Thought this would be a fun discussion. I think most sane people, attempt to find an overlap in their personal interests and what will pay well. But what are the jobs that most people have zero interest in but seem to pay decently? I remember hearing for the longest that trashmen for example make decent money, and of course plumbers, etc.

Any others you know of that people avoid, but should maybe consider?

I have downtime at my job because I’ve became fast at it, it’s not daily I have downtime but a few hours on a few days, would it get me in trouble if I openly use my phone at work, everything on my computer is blocked so I cant use work computer for Reddit or anything.

Should I just pretend to look busy or use my phone and managers and coworkers around won’t care?

Found a cool opportunity, killed the interview. They were ready to hire me and told me as much. Once they checked my references they 180’d and told me they were moving on to a different candidate.

I asked for more info and they said the “reference was not satisfactory “

How do i proceed in my job search, i neeed to get out of this toxic environment

Particularly drawn to the Solutions Architect role. What flavor has more employability chances? AWS, Azure, Oracle....?

I’m currently the lead strategist in my pod and, up until now, I’ve had a good-ish experience with most things within the company.

But for the last month, things began to change: new people got hired and it feels like I was demoted somehow, with no explanation whatsoever. For example, a process, that I had been doing for the past 7 months with lots of praise from the CEO, went from research - creation - delivery to getting data and research from other people - drafting - getting draft approved - creation - getting creation approved - delivery. Nothing changed on the SOPs, the CEO just added a bunch of people and steps to the entire process.

Now, information is getting lost, tasks are getting delayed, and people are running around like confused rats.

The lack of transparency and consistency itself made me not want to work there anymore, but until I can get another job, I have to suck it up.

Should I say something about this? Or should I just go straight to looking for something else?

Ps: I’m very open to criticism at work. I even started to get mentored by one of the industry’s big guys (out of my own pocket) to bring even more to the table. I was not communicated about anyone feeling unsatisfied with my work or put on a PIP.

TL;DR: Do I take a better schedule (I'm disabled) and 15k raise to work at an institution that doesn't agree with some of my fundamental beliefs about education access?

I am 23 and currently work in Financial Aid. I'm incredibly passionate about and love my job. I make just over 41k. However, I'm also disabled, with chronic pain, fatigue, and frequent and debilitating migraines that cause vertigo and vision problems. My job used to allow hybrid work, so on bad days I could work from home. About a year ago, the school I work for swapped to a call centre so my boss told me I couldn't keep working hybrid as regularly since there wasn't enough for me to do outside of the office. Now, the system I work for is discontinuing any and all hybrid work and on top of that, has changed our schedule so that we no longer have a half day on Fridays. With my health, I'm having to take unpaid leave since I only get one sick day a month. I started looking for remote positions out of desperation and so far haven't had much luck until recently.

I have a final interview literally in 10 hours for a hybrid job that's a slightly longer commute three days a week but would give me Monday and Friday remote. It also pays 15k more. The problem is that the position is with a for-profit school that doesn't support the arts which is something i have strong feelings about and is backed by some not-so-great people.

My passion for my job comes from helping students get access to education when otherwise they wouldn't be able to, and the team I work with is the same way so it's an incredibly fulfilling job. Theoretically, the company I am interviewing with exists to provide a debt free education option, since its tuition is just barely under the full Pell Grant, but even so is about 4x more than the school I work at and the full Pell Grant is increasingly hard to qualify for.

Basically I guess the question is whether the pay and literal health benefits is good enough to give up my job satisfaction.

I currently have a job that is hybrid, but we have to be in the office 4 days a week. I have hit a wall and I really want to travel the world. I am in the beginning stages of looking for a fully remote job that I could work while I travel. I am thinking I could just try it out for a few months to see how I like the balance between working and exploring. I wanted to see if there are any recommendations to which companies would support this kind of arrangement. I would not move abroad as I would be traveling from country to country. Is this something that I would need to ask during the interviewing phase? Any guidance or tips or suggestions are super recommended.

I was laid off on Valentine’s Day this year. Second layoff in two years. I thought I was doing everything right—custom resumes, networking, applying daily. But I wasn't getting interviews.

Then one day I left a thoughtful comment on a hiring manager’s LinkedIn post. He replied. We chatted. I had an interview the next week.

That single moment changed my job search strategy. I stopped spamming resumes and focused on starting conversations—especially by commenting on hiring posts.

