A brief thought on “prestigious” employers and “career downgrades”
I currently work for a “prestigious” company (you’ve heard the name) and have for a few years now. As a college student, my peers, friends, and my parents friends kept telling me how jealous they were of me for getting into such a great company.
I am quickly finding out that the “prestige” this company has was in reality really great marketing and that I do not particularly enjoy working there. I work way too much (12 hour days, 5am - 5pm are not uncommon) and I don’t like the toxic culture. It makes me anxious and depressed.
Is it really worth it? Should I apply to the local government jobs that pay $20k less but offer actual pensions (not 401k), are chill (my friend does Azure/AWS trainings and scrolls Reddit, and 40 hours a week if that? Everyone I bring this up to says it’s a total career downgrade and a bad idea.
Here's a lot of thing that "career" people tend to not get: money doesn't really matter. It only really matters if you don't have enough to afford your essentials. Happiness comes from within, not from the things you buy.
The only thing that you can get from more money is security - having money to fall back on for emergencies and lack of employment, or retirement. Having an actual pension instead of a 401(k) feels a lot more secure to me; there are stock market crashes all the time.
At the end of the day the most important thing is to ensure the happiness of yourself and your family. If switching to a lower-paying job makes you more happy, consider it a worthwhile investment. It'll make your life longer and more worthwhile.
I think a more apt way to put it would be to say that money only matters to a point. As someone who has doubled his salary in the last 5 years I remember where I was vs where I am now. Back then I would have happily worked 12 hour days if I knew that I was getting paid decently for it. At one point (like a decade ago) I was working 12 hour days for 30k /yr. I didn't know any better, I was easily taken advantage of.
Once you are in a position to turn down jobs that don't work for you and your family, then yes. Security and comfort is important.
Basically yes.
There are some people who follow the FIRE (financial independance/retire early) philosophy, where they work to earn as much money as they can and spend as little as possible in an effort to live off of the sum of their money for the rest of their lives. and if that makes them happy it's fine, but I honestly don't think it's an ideal way to live one's life. Simply changing from working 12 hours a day to working 0 hours a day seems like a rather shocking transition, and the supposed best years of your life are being spent working instead of enjoying them.
This is actually something that gets discussed a lot in the FIRE community. Not everyone is on board with the "scrimp and save every last penny and retire at 40" mentality. People fall all across the frugality spectrum and still consider themselves part of the FIRE lifestyle. A common mantra is "build the life you want and then save for it" which about sums up my attitude towards money.
Very much this. I follow a pretty "moderate" FIRE lifestyle where I heavily save (amount based on a target goal by a certain age) but still spend plenty of money on fun and some luxuries. I'm pretty much at the point where I've acquired all the "stuff" I need, and my traveling is limited by time, so it makes it easier to save.
It's worth pointing out that pension funds invest heavily in the market. Pension fund managers are interested in other asset classes too, but the equity securities in a pension fund aren't significantly different from those in a typical 401k plan. Regardless, the market index is up in 80% of years and is always up over a 15+ year period. As far as long-term investment strategies go, the risk is pretty manageable. It's mostly a matter of whether you can psychologically stomach short-term volatility. Nothing wrong with that not being your thing; there are plenty of less volatile alternatives, albeit usually with slightly lesser returns.
But I agree with your comment. The point at which you become financially independent enough to have real security is more related to your ability to live frugally and flexibly than your income per se. (The higher the income, the more we're tempted to spend extravagantly. Few can truly resist.) I keep a daily journal and I've consistently found that although my worst days tend to be related to problems at work, my best days are virtually always related to social interaction with friends/family, art, music, or spirituality. For me, a great day at work is only an OK day overall. But when work is consuming my life, boy does it ever dominate my headspace.
If I can reduce the stress that my work causes me and still get by relatively comfortably, I'm perfectly happy. I don't need a gilded mansion or a luxury vehicle. But I do need my friends.
There is nothing wrong with wanting a more relaxed work environment.
Maybe it is a career downgrade, prestigious companies def look better on resumes, but that doesn't mean it isn't the right choice for you.
Plus you have the prestigious company on your resume. You're free to go wherever you want now. I have a prestigious organization on my resume. It's not a tech company, but I am absolutely hounded by recruiters because I worked there. I don't work there anymore and am in a small tech company that is very well-known in its niche. I have no interest in leaving any time soon because I really like the company and my team, and I took a pay cut to join the team, though I have quickly outpaced the pay cut I took in the time I've been here monetarily and in benefits.
Once you have that name on your resume, you're fine to move forward and go elsewhere. And if anyone asks you can always say you wanted to try something different. You're still young in your career and trying new things and moving around isn't that uncommon or weird anymore. Go for the easier job if you think it will make you less depressed and tired @ranier.
good luck!
