u/Entire_Ad6036

My uncle was a senior director at a credit union. He was supposed to retire next week, and they had already prepared five people to cover the work he had been doing. Yes, that's how much he was carrying beyond his capacity.

A few days ago, he was extremely anxious about finishing one last deal, a six-million-dollar account.

Then yesterday afternoon, he woke up with chest pain and ended up in the ER. It was a heart attack. He didn't survive.

He spent his entire life chasing after work, always talking about what he and his wife would do when he retired. They were going to take trips, see other countries, and finally slow down a little. He had barely even left the state.

I'm begging you, don't let your job destroy you. Take the trip. Don't let your entire identity be built around work. Keep seeing the bigger picture.

There's no way things can keep going like this, right? And this isn't even something completely new; I feel like the job market has been messed up for about 14 months straight.

I seriously don't know what else I'm supposed to do. How is this not something everyone is talking about everywhere all week???

I spent almost 3 years stuck in the IT/dev path. I did 4 internships, got hired full-time as a dev and then they let me go because I was "not senior enough," shipped personal projects that real people used, went to networking events 3 times a month, tried to build a personal brand, and all that stuff. I interviewed with a few companies and made it to 6 rounds only to lose to someone else in the end, got hundreds of rejections, dealt with fake postings and clown interviews, and worked for free with early-stage startups "for experience," and about 80% of them don't even exist anymore. I sent my information to a lot of random companies that probably scraped it, because now my phone won't stop getting spam texts and calls. I was forced into the Leetcode grind for interviews, and when I asked a senior dev whether he had to do all of this when he started in 2012, he laughed and said, "nah, not really."

A little while ago, I made a separate resume focused on my sales/content/communication skills instead of trying to look like every other junior dev clone, and I got 6 interviews in the first week.

One of them put me through 3 rounds for a sales role, entirely commission-based, selling RVs and motorcycles.

And the weird thing is they were excited about my tech background, my content stuff, and the fact that I can talk to people without seeming like a Jira ticket.

In the end, they offered me a job, and it has a real training/mentorship process instead of "figure it out and pray."

I was with my family a few weekends ago, and my 4-year-old nephew was running around in the yard, hysterically happy because of bubbles. And that's when I had a moment of realization...

That kid does not care even one bit how much I got beaten down trying to get into tech.

Life is weird like that. The moment I stopped being obsessed with forcing myself into this industry, other options started showing up that honestly might suit me better in this market anyway.

Life gets a lot better when you stop worshipping this BS industry.

It's insane that I wanted to grind my soul into dust just so some non-technical PM genius could throw me a half-baked app idea because management saw a competitor doing it.

Fuck around and find out. That's still what I always say.

I worked from home from 2020 to 2026. I got laid off, and then about two weeks later I found a job I truly love. I'll stay here until retirement if they keep wanting me around.
The role was fully in-office at first. I was generally fine with that, except that the commute was 45 miles each way and the traffic was really rough.
I went back to working remotely again in April 2026, and honestly, I don't think I could go back to working in the office 5 days a week again.
My manager recently asked me if I'd be willing to give up my office, and I said yes without even thinking about it. I always figured that if I kept holding onto a decent-sized office with a window, eventually someone would start wondering why I wasn't sitting in it. Now I'll just take any available desk when I need to go in. And that happens every so often, maybe once every few months, and I'm totally fine with that.
I'm just grateful that I work somewhere that still genuinely supports remote work.