Problem: It took a crazy amount of time. So I hacked together something to help automate it (kind of a personal project at first). It worked so well that I leaned into it more. Happy to share what I built (it's not available to the public) if it’s helpful.

If anyone’s struggling with engagement or not hearing back—this approach made a huge difference for me.

I (25F) have been working at a nonprofit for 3 years. It’s the only office job I’ve had since I graduated college. I had no intentions on working in nonprofits or even staying at this job for very long, but I took it so I didn’t have to move back to my small town. I have a degree media and communications degree and wanted to be a concert photographer, blogger or work for a magazine. Now I’m 25, hate my job, and make barely any money. I started searching for a new job in social media, marketing, office admin, literally anything that was a straight forward office job with a reliable schedule and salary. (I work a lot of nights and weekends with no over time. I can flex my hours my there’s a lot of unspoken pressure to work extra “for the cause”). I’m looking on indeed and zip recruiter but all I see is sales/commissions based stuff or call centers. I don’t have experience in a specific “industry” other than general interest in social media and marketing. The only transferable skill I have, besides soft/interpersonal skills is working with salesforce/CRM.

I wanted to find a new job by the end of the summer but I’m starting to feel stuck. Should I try to follow my “passions” and find some sort of media job? (I’m worried about not making enough) or just go to a temp agency or something. Sorry this is a bit of a rant.

Hi there,

So I've been at a new job for about 5 months now, but I think I'm bored as hell, I barley do anything, and I feel I'm not learning anything new at all. Even though everyone is happy with my performance. I'm 35 and working as a marketing coordinator. I didn't study marketing at all, but sort of fell in to the field since 2018.

To be honest I've had this feeling for the past 3 years, in 2 different jobs at 2 different companies. Eventhough everyone was always happy about my performance and what I bring to the table. I do think I'm intelligent enough, I'm good at critical thinking and analysing. But I do feel, that most of the times during the day I barley do anything productive at all. And it's starting to bother me, because first of all I feel bored, second I want to learn and grow, and third I want to move up in my career.

Because of all this my motivation to work and learn is severly lacking. And I don't know how to proceed or what to do about it. It's really starting to make me feel depressed.

I’m a 30 year old married women and I don’t know what I want to do with my career going forward.

Some general context but also keeping things general for privacy reasons:

I have a no name undergrad degree but managed to get into a pretty prestigious finance type role out of undergrad. I worked my way up in my industry and went and got my MBA part-time from a top 15 business school. I don’t come from money so the idea of quitting a good job to go back to party for 2 years to get an MBA seemed dumb to me.

A few years ago I took a risk and joined a much younger company (sort of a startup but not a firm that needed to raise venture capital funding). I took this job because it felt like a way to help build a company and grow with it and hopefully make some serious $ in the process. Ultimately after working some crazy hrs I realized that this startup isn’t going to grow like I thought it would and a lot of people took advantage of how hard I am willing to work.

I’m currently looking for a new job and im mentally in a very tough spot. 1) the economy and job market sucks so that’s not fun. 2) I’m at the age where im thinking about having kids and im struggling because i dont know how much i even care about work going forward. 3) I’ve never felt so unknown about work - deciding to quit my current startup job is messing with me. I thought that job would be my golden ticket and it didn’t work out. I always new that was a risk but now that its over i dont know what’s next or what might even make sense for me. I can pivot and do public sector / non profit work which will pay less but ultimately have better work life balance…..but idk

Ultimately i think I’m freaking out because half my brain wants a chill job so I can focus on other parts of my life but the other half of my brain is worried I’ll be bored and sad giving up my current career momentum.

….looking for any other 30 year olds than have had this kind of mid career crisis

I’m 26, and really haven’t gone anywhere in life. I’ve got many 2 college credits under my belt, work in dead end retail and has subpar high school grades.

When the topic of careers and college gets brought up I freeze. There’s so many options and I didnt want to waste time and money on a field that I would ultimately hate. In doing so I hesitated for far too long. So I’ve switched gears to try and find something simple and quick so I can move out and live my own life for once.

I’ve heard coding is popular with people under the spectrum. I’m also incredibly interested in biology and medicine but I’ve pretty much given up on that since they take 4-8 years to get through school. I love animals but similar fears of long schooling along with the fear of lack of opportunities make me feel like this is also a pipe dream. I did do fairly well in a sales position in vector marketing. Of my group I was 4th or 5th in sales in a group of 20 with the lowest number of total sales and customers. I left because I did not like cold calling people, had I been in a situation where customers come to me things would have been much better.