With 12 hours a day, you don't even earn more, you just put more hours in.
If you're sweating the money, you could work on a side gig 4 hours a day and probably make the same or more as you make now.
Your health and your quality of life should always be first.
I assume you don't have kids yet, but I assume you want to spend time with them and not be stressed out all day.
Nothing is worse to me than dreading the next day at work.
That’s a good point about hours. I don’t even know the hourly equivalent of my salary and I don’t really care to know because it’d probably make me depressed.
I don’t have kids, but I do have friends, family, and a cat!
I’m not sweating the money necessarily. I have lived very simply compared to my peers so I have a decent savings and low expenses.
I always dread the next day at work, but I also dreaded next day of school, college, whatever. Maybe that’s just life?
I dreaded school, I dreaded jobs. I didn't even have to set the alarm for the last 6 years because I didn't feel any of that.
It often comes down to the people at those places, not even if it's stressful or not.
If all you’ve ever experienced is dread, I’m worried about you finding what you need to make your life satisfying. Maybe this is something you could work with a therapist to figure out?
I recommend doing some reflecting and solidifying of your life goals before making big changes.
But I also agree that if you are working 12 hour days, taking a 20k salary loss but working a normal schedule isn’t actually a paycut when you do it by hour.
I can't stress this enough... figure it out so you know so that you can make more informed decisions.
Are you never going to have a family? I have a job with a poor work life balance and it puts an enormous strain on my family. It means that my wife re-entered the work force later, it was harder for HER to find meaningful employment because MY job is more important and always comes first.
The longer you are there, the more you'll "need" the money and the harder it will be to move on.
Go get other job experience and figure it out. I'd say most people don't really enjoy going to work. You need to learn for yourself what is "just life" and what is a bad workplace.
I did something similar, went from a huge well known org (with what sounds like a similar culture) to a smaller and more local org. I didn't take as drastic of a paycut, but I absolutely love my job now.
You need to do what's right for you, not what others perceive.
They say they've been there a couple years already and most tech companies really only care if you stay for a year anymore. I think putting in more time than the absolute minimum necessary amount for a company you can't stand to have it on your resume to get a leg up is killing yourself slightly faster than you would normally.
Thanks for your comment above. I’m considering just coasting (or rather working like an “normal” person) and I wouldn’t feel bad about it. At this point it’s been a few years, and I feel I’ve served my time as they say, but I feel stuck in a way that’s hard to describe.
Prestige won’t pay for your therapy bills, which you won’t have time to go to with 12-15 hour days anyway. It’s just a job. Take the pay cut and go be happy.
I went to a big name defense contractor, while i hated working for them it did get my foot in the door for better things and went to a smaller company 6 months later. While i stepped down in pay immediately, the better work hours and mental health from liking my job allowed me to build on skills and get a better paying job down the road.
I think it depends on what you value. Is it worth it? Only you can answer that.
I work for a well-known company as well, but they pay me well enough that I would never consider a cushy government job at this point in my career. Maybe when I'm older want I want the healthcare benefits or something. But at this point, I'd rather have the money and I'm willing to work hard for it in order to maintain the lifestyle that it affords me, and save for an early retirement. But not everyone is like that.
A couple of years ago I received a job offer from Deloitte making a substantial amount more per year than I was making at the time. In my field, this job would have very likely catapulted my resume way up and allowed me to make more money afterwards.
Ultimately, I turned the job down. I read a lot of comments on Fishbowl about the company culture and the work. I talked to someone who was working there and asked if the backstabbing was real and of the amount of hours spent creating PowerPoints was real, and they confirmed it was all true.
At my current job, I work remote. At most, I will work a 40 hour work week versus the ~60 Deloitte would require. Most weeks I work 32. In that time, I got to take flying lessons for my private pilot's license, started learning Ukrainian, been on many vacations, and generally just live a good and easy. If I had taken that job, I would have been worked to the bone and probably full of burnout and regret.
I always feel there is more to life than work. Right now, I am technically working but I am eating pizza, watchingy girlfriend flail around playing Beat Saber. To me, this is priceless
I feel this. I used to be hunting jobs in an insanely competitive and life-destroying industry, but circumstantially found myself in a pretty boring, low impact office job with light, consistent hours. And it feels like I've finally started living. I have free time to hang out with friends, play games, focus on my SO, cook food, actually take care of myself. My life has shifted from living to work, to working to facilitate my "real" life. When people want to know who I am, I no longer respond with a job title. I haven't felt burnout in years, and I look forward to the opportunities each day brings. I never though having a job I consider boring and lame would have made my life so much better, but here we are.
