What made you cynical/clear-eyed about work?

[Boose]

Gen X-er here, so cynicism is my beat. Here's what made me realize I should save early and often. How about you?

- The White House talked about trickle-down Reaganomics while New England's manufacturing sector was gasping for air. My father was an independent technician for factories in NE; his contracts morphed from lucrative system design/install into penny-pinching repair jobs. As the factories closed, he worried about staying in the black. Lots of tense dinner times.

- I was offered my first post-collegiate F/T job at a private law school for $19,500/yr. Once I accepted, the manager backpedaled and said the position was budgeted for $19,000. Really?!? The difference was 1.5 months of rent for me; how much of an impact could it have made on the school?

- I got a clerical job at Harvard in the year that they froze the clerical/technical pensions and launched a 401K. Current endowment at Harvard: $38.3 billion. The pension for this low-paid, largely female workforce was never going to break them.

- Listening to lots of disaffected music from Thatcher's Britain. As Morrissey said:

"And if you must, go to work, tomorrow
Well, if I were you I wouldn't bother
For there are brighter sides to life
And I should know, because I've seen them, but not very often"

 

[dixonge]

We waited quite late to start getting out of debt and save for ER, but at about the same time I had a couple of opportunities to apply for promotions. They involved increasing my work hours from 40-60 per week for a minimal salary increase. Also lots of on-call work. All the other co-workers in these positions had maxed out their comp. hours and vacation because they could never take enough time off.

I declined and was very glad to get out while I could...

 

[athena53]

My Dad, a metallurgical engineer, worked for the same steel company almost his entire career. (The exception was a few months with another company, which didn't work out, and then he returned.) He was running the Chicago district when the company was acquired and subsequently "demoted" by the new management, I didn't even know there was such a thing. He was 54 years old.

Mom and Dad were always LBYM types. Dad decided to try a new career as a financial advisor and went with the firm where he had his investments, but in a branch near Myrtle Beach, SC. He and Mom rented a small condo for a year and then bought with cash. The second career didn't work out but they had significant savings and no mortgage, they had each other, and they had a country club membership so they could golf every day. That's about all they needed. (Mom died 3 years ago but Dad is still alive and solvent; he sold the house at a nice price and is in a nice Independent Living facility.)

It was truly a lesson in the value of LBYM and not assuming the company would love you forever.

 

[N02L84ER]

I was always LBYM because my farmer parents paid the boys for chores but refused to give the girls anything, even for the same chores including bucking bales onto the wagon and into the barn. I squeezed every penny I earned from babysitting other people's children and mowing a neighbor's lawn. After college, my first job was teaching in a high school and the district withheld 10% automatically for the pension. When I moved to a private sector j*b after 6 years, I had no problem automatically saving 15%+ per paycheck.

What made us cynical about w*rk happened 8 years later while we were w*rking for a startup. DH and I joined 2 other guys in the startup, a few years later the 4 of us decided we wanted to expand quicker but would need more cash. We presented our business plan to a couple of VC guys and got they agreed to join us. All 6 of us were supposed to be equal partners. Within 3 years, just as profits were starting to take off thanks to lots of sacrifice on all our parts, the two VC guys, without warning or explanation, hired security guards specifically to escort DH and I out of the building even though we did nothing wrong. Although we hired a lawyer, we had no success getting deferred salaries, vacation time pay, leased equipment, or our j*bs back. Within 1 year they had to declare bankruptcy because DH and I were the brains behind the company. Karma can be a real b*tch! From that time forward, we swore we would have no loyalty to a j*b.

 

[razztazz]

What made you cynical/clear-eyed about work?

Growing up watching "working people."

 

[justlikebike]

I remember my first job after college.
I was doing a similar job to another co-worker and after working 1 year we both got a $200 a month raise. I decided to see how much better I could do if I worked really hard the next year. Ended up spending 7 months on the road, worked ungodly hours, at the end of the year I was throwing up each morning and each night. Got a $200 raise, same as the other guy...

 

[CardsFan]

Gen X-er here, so cynicism is my beat. Here's what made me realize I should save early and often. How about you?

- The White House talked about trickle-down Reaganomics while New England's manufacturing sector was gasping for air. My father was an independent technician for factories in NE; his contracts morphed from lucrative system design/install into penny-pinching repair jobs. As the factories closed, he worried about staying in the black. Lots of tense dinner times.

