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People Start Hating Their Jobs at Age 35
- psadri 9y agoProbably around the same time they realize they don't have unlimited time and become aware that their life clock is ticking away.
- damnfine 9y agoI wasted my good years working and studying for the opprotunity to have this job I now just slighly less than hate. -everyone my age
- dkersten 9y agoPretty much. I've been finding myself more and more dissatisfied with my work as I get older and regretting that I didn't do something crazy when I was younger instead. Its not too late for me to do some of those things luckily, but its very difficult to drop everything to do so (and its not clear that, for example, a years travelling will make me any less dissatisfied with my work, although at least it would help me refocus my life).
- nostrademons 9y ago> and its not clear that, for example, a years traveling will make me any less dissatisfied with my work, although at least it would help me refocus my life I think this is the crux of the matter. I know a few people who spent their 20s traveling abroad and having great life experiences, and now that they're in their 30s, they're like "Shit, I have no career, I'm working at Whole Foods / living off my parents / flat broke and I'll never be able to afford the life milestones that I took for granted like getting married, having kids, or owning a house." I think the root of the problem is that evolutionarily, our happiness emotion didn't evolve to make us happy. Rather, it evolved to force us to take actions which increase our chance of passing on our genes. There's pretty ample evidence for this (Google [hedonic treadmill], for example), and yet we keep wishing we were happier. I guess we're fated to do this, because people who didn't wish they were happier wouldn't be driven to take actions to pass on their genes. FWIW, I don't regret working hard (at some startups, and also one big corp) during my 20s at all. It was what I wanted to do at the time, and it's given me some cushion to do other things I want to do. Plus I got to work on some really cool projects with some great other people, and had a lot of fun doing so.
- mkbnnh 9y agoYou know where the roof is, yes?
- executesorder66 9y agoAlthough I don't hate my job, this is pretty much me right now. (26 years old) I've got a cool job as a software developer, and it pays well. Flexible hours. Good colleagues. But I don't give a flying fuck about the software that I'm paid to develop. I'd much rather be working on open source software. Why don't I do it in my free time? Well I'm still studying part time, so I can't really. But this is my last semester, and maybe things will be better once I finish my studies. It really sucks that time is limited, and you can never get it back. [0] [0] https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html
- roryisok 9y agocan confirm
- bigmanwalter 9y ago"Refocus on a personal project". How about we stop grinding out 40+ hour mentally and physically strenuous weeks. Programming hours on end is difficult, as is sitting at a desk and staring into a monitor. I could be happy programming for the rest of my life if I'm only doing 15 hours per week but unfortunately there's extremely little work that pays well per hour and is part-time. I'm willing to work at a discounted rate, but the offers I'm finding are either full time, or embarrassingly low hourly rates. And this is in Canada where we have single payer government healthcare, so employers don't even have an excuse.
- karllager 9y agoI believe the tech sector is extremely prone to this: If you cannot climb out of a technical role, over time, you realize just how clueless most people are, especially those who imagine themselves of being "in control". Not just a bit uninformed, no: absolutely positively clueless[1]. If you go the management route, you often give up, what got you started with all this is the first place: curiosity and exploration, creation and progress. It becomes: handling paperwork, keeping the clients' bad ideas in check, motivating those on the payroll, who wait for your instructions to act. It must be nightmare. Where is the exit? [1] Update: I believe this is what is called the nerd/nerd-exploiter dilemma.
- _ncxu 9y agoI'm only 31 and found out the hard way that 90% of the way successful people got to where they are is through charisma, lying, and cheating others.
- sremani 9y agoI think that is cynical, but people have to realize "Intelligence" itself is not enough. You can either work on your soft-skills or you can put together a well rounded team working for you. For a small up-start relying on a friend or family with good soft-skills is a good start.
- peterb 9y ago... you forgot luck.
- apeacox 9y agoI'm 40 and I've found out the hard way that 90% people under 35 adopt absolute statements for everything, as if they think they already know how the life, the world and the universe work. Good luck.
- penpapersw 9y agoYou're right. I actually only had one or two people in mind when I wrote that comment, and I didn't even realize it until you pointed it out. Thanks.