The worst thing about Deloitters (I used to work in an adjacent company myself) is that so many of them hate the culture and toxic management, burn out and go elsewhere, but then just replicate the culture wherever they go. I’ve dealt with enough clients with Deloitte, BAH, BCG, etc. alumni there and it’s always just kind of a mess under them because they just spend so much time bike-shedding over presentation and framing and word choice type pedantry without the focus on getting shit done or clearing up disagreements on important design and architecture matters.
Gotta get those billable hours dragging your feet every step of the way!
Learning about how they operate has made it my goal to never ever hire consultants for something that I can feasibly do or learn to do. I love putting consultants out of a job
There's no easy answer. I would just note that it's a misconception that things like work life balance, pay, and prestige are zero sum. It's not options in a video game. Companies don't have stats that add up to 100.
I work for a company that would be considered fairly prestigious in my area. I get paid very well. In terms of actual heads down working hours, I do <20 a week.
If you think the government job is paying below what you'd want, there's no reason you can't first look for other private sector jobs with both better or equal pay and less hours.
Even if its a "downgrade" in terms of prestige, the gains from having a proper work-life balance and better team culture will be worth it in the long run. While the pay cut may hurt a bit, you can always hop around to other companies and earn more if you want. Especially with that big name on your resume, you will be inundated by messages from recruiters on LinkedIn because of it lol. I've got friends at some of the FAANG companies and they always get a handful of recruiters every day handing them new opportunities.
I’m having a hard time placing a monetary value on the career earnings between a government job and my corporate job. Of course the monetary aspect is easy, but how should I value WLB, happiness, sanity, and future opportunities?
I think everyone is different in how they should value what you listed but I personally rank those things from most important to least important in the following order:
I personally hate that "live to work" mentality and only work so I can enjoy other things. I do enjoy my job but it's not something I would sacrifice my personal life for. I rank sanity first because my sanity at work would affect the rest of my life. I rank WLB and happiness equally because I associate the two with each other. If work gets stressful, that affects my personal life and therefore affects my happiness. Finally, there's future opportunities. Since I only work to live, I'm not too worried about future opportunities. As long as my pay is good and my work doesn't cut into my personal life, I"M happy. Luckily, where I work, they don't force you to constantly move upwards so I can go up the corporate ladder at my own pace.
I don't know what kind of work you do or what your choices are, but for programmers, moving to a different tech company is a common strategy to get a raise, and you also get to see a different company's culture, which may be substantially different and hopefully more relaxed. So you can end up with both better pay and less stress, sometimes.
So, maybe look around at other options besides the government job?
This is definitely an option too. I suppose I’m on one extreme so I was only looking at the other.
Man, I am in a similar situation. I got what was my dream job about 2 years ago at a startup in a hot tech field and loved it for a while, but now I've found that I'm working way to much and family has been sidelined.
I'm interviewing for a position at a fortune 500 company tomorrow because it will likely be a much better work life balance and similar to slightly higher pay.
However, I'm still really struggling with feeling like I'm settling or giving up on my dreams, but I just keep reminding myself that a stable job and happy family is more important.
"Hustle culture" is a sickness. Putting in long hours in a toxic environment that makes you anxious and depressed isn't good for you, your family, or your long-term career. You've got time at a prestigious organization on your resume, and that can help with your future prospects.
Taking a pay cut to get a better work/life balance is absolutely fine, and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise has probably bought into that same toxic hustle culture bullshit. Their opinion doesn't matter.
That being said, I personally probably wouldn't want that chill "does training and scrolls Reddit all day" job. I want to be challenged, but not consumed. That way I can keep sharpening and expanding my skills. I don't want to be just a body in a seat.
I’m a big critic of hustle culture so I understand how you feel. I need to find something between constant grind and trainings/reddit all day.
It depends on a lot. I killed myself early in my career with the high pressure job. I liked that I was able to pay off my student loans quickly and save a decent amount of money to buy a house and start a family. I did not like the severe burnout I experienced towards the end of my tenure there. I also learned some skills around being able to talk to senior executives and learn how they think that I probably wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. I’m a very polished presenter and communicator now and I attribute that largely to the crucible I was trained in.
In hindsight, a few years in a place like that to pick up some of the useful skills, make contacts, and burnish the resume with a big name can be a big advantage for job future prospects. But stick around for too long and you’ll either burn out and get managed out or “go native” as you move up.
You gotta know when to quit. The big risk is getting too spendy to where the slightly higher salary becomes golden handcuffs. Be willing to jump ship for a flat pay change or a cut as soon as you’re not getting anything out of it.
I’ll say though, the low investment jobs aren’t always so chill. I miss working around engaged, ambitious people who take pride in their work. Being in a place where people are just there to check in and check out without really caring about what they’re doing or why they’re there is a huge drag. You have to get up every morning and psych yourself up to do nothing all day. It feels great for a while but eventually it’s spiritually destructive to feel like you’re spinning wheels in a bullshit job like that.