WADR, I grew up in Massachusetts, manufacturing there died when the textile industry went south in the early 1900's. Foundries died a little later. By the time Reagan was president, there was very little manufacturing there.

 

[travelover]

Whoa! You mean Mega Corp does not have our best interests at heart?

 

[joeea]

Here's what made me realize I should save early and often. How about you?

I grew up in a family without any money.

 

[Markola]

Just read your employee manual. It likely indicates you work for an At-Will employer who can let you go at any time for no reason at all, you have no contract, no pension, no union to protect you and you get tiny raises because any growth is instead going to pay for health care. Only a fool would be loyal to such an organization. The only logical choice is to do what’s best for your career, strategically biding your time, saving a large % of your income for retirement and FU money, building your resume and skill set and references so that you can jump ship immediately when you find a better opportunity.

 

[FIREd]

I was laid off from my first job only months after graduating (the company folded due to lack of funding). I didn’t even have time to get fooled by the promises of a good job. I quickly realized that I should not count on work income for the long haul. Save a lot and steadily replace work income with passive income. That was the strategy I had in place only 4 years into my career.

 

[Pellice]

I grew up in a family without any money.

I can't equal joeea's conciseness, alas, so I'll just expand ....

It wasn't cynicism nor realism. It was fear, plain and simple. My parents were Depression Era and terrified of financial insecurity. They both had stories of hardship during the Depression, and of rationing (and army service) during WW2. My father was a unionized employee, and more than once was on strike (although I do not remember his being laid off). I remember my mother's doubling canned food purchases before a probable strike. My mother kept the budget, extremely strictly, and could account for every penny. However, this was the high point of unionization, and I believe, looking back, we WERE financially secure.

Nevertheless, I grew up fearful of economic insecurity and had a savings account before a checking account. My major, both undergraduate and graduate, was History and I took its lessons to heart: don't believe Walt Disney ' "Anything your heart desires, your dreams will come true." I wasn't much of a risk taker, for better or worse! I took a "good enough" job before graduation that DID turn out to be good enough!

I pretty quickly decided that I was going to prioritize life outside of work over life inside of work. I WAS very clear-eyed about that and kept checking back with myself - "are you ok with the amount of money you are making, with your not-so-significant position." I worked to make my job work for me as far as I could. In the end, it turned out to be the right decision for me.

 

[athena53]

Whoa! You mean Mega Corp does not have our best interests at heart?

I hate to break it to you, but the people in HR aren't your friends, either!

It wasn't cynicism nor realism. It was fear, plain and simple. <snip>Nevertheless, I grew up fearful of economic insecurity and had a savings account before a checking account.

My entire adult life I was driven by a fear of ending up old and poor. I'm not sure why- the elderly in my family seemed to be getting by OK. I think it was taking the bus in and out of downtown Cincinnati for my first job and seeing that the poor areas had a lot of elderly. Presumably most of them had married and had children, but they were living in a dodgy area. What did they do all day? What if they needed dental care? Did they have enough food? I knew I didn't want to live like that and it was up to me (and luck or the Grace of God, depending on your persuasion) to provide for my own future.

Forty-four years later, I've outlived a husband and an ex-husband and have a wonderful son who's said he'd take me in if I couldn't live by myself. Bless him, but that won't be necessary.

 

[Chuckanut]

I learned a long time ago from my father that a person should always work for himself or herself. When I took my first job he reminded me, "You may be employed by MegaCorp, but always work for yourself."

That job with MegaCorp proved him right as I saw many people who worked very hard only to be put-down by company politics, made miserable by an incompetent boss, past over for the promise of a bright shiny new hire, or kicked under the bus because they could not pull a miracle out of their hat.

Thank goodness for LBYM and investments.

 

[Klubbie]

It was my second job out of grad school.

I graduated from grad school in 2010. I had spent 4 years working prior to grad school so had some work experience. That first job out of grad school was great. I had great coworkers, great boss, did interesting work, had a positive experience at megacorp. I also had gotten promoted and saw some positive things happening in my career. But I wasn't being paid marker value for my role. The promotion I mentioned came with a zero dollar raise. Things had also started to shift at work otherwise. We were reorged under a manager who was just awful and had HR complaints filed against her regularly. I also had direct reports making more money than me. I went from being rated at the top of the performance review bell curve overnight. The only thing that changed was the boss. So I went out and got a new job that paid me more of what I was worth. Same industry, smaller firm (still very large) with all of its operations located in my city. I thought it would be a place to grow professionally and advance for years to come.