- sharkweek 9y agoI started to notice this in my late 20s. It felt kind of like a "the emperor has no clothes" moment when I was working at a tech startup that pushed long hours/weekend work in order to fulfill some "mission" and "greater purpose" and that I should feel a part of this for the greater good. It kind of hit me that this was mostly just a fantastic way to extract more work out of young, impressionable 20somethings who didn't know any better without paying them for this extra effort, but that, at the end of the journey it will pay off! With that in mind, I realized that I much prefer being a hired gun, where I typically can add benefit for about 1-2 years, then it's onto the next thing. I have very little interest in the corporate grind working my way up from new employee to VP or whatever, repeating the corporate mission like some sort of indoctrination, trying to keep myself sane. I would be interested in a workplace that just kind of accepted this, but I'm afraid optically, no company wants to present its relationship with its workforce as entirely trasnactional. I'd be a huge fan.
- karllager 9y agoThanks for this story. I believe a lot of people would love to work on some greater good. I, for one, would love to work for a aggressive non-profit, if there is such a thing. Software and automation is the way to the future - why let just a few profit from it?
- svachalek 9y agoRead up on Netflix, it's a very Kool-Aid-free culture.
- bigmanwalter 9y agoThere are recruitment firms who can find you these transational contracts. They're full time generally and pay well.
- gakz 9y agoI have hope that some companies are starting to understand this and we'll have –hopefully– a course correction. What has become common is unsustainable. A few companies are starting to understand this, I think what DHH and Basecamp are doing is more the future. Giving people's lives outside of work as seemingly a first class priority, which sounds weird to say as a new notion, but yet here we are - https://basecamp.com/about/jobs https://basecamp.com/about/jobs
- theprotocol 9y agoI must have been an early bloomer. :) I've always loved the technical parts of my job (and still do), but since day 1 of my career I've gotten nothing but scheming and toxicity when dealing with my superiors and my various counterparts. I'm not entirely sure if I've simply been unlucky, or if the majority of workplaces really are this high strung. The existence of Dilbert suggests the latter.
- beastman82 9y agoFWIW I think it's the former.
- 3minus1 9y agoMisleading title. Should be percent of people who hate their job increases from 8% to 17% after age 35.
- tradersam 9y agoWhat? I just turned 20 and I've hated every job I've had (after a while, of course).
- KGIII 9y agoDo you know the adage about finding a job doing what you love, and how it means you'll never work a day in your life? It is a lie. Lest you think self-employed is a better option, you'll never work harder than you work for yourself.
- bigmanwalter 9y agoIt sucks that this can't be freely admitted in today's culture. It's possibly true for those who love control and find themselves in a position over others, but it's definitely not true for those who like working with their hands and minds.
- KGIII 9y agoI think we call those people "psychopaths." I suppose they may enjoy it. Duly noted. Sort of related: Way back when, I did manual labor. Later, I'd get my doctorate and start my own business. I was more exhausted from the mental labor than I was from the manual labor.
- bigmanwalter 9y agoI completely agree, I used to paint in the summers. As soon as work was done, I was having fun and full of energy. Now, as a developer, I can barely hold a conversation with my girlfriend I have so little energy left after a day of work.
- KGIII 9y agoI'm a mathematician, and haven't any idea why it is this way. I suppose there's a name for it, a reason for it, and a bunch of people with varied opinions on it. But, it does seem true. It does seem that I'm much more exhausted after mental labor (for wont of a better term). I'm retired, today. I do all sorts of manual labor, even though I don't really need to. It doesn't really tire me out that much. Yet, the mental work is still relatively exhausting. I have no idea why.
- antoniuschan99 9y agoOnce a recession hits, people will start feeling how lucky they are to still have a job. Then after a few years of continued growth in the economy, they will go back to hating their job.
- danvoell 9y agoI have to assume that they extrapolated the data to account for kids and mortgages?
- thinbeige 9y agoAnd all the years before they have this subtle unsettling feeling that something is wrong with their job.
- randomdrake 9y agoThis "news" is an advertisement for a report from Robert Half that was released last year entitled: "It’s time we all work happy™: The secrets of the happiest companies and employees.[1]" It was simply rehashed and presented as "new", by Robert Half[2], and is now hitting the press again. The full report appears to be available for free on the web[3]. [1] - https://www.roberthalf.co.uk/its-time-we-all-work-happy/report https://www.roberthalf.co.uk/its-time-we-all-work-happy/repo... [2] - https://www.roberthalf.co.uk/press/research-finds-age-discontent-work-starts-just-35 https://www.roberthalf.co.uk/press/research-finds-age-discon... [3] - http://heart4happiness.nl/wp-content/upload_folders/heart4happiness.nl/2016/10/rh_1016_iapdf_workhappy_can_eng_final.pdf http://heart4happiness.nl/wp-content/upload_folders/heart4ha...