Hopkins is notorious for this. They pay significantly less than most similarly situated institutions because prestige can pay my rent apparently.
Everyone has their own idea about what their career is for, and it's not uncommon to change the goal posts over the years. I have a pretty average job at a regional level employer (~ 1200 coworkers or so). It's stil my first employer, and I'm slowly approaching my 25th anniversary with them.
My payment is regulated with an agreement declared to be universally applicable (not uncommon in Germany), that means the wages / payment grades etc are negotiated between the union and the federation of employers in that field - and then they apply no matter if you're in a union or not. So it doesn't really make sense applying elsewhere except I find an employer in that field who pays above. And if they do, there's always a very good reason not to apply as it means they are desperate.
Within my company, I found my place years ago. I have a wonderful mixture of responsibility, challenge, but I still enjoy my job almost every day. To put it this way, I'm the highest ranking coworker that isn't a boss to anyone. I have authority, but purely by seniority. Money wise, I'm not and will never be filthy rich, but I don't have to worry at all about making ends meet. If I want to have something (within reason), I buy it. But I couldn't buy a brand new car every three years or so. Any step further up in the ladder would mean at least lower leadership roles. I'm not a leader. So it would tip the balance and give me extra money that I don't really need but ruin my personal happiness and enjoying the job. Realizing this, I not only didn't apply for any promotion anymore, but I actively refused until HR finally stopped asking.
However, that's just my way of dealing with it as I value personal happiness and time off above extra money I don't need to cover my everyday and not so everyday expenses. You might have a different or the same answer.
As far as I know, there might as well not be professional unions for people in software, consulting, accounting, etc in the US. I could be fired for anything at anytime. I’d love to be able to be in a Union and work at the same place for 25 years, but from what I’ve seen that really only happens in government jobs and labor unions.
I'm not in a union, and I have no idea if and how many coworkers are. In Germany such things tend to be rather relaxed. You only find out who's in the union when the union happens to call a strike in your company. Then, unionised coworkers are allowed to go on strike and don't face repercussions for it (and are paid to some extent by the union), while non-unionised coworkers risk their job if they would take part. Other than that it's more relevant for staff council members to be in the union given they give legal help and support if needed.
IIRC in the 20+ years already they called on short warning strikes in my company maybe three times? We aren't a typically relevant subject to strikes. Given the union has to pay their members for a strike and at the same time hope the non-union coworkers don't fill the gap they typically target different employers in the same field for a real strike - small companies or departments where there's a high percentage of unionised employees, and where you can deal a lot of damage / gain a lot of public attention with rather few coworkers that are actually going on strike to save costs.
Definitely worth it imo. I would never work more than 40 hours a week. Hell 40 hours is already too much.
Having a chill job that also gives you more free time is awesome. Work-life balance > money.
I was in a similar situation actually. Worked for a private FTSE 100 financial company as a relationship manager for 250 financial advisors. It payed pretty well, benefits were okay and it opened lots of doors to potentially move into business development roles which would've seen my career advance strongly abd my income skyrocket.
But the role was brutal, overtime was expected, when I finished work all I did was stress about ongoing cases, and I tell you one thing, if you're seen as getting in the way of a client and their money or a financial advisor and their clients/commission, the absolute rage and fury that rains down upon you is catastrophic for your mental health.
Late 2021 and I'd had enough after 5 years in the role, my mental health was plummeting, and my partner had had to help me deal with anxiety attacks which were something I'd never dealt with before.
I applied for a role working for the national auditor, as it seemed cool, fun, their pension was a career average which is very rare in the UK now and the job seemed a lot more relaxed (as well as being in the Best Companies Top 25 Companies to work for in the UK list). Only thing is, I'd be dropping £9k ($11.5k) a year which was a scary prospect but me and my partner spoke about it, found ways we could save money here or there and I applied for the role and got it.
Now don't get me wrong, the crazy levels of inflation we've seen over the past year and a half have put pressure on our finances but we're still fine and I'm still nowhere near as stressed as I was when I was in my old job. The bonus is, I love my new job, it's everything I've been looking for, challenges me but doesn't overwork me, I'm not taking call after call after call and I just get to work quietly from home with no pressure to go into the office. I speak to my line manager once a month for our monthly catch up and no ones breathing over my shoulder or micromanaging me or chasing stuff up.
My work-life balance has never been better and because we're unionised at my new job we got a £3k pay increase last year and folks I worked with at my last job just got the usual 1.5% increase so I'm now only £6k-6.5k down rather than £9k.
I can say that, for me, the change in career was absolutely the best thing I could've done, even if it has kind of reset my career path.
This is the kind of Success story I love to hear. Congrats on your job and thanks for your comment.