Boy was I wrong. My boss left in 3 months. His replacement came in 3 months later and left after six weeks. Half the team I was on turned over by end of year. The manager I ended up reporting through wasn't accountable about anything. She deflected responsibility and threw direct reports (including me) under the bus regularly to make herself look better. Even though the real problem was that she herself did not know anything about what anyone on her team actually did day to day. Problems would arise that would end up getting escalated to her and she would get into meetings and just have no clue about anything - in many cases on topics she had been briefed on many times. So in those cases she was either lying or stupid. There were other political things that went on in that role as well. Backstabbing, avoiding doing the right thing (things that industry peers were doing) out of laziness and then rationalizing them to senior leadership by saying "we weren't there yet" because we were smaller than the biggest companies in the industry, even though we were bigger than 90% of companies in the industry.

The thing that took the cake though was watching one of my peers (we had the same boss) talk down to, curse at, and act in hostile and belligerent manner towards one if my direct reports and tell her (and me) that if it wasnt for him we wouldn't have jobs and that we weren't capable of understanding the work he did. All the while, this peer of mine was the laughing stock of the larger department we worked in. No one respected him. As a company, strategic decisions at the department level were made to minimize the negative impact this guy could have on the organization. I am also fairly convinced that the smaller team I was on had such a negative reputation that it impacted my ability to get another job within the company. That may just me being overly cynical, but it is hard to say with the level of dysfunction in that role.

My boss couldn't see it, or she did and ignored it. The combination of these things burned me and I still havent recovered. I would spend most mornings sitting in my car, sometimes for over an hour, dreading going in. The job itself was not hard and I was rarely overly busy. But the culture was so toxic.

Last summer I was finally able to find a comparable paying job, and have a better boss, better coworkers and am in a better environment overall. But my career ambition is largely dead.

My wife is in school and looking to become a nurse practitioner in a couple years. After that I am going go look into a career change. Most likely for less money, but by the time she is done with school and I actually make the change we will be in our early 40s with no debt (except for mortgage) and (hopefully) close to 500k in retirement assets based on our current contributions. I may stick out the current path an extra year or two to bank some extra cash, but I have zero interest in investing heavily in corporate America beyond what I have to. I'd rather earn less and do something more fulfilling once we get over this last major financial hurdle (wife's schooling).

 

[Fireup2020]

My parents retired a little early (60 & 54) - and watching them relax and have fun was the motivation I needed to plan accordingly! I have too many things I want to do, and the work things just gets in the way!

 

[Sunset]

I can't equal joeea's conciseness, alas, so I'll just expand ....

It wasn't cynicism nor realism. It was fear, plain and simple. My parents were Depression Era and terrified of financial insecurity. They both had stories of hardship during the Depression, and of rationing (and army service) during WW2. .....

++ Exactly my situation.

I always saved as those stories made quite an impression on me.

 

[Boose]

CardsFan, where in Mass did you grow up? I was in Franklin. My great-grandmother's and great-uncle's jobs at American Felt were gone in the early 1970s. But my dad was doing work with Foster Grant, Borden, Vlasic Pickle, Red Hed and Dryvit into the 1980s - among other manufacturers. My favorite was Entenmann's - Dad always brought home a fresh box of eclairs.

 

[aja8888]

I grew up in a family without any money.

Ditto...then left home at 17 with a hope and a prayer.

 

[CardsFan]

CardsFan, where in Mass did you grow up? I was in Franklin. My great-grandmother's and great-uncle's jobs at American Felt were gone in the early 1970s. But my dad was doing work with Foster Grant, Borden, Vlasic Pickle, Red Hed and Dryvit into the 1980s - among other manufacturers. My favorite was Entenmann's - Dad always brought home a fresh box of eclairs.

Grew up on the South Shore, but had family in Fitchburg and the surrounding areas. The big days of manufacturing in New England were gone before the 70's. Yes, there was still some, but the one's you list were minor players compared to the mills and foundries 50 years earlier.