- Haul4ss 9y agoI'm like the opposite of this. By my mid-to-late 20s I was disillusioned with my job and career choice. I also felt trapped in my situation because there weren't a lot of choices for developers where I used to live. It took me a few years and one big (geographic) move, but I did manage to steer my career in a better direction. Through hard work and a big ol' dose of luck, I was in a job I enjoyed when I was 35. And I'm in an even better one now!
- Winterflow3r 9y agoCan I ask what was the geographic move (or is it <somewhere> to SV/SF/Cali?)? -another trapped dev
- Haul4ss 9y agoUpstate NY to greater DC area.
- daliwali 9y agoYou don't have to be 35 to start hating your job, I did at 25. It begins with the realization that you're a loser in the corporate hierarchy, and do as little work as you can possibly do without getting fired. Software developers tend to complain that their job is tedious, repetitive, and that they aren't learning anything. Most jobs are like that. I believe that a large portion of repetitive software development can be automated, and this is a largely unexplored area.
- whataretensors 9y agoThe 'little work as you can possibly do' is a trap. It's a toxic frame that unconsciously poisons a company culture(others notice and emulate). And it happens, often, as a completely understandable defense mechanism. This is made worse every time a manager gives an unrealistic deadline. Exemplified by rushing towards ANY deadlines. Moreover, it happens as a result of forcing the worker to sit in a chair for 8 hours staring at a monitor. A huge amount of work can be done by communicating vision, thinking for N hours, then hacking something together in 1-2 hours. I think companies should rethink the outdated assembly line factory worker schema for thought workers.
- daliwali 9y agoAs long as your employers are not acting in good faith, then I don't think they are worth any extra effort. When most employees are doing just enough work to get by, it says more about the employer than employee.
- MesoLimboCortic 9y agoFor an alternative take on the job satisfaction - age relationship (as well as inclusion of the moderator variable of job tenure) in the United States, using a large (12k+) sample: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/minds-business/job-satisfaction-tends-to-increase-with-age.html https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/minds-business/job... Dobrow Riza, S., Ganzach, Y., & Liu, Y. (2016). Time and job satisfaction: a longitudinal study of the differential roles of age and tenure. Journal of Management. doi: 10.1177/0149206315624962
- EADGBE 9y agoThis is why I have no intention of programming anymore after this point. Maybe I'll enjoy the next thing. Maybe.
- tmaly 9y agoI agree 100% on the last statement, refocus your efforts on a personal project. I think more people in a corporate job should consider doing this sooner in life. It is a great way to build additional skills, especially in situations where no training is offered.
- Ancalagon 9y agoMade an account for this: I just wanted to point out this thread has been one of the most thought-provoking I've read in a while. Really grateful to all of the users posting such great reads in these comments (I think I've read most or all of them).
- kazinator 9y agoOf course young people love their jobs! Wow, there is suddenly all this money; don't have to live in the parents' basement, weeee!
- TheCoelacanth 9y agoI wonder if that is roughly the age where it usually becomes apparent that further career advancement is going to be much harder. I'm 29 and I'm pretty sure one more promotion will be fairly easy to get, but after that it looks much harder and will require developing some skills that I haven't needed much in my earlier career.
- jonsterling 9y ago?
- davidjnelson 9y agoSo happy I finally found a well managed company to work for!!
- trentmb 9y agoI'm wise beyond my years
- synicalx 9y agoI've always hated my jobs, but I keep doing them because I'm good at what I do, and I get paid well for it (at least I do now anyway). For me, work is just a means to an end - I earn money so I can spend it on the stuff I actually like. When you do something you love as a job you'll (probably) either quickly stop loving it or you won't make any money doing it. I used to be fairly heavily involved in my local "freelancer" scene and I've seen countless young and enthusiastic creatives turn into stressed, angry, bitter, and cynical baristas.
- lemonycracket 9y agoAnd this is why you should buy real estate rentals: live for free and get money for little effort.
- zaccus 9y agoI guess I've avoided crippling disillusionment because I never expected a job to be fulfilling or whatever. It's a means of providing for myself and my family, that's it. The idea that it's supposed to be more than that is really strange to me. When I was in my 20s the only jobs I could get was stuff like waiting tables and working in outbound call centers. Whenever I'm down I remind myself that at least I don't have to do that bullshit anymore. Now I sit in an air conditioned office with a nice view, and can work from home on a regular basis. I know what my availability will be in a month. I can take vacations. That's pretty cool! I literally can't imagine "loving" a job. No matter what it is, the fact that I have to do it every day, year after year, just to have health insurance and avoid homelessness, ruins it for me. That's not a complaint, that's an assertion that I'm about as happy doing this as I would be doing anything else.