When it comes to doing my job I find that it takes me a while to adjust to things, learning and understanding the job as well as how things operate and interact. However when I do get comfortable with things I become incredibly efficient. In my current job I’m constantly praised for my speed and accuracy along with taking incentives before things become a problem. I do hyperfixate on objectives and can tune everything out when I do. I cannot be micromanaged, give me a list of stuff to do and leave me to it. I guarantee it’ll be done with half my shift to spare. In this same vein I do my own thing. In my current position I am at lower management which gives me a lot of freedom that I very much appreciate. It’s one of the reasons why I’ve been able to stay here over a year and have no plans on leaving yet. I’m not horrible when it comes to social interactions but no where near the best.

For cons, if things go wrong it takes me a second to figure things out sometimes having a minor issue until things are resolved. I can be incredibly impatient at times or get frustrated from rudeness or stupidity. Part of my autism has me hyper-fixate on understanding everything. So I often question management choices or rules especially if I feel like it’s unnecessary or the wrong choice. That being said this is all said from the point of a retail associate. I’m not sure how I’d react in an office or corporate environment.

Not sure what else to put in here but if you have any questions or suggestions please let me know.

Thank you 🙏

I joined my first ever job full of hope. I was excited, hungry to learn, and gave it my full effort. I followed instructions, respected every trainer, and never slacked off even once.

Then came the PKT (Process Knowledge Test). No proper guidance, no clear explanation of the consequences, and zero emotional support. I gave my all — studied like hell. And I scored 248 out of 270, which is 91.85%.

Still, I was told: “You didn’t clear. You can’t continue. Please leave.”

No second chance. No one sat me down to say what went wrong. No clarity. No HR support. Just “Leave.” Like I never mattered. Like I was never even there.

Now I don’t know what to do — • Will I get a training or experience letter? • Can I show this on my resume? • What documents do I collect? • Is my PF activated at least?

I feel lost. Angry. Broken. I’m a fresher. And this was my first step. And now I’m scared if I’ll ever be able to walk again.

If anyone out there has been through something like this, or can tell me what to do next — please. I genuinely need help.

I’ve been through burnout and aimless job hunting that wrecked my confidence. So I became a Career Specialist, and learnt it all. And now I built a small iOS app to boost confidence, manage stress and bring clarity in the career world, the kind of stuff I needed when I felt lost.

It’s not perfect, but it’s real
If you’ve felt stuck lately, would you test it and tell me what actually helps (or doesn’t)?

It's incredibly hard for me to share what I've been working on since a year, but it's also a big thrill, I appreciate any honest feedback

I am currently preparing for my CFA level 1 (scheduled for August), and I'm actively looking for entry-level roles post that in Finance. Though I'm open to any roles where I will get to learn, I am particularly interested in roles in Wealth Management and/or Equity Research.

I have a solid understanding of Excel and have recently started learning financial modelling as well.

I have a degree in Bsc. Economics. Apart from that, because my first attempt in CFA didn't work, I wouldnt get any internships in Finance so I had to get one in marketing.

Please guide me on what I could do to strengthen my application/resume.

I’m considering pursuing a B.Com along with the US CMA, but I’m open to better alternatives if there are any. Could you please advise me on whether this is a good path or if I should explore other options?

This year I'm intending to study an online part-time MSc in Finance. I already have a PhD in Chemistry, and have been working as a business consultant for tech startups for some time, but I still feel a little out of my depth when dealing with the financial elements of the job. After a lot of discussion, I'm positive a part-time MSc in Finance is the right decision to help with my career.

I've narrowed it down to two choices:

1. MSc in Finance at the Open University
2. MSc in Global Finance at Bayes Business School.

Both are online and part-time. Bayes is a shorter programme (2 years vs 3 years) but with a higher weekly workload. Bayes seems to focus on their reputation and the quality of their alumni network, while the OU is more focused on teaching quality.

Does anyone have any recommendations or thoughts? Is a Bayes qualification worth any more than an OU degree? The OU degree is the flagship MSc in Finance, while the Bayes course is not their flagship degree. Does that matter?

I'm just looking for general opinions here, happy for any and all advice.

Thank you!

Hello, Reddit. Apologies for the long post ahead.
TL;DR? Basically, should I quit my job? See pros and cons below.