 

[exnavynuke]

I spent 12 years in the Navy, at 10 years I got diagnosed with a medical condition. 2 years later they decided I couldn't stay in with that condition (because finding jobs like what I had been doing for the past 2 years, in my field, was apparently going to be too hard. They then screwed me out of ~$40k. By the time I figured out how, I'd gotten to the point where it would be me suing the gov to try and get that money. One lawyer told me it'd be about $50k to pay for the lawsuit that I'd probably win my $40k, but nothing guaranteed. I decided to not spend the money.

But hey, I found a nice job with little travel, nice bosses, and encouragement to move upward in my career. At least, it seemed that way. The job that my boss didn't want, was going to recommend me for, and that the person leaving that management position was going to recommend me for, went to my boss without ever being posted for anyone else (like myself) to be in consideration for. That boss was then way in over their head and their lack of management skills became quickly apparent, and got worse from there. Pay stagnated, and required travel increased.

I realized I had three options -
A. Stay and be like everyone else stuck there in a pretty much dead-end job.
B. Move to a competitor or another position somewhere else - abandoning my parents who I'd move out to me so I could help take care of them and leaving most of my good friends.
or
C. Take advantage of the pay at the job, save and invest aggressively, and put up with the job for a relatively short period of time and retire early.

I choose C currently, and along that route the increasing net worth has given me the confidence to ask for more pay and concessions (like more time working from home) along the way. I know it would suck to have to move, but I also know I have the financial ability to do so if things get too bad to deal with here.

I'm senior enough that I'm mostly left to work on my own, I rarely "report" to anyone on a regular basis, and I can deal with that for now due to the relatively generous PTO policy, flex time policy, ability to work from home for ~1/2-2/3rds of my time each week, and being able to help my parents out regularly.

 

[Lewis Clark]

I had a double whammy during my first week in my first job after leaving the Navy.

#1: My first morning in the new job, I found out that the position I was hired for no longer existed because that project had been canceled. They offered me a different position, which I accepted. After all, I had already relocated and needed a job. But they gave me zero training and could not even give me a list of my responsibilities. It took about 8 months before I felt comfortable and fully productive. Most folks were happy to help when I asked a specific question, but it took time before I knew what questions to ask.

#2: Later that first week, the company did a mass layoff of about 80 people, if I recall correctly. Luckily I was not included in the layoff, but I never felt secure in that job during my entire tenure with that employer.

This was an eye-opening introduction to Corporate America.

 

[athena53]

My poor son learned early.

He was 10 when I showed up unexpectedly to pick him up after school. He asked why I was there; typically he took the bus. I'd been downsized that morning and the outplacement counselor brought in to do damage control after the message was delivered told me I should tell him I was looking for a new job and the company was paying me to look for a new job. Instead, I told him the truth: in polite company parlance, my "position had been eliminated" and I had 5 months severance and was starting a job search immediately. Six weeks later, I was at a new job.

A few months after that I got home from a business trip and it was late enough that I decided to skip the office and pick DS up at school. He looked at me in surprise and said, "Mom, did you get fired again?"

DS is in a decent corporate job, same industry, but knows to look out for himself.

 

[SunBlueSky]

Luckily, as kids my parents made us work in the vegetable garden, rake leaves, mow the lawn, pick up rocks, hay bales, etc. My father especially instilled in us kids the value of work for the feeling of accomplishment and self worth it gave a person. We saw our father's manufacturing plant shut down several times for layoffs, then in early 80's close for good- he always blamed it on "bad management". Seeing him lose his job after he had worked so hard was eye-opening.

My own clear-eyedness about work began in my first job when my best friend was laid off, and later in my second job when the company "downsized" and many were let go. I understood that I had to continue to add to my skills and knowledge, as well as my savings (401k).

 

[CardsFan]

I survived two layoffs.
The first one happened, and this is the truth, because the company planning software did not deduct work completed from backlog, so the backlog was inflated. When someone figured it out, all h$ll broke loose. Luckily for me, I had been working with the R&D department, and they actually DID need help. I transferred as the layoffs were happening. I remember the new HR guy had to do all the dirty work, and when he got through, they laid him off too.

Second time, I was smarter. Big boss retired. He had all the construction licenses for the company (we did design-build at the time). I volunteered to take the tests. (side note: I was in Baton Rouge taking a contracting test when 9/11 happened. Drove back in a rental car.)

When the layoffs occurred, I was about as bullet-proof as you could be. We had 4 projects in progress, using my licenses.

Luck is good. Planning is better.