3 ms·

I can relate to this. Neither of my parents have college degrees and we were poor growing up. For a while they just pushed me to get any job I could. I worked i

I can relate to this. Neither of my parents have college degrees and we were poor growing up. For a while they just pushed me to get any job I could. I worked in a call centre (horrible), door to door sales (more horrible), a butcher in supermarket (slightly horrible), working in the NHS (terrible pay, lovely people). I've had a lot problems myself struggling around guilt about the pay and general lifestyle in tech. But I'm now working in a tech company with lovely people, doing interesting work. For what it's worth from a stranger: I wish you luck in overcoming your inner critic and that you are worthy and deserving to get a job with people you like at a job you enjoy.

Mezzie 5y ago
> For a while they just pushed me to get any job I could. I worked in a call centre (horrible), door to door sales (more horrible), a butcher in supermarket (slightly horrible), working in the NHS (terrible pay, lovely people). This is a large part of it, especially as someone whose community is likely to have those sorts of jobs. If everybody around you hates their job and you grow up in a culture where people actively despise their workplaces/management, you assume that's just how jobs are. EVERYBODY I grew up around hated their jobs, so it's really hard for me to know what to put up with. To people like my stepdad, my displeasure at how I'm treated by leadership is complete stuck up whining: I personally make more than him + my mother and their households ever have, I'm not in physical danger (unlike him doing HVAC work, my mom doing warehouse work, my siblings' SOs who work landscaping, etc), etc. I was taught growing up that basically unless your boss put you in the hospital, you were lucky to not be homeless or starving and work just sucks. This is a particularly hard mindset to get out of because in white-collar environments, you can't talk about how growing up blue collar or working class makes you anxious because a lot of 'professionalism' boils down to 'don't let the nice people know you're a peasant or you'll be kicked out for not being a culture fit'. The pandemic has been very helpful, ironically! I'm more than willing to blame myself for all my life problems, but when I see OTHER people being treated like I was, it raises my heckles and pisses me off. I'm so glad to hear that you found a job you like. I'm hoping to move from a small-shop/journeyman dev to working in a dev team and I'm trying to maintain optimism, so stories like that help!

Mezzie 5y ago

> For a while they just pushed me to get any job I could. I worked in a call centre (horrible), door to door sales (more horrible), a butcher in supermarket (slightly horrible), working in the NHS (terrible pay, lovely people). This is a large part of it, especially as someone whose community is likely to have those sorts of jobs. If everybody around you hates their job and you grow up in a culture where people actively despise their workplaces/management, you assume that's just how jobs are. EVERYBODY I grew up around hated their jobs, so it's really hard for me to know what to put up with. To people like my stepdad, my displeasure at how I'm treated by leadership is complete stuck up whining: I personally make more than him + my mother and their households ever have, I'm not in physical danger (unlike him doing HVAC work, my mom doing warehouse work, my siblings' SOs who work landscaping, etc), etc. I was taught growing up that basically unless your boss put you in the hospital, you were lucky to not be homeless or starving and work just sucks. This is a particularly hard mindset to get out of because in white-collar environments, you can't talk about how growing up blue collar or working class makes you anxious because a lot of 'professionalism' boils down to 'don't let the nice people know you're a peasant or you'll be kicked out for not being a culture fit'. The pandemic has been very helpful, ironically! I'm more than willing to blame myself for all my life problems, but when I see OTHER people being treated like I was, it raises my heckles and pisses me off. I'm so glad to hear that you found a job you like. I'm hoping to move from a small-shop/journeyman dev to working in a dev team and I'm trying to maintain optimism, so stories like that help!