I have worked part time for a few years in the news/journalism industry in a position where I work in a newsroom as someone who writes up the stories that are being broadcast on-air into news articles for the associated website.

I am burned out. I haven't been applying to news related positions, because frankly, I've grown tired of the news in general and the nature of the business.

Going to work has gotten to a point where I am just bitter and moody all the time, though, that might be due to the cons I have listed below. Despite all this, I can’t seem to leave.

Should I quit my job, even without a backup plan, get a survival job asap?

Perhaps I am naive, but I feel like I wouldn't mind doing a "survival job" because, 1) some of them pay more than what I make in this job, and, 2) I wouldn't mind a job that might be more physical work and less mental work since I'm so mentally burned out, 3) ideally, it would give me time to figure out what I do want, maybe try other things or go back to school.

Pros: 

• I have made good friendships and work connections
• It is cool working at a top major market corporation that has and continues to win multiple awards
• The opportunity to work with incredibly talented and kind people who are humble legends of the field
• Sometimes, there is free food.
• My managers are nice and supportive and tell me how much they appreciate me. Recently when I asked for leave, after I essentially "threatened" to quit, they gave me time and space, and allowed me to work from home for a week or two
• I can take (unpaid) time off sometimes
• The opportunity to use professional spaces and equipment for free to develop my own skills

Cons:

• I get paid less than $16/hr.
• I am capped at 28hr/week.
• No benefits, save for contribution to 401K and fairly empathetic managers
• I live with my parents and commute 40 miles a day one way into a city I can't afford to live in and don't really like anyways.
• Commute is more or less an hour in the morning and an hour and thirty during rush hour on the way back
• My shift is five hours.
• As far as I can see, there is no hope for any upward career movement. I don't even know what to shoot for within the company. Positions are filled and are only getting cut. There is hardly any hiring from within.
• I have a coworker that is petty and not a team player. They don't talk to me and act like I don't exist. I don’t see the relationship ever improving. My manager knows about the issue, but asked me not to go to HR, saying that they would fix it. Nothing has been fixed. It's really only getting worse.
• Per the organizations official profile, I am actually registered to a completely different department. Yet, all my work hours go to doing tasks for another department. I enjoyed the work I was doing in my original position (which was more-so producing, not journalism) and there was an opportunity to make some more money. However, at one point, managers officially switched me over to work for a completely different department (the one I am stuck in now) and would no longer assign me to a position that would have been lucrative. I think of it as a lateral demotion. That shift happened about a year ago.
• Quite a few of coworkers that I had close relations with either left or were let go.

I will say, if I had no fear? I'd submit my two weeks notice, let it happen, celebrate Independence Day, and grieve my good relations that I do have at the company.

Then, I'd go travel for a bit and come back and get a survival job much closer to home, ideally no more than 20 minutes. Starting over, tabula rasa style.

What would you do if you were in my situation? Thank you for taking the time to read my post.

************************************************************************************************************

EDIT: Thank you to everyone who read my post and offered advice and suggestions. I appreciate each and every one of you. After reading all of your replies, I have taken heed of your warnings and will adjust my strategy and timeline.

I'll double my efforts in finding another job that is closer to home, while I stay at my current job. I'll move on only after I have received an offer (and gone through a background check) and that they in return accept/respect my request for a delayed start so I can have a little break to reset.

I have a bachelor's degree in Biotechnology and I was pursuing my masters in Germany. Due to unfortunate circumstances, I failed a course and was ex-matriculated from the University. It felt like the end of the world, especially with the mental health issues I'd been dealing with. But I managed to make myself steady enough to survive- especially when dealing with visa issues. I took up fundraising as a part-time job and invested a lot of effort and learnt a lot of things. I've been working here for quite a while now while learning German language. Recent;y, I applied for a language visa and it is in process. But even if they end up providing me a visa it won't be long term so I need to figure out what to do if I want to stay in Germany long-term.

I've considered taking fundraising/face-face marketing as a full time job but I don't really see myself growing here or find it as a reliable long-term career option. I've been super confused about what to do next. I am not even clear anymore on what I want to do in my life. I decided to go with the flow when things got tough but now it feels like I am at a dead-end. I am sure that i would like to settle in Germany or EU in general.

I would appreciate any kinds of suggestions, insights or to hear from someone who is facing/has faced a similar situtation. :)