It’s time for our monthly blog party and thanks to Gethyn Ellis ( t | b) for hosting this month. Gethyn asks us for the best Career Advice we’ve ever received.
As with everything there is a story to go with it. My first job out of high school I managed to land a computer operator job at a local family manufacturing company. At the age of 18 jumping right in and working on computers was a great start with no training or degree. But this would be one of the toxic job environments. One of C level folks liked to use his outside voice more than he did talk not to mention colorful words. My boss for most of my tenure would pull me into his house and yell out me things that he was fussed at for (I would find this out later when he was fired for not showing up at a sister office for how to know how many times when he just showed up to pick up the NBA tickets for the night and not to do the work for the day). There are many other stories to go with this job that I stayed out for over seven years.
I had a three-month dot com bust job after this and moved into a job for nine years. This job was no better. It was even more toxic. Not only was leadership toxic but my coworkers were, and it was a multiple billion-dollar company. I started therapy while I was at this job and found out when I left this job that my therapist thought I made this place sound so bad that he thought I was making it up and it was just me that had a problem. He didn’t understand why I had an instant level of wellness after I left. The amount of money I spent on therapy trying to survive work and I could have been working on well my real issues form childhood.
So, this started my illustrious career since then I’ve had 6 jobs n the last 12 years, one for six years. A couple I wasn’t the happiest out of just because they weren’t a good fit.
So what does this have to do with career advice? I’ve said this in my mental health presentation, but life is too short to spend a third of your life working a job that affects your mental health negatively or makes you unhappy. I even ran into someone at PASS Summit this last year that heard that in my presentation and told me thank you.
Don’t stay at a job that makes you miserable and get a job that makes you happy!
Great advise, but for me the issue has always been: Love the work, hate the boss.
Boss hasn’t been the problem. It always been the company culture and you can’t love your work enough to work in a toxic environment. Case in point. One job I was had for nine months. On my last day after I leave one of the sysadmins calls me and tells me his director had months ago told his team to make me look bad but he had refused to do so and ha been black balled on projects becaaue of it.
Hi Tracy, I was very touched by your testimony. I fortunately in the work aspect have been very fortunate so far, I have only encountered one client with an environment definable as “toxic.” However, having also followed a psychoanalytic path, I found that my school period was much more devastating than I imagined, and the university also played its part. The fact that you even endured years in job positions that were literally hurting you testifies to what I have no problem admitting: women today are much stronger than us males. Thanks again, I wish you the best in your future.