u/Independent_Switch33

I kept saying i wanted a promotion, then i got more responsibility and immediately started daydreaming about quitting.

The problem wasn’t “fear of success” or whatever. It was that i wanted the WRONG prize.

I started paying attention to what i actually chase when work is going well, and it’s not always status.

A few versions of ambition I keep seeing in myself + coworkers:

1) Ownership ambition

You want to decide. You want the final call. The job is miserable if you’re just implementing someone else’s taste.

2) Mastery ambition

You want to get scary good at a specific thing. You’ll tolerate low visibility if the work is interesting and you can improve.

3) Freedom ambition

You want control of your day. Meetings and “quick check-ins” feel like sandpaper. You don’t mind hard work, you mind interruptions.

4) Impact ambition

You want the work to change something that feels real. You’ll take boring tasks if you can see the outcome in the world.

5) Recognition ambition

You want your effort to be seen. Not even praise, sometimes just accurate credit. Being the invisible fixer makes you resentful fast.

6) Stability ambition

You want predictable money + predictable expectations. You might still be ambitious, you just don’t want chaos packaged as “growth.”

I wrote down moments i felt weirdly energized at work (and moments i got snappy for no reason) for two weeks, then compared notes with my calendar. i used a notes app, asked ChatGPT to sort the patterns, and took the coached career test that same week.

The most annoying part: i realized i was calling myself “lazy” when i was actually trying to do mastery ambition inside a role that rewards recognition ambition.

MBTI-wise, i can see how people map this to functions (Te: ownership/impact, Ti: mastery, Ne: freedom, Fe: recognition, Si: stability, etc) but i dont think it’s one-to-one. It’s more like: your type gives you a default way you chase the prize, and work culture decides which prizes are “valid.”

What kind of ambition do you think your job rewards, and what kind do you actually have?

I’m getting so tired of the "does MLS pay enough" threads because everyone ignores the only thing that actually matters: location. 70k in rural Iowa is a completely different life than 70k in Seattle, yet we act like the base rate is the whole story.

I’ve been looking at my coworkers and classmates, and it feels like everyone falls into a few camps. You have the people in the massive coastal metros who get the cool Level 1 trauma experience but pay rent that makes you want to scream.

Then there’s the mid-sized city crowd where you can actually afford a mortgage solo, but the pay is lower and the options get thin if you piss off the wrong manager.

The ones that really get me are the people stuck by family. I see techs watching job postings in other states that pay way more, but they can't leave because they're taking care of parents or sharing custody of kids. It’s a total lack of leverage that nobody talks about.

I spent a weekend obsessing over this and even did a Coached career test just to see if I was actually cut out for the big-city move I was dreaming about. It was a reality check. I realized I was chasing a "prestige" lifestyle that doesn't even fit my personality. I actually value quiet and a short commute way more than being near a bunch of nightlife I'm too tired to visit anyway.

It’s just wild seeing the difference in the lab. One tech here makes less than me but owns a house 15 minutes away with no car payment. Meanwhile, I’m lighting money on fire for rent and gas and have nothing to show for it.

Then I have a friend who moved to the coast for a huge raise, and now they pay $2k just for a room in a shared apartment. The money is a total wash.

I'm still trying to figure out if I should pack up and move somewhere cheaper or just accept that this career has a very specific ceiling depending on the zip code. Has anyone else had to choose between the experience of a big city and actually being able to save a cent?

I’ve hit a pattern I can’t ignore anymore: for the first two months I’m usually fine, by month three I’m constantly irritated, and by month six I’m genuinely fantasizing about just walking out without saying a word.

It’s happened in retail, front desk/admin stuff, even a supposedly good corporate job where I mostly just sat there refreshing my inbox and waiting for somebody else to create an emergency for me.

I kept telling myself I just needed to tough it out and eventually I’d adjust. Never happened.

I finally sat down and looked at the actual patterns instead of the job titles. Turns out I don’t hate working. I hate constant interruptions, being monitored all day, fake urgency, and jobs where you’re expected to perform socially for 8 straight hours while also somehow reading people’s minds.

But I weirdly like repetitive stuff if I can get good at it. Cleaning up messy spreadsheets scratches something in my brain. Same with fixing broken processes or helping someone solve a problem one-on-one. Completely different feeling.

I started making this giant “never again” list from old jobs and it got a little depressing honestly. Half the entries were basically “manager changes priorities every 11 minutes” and “every task feels like I’m being timed by God.”

At one point I had a coached personality assessment open while writing all this down and it did make me realize I keep chasing jobs that sound respectable instead of jobs that actually fit how my brain works day to day.

Now I’m looking at stuff like billing, data coordination, QA, backend ops, maybe logistics if it’s not complete chaos. I just can’t tell if I’m finally narrowing in on something or if I’m about to repeat the cycle again somewhere else.

I hit a dumb point last year where i’d finish work faster, do a better job, and then feel punished for it because the invoice got smaller.

So i tried something that felt scary-simple: i stopped quoting “hours” and started quoting a small, fixed thing with an obvious end.

What i sell now (for most new clients) is one of these:

• a 60-90 min teardown + short written plan
• a fixed deliverable with a revision cap (landing page, email sequence, tracking setup, whatever)
• a “first week” implementation where i only touch the top 2-3 issues and stop

Midway through writing the first couple offers, i dumped my messy notes into Google Docs, a notebook, the Coached career test, and a plain old timer app, mostly to get words for what i actually do besides “work hard.”

Stuff that made this work (and keeps it from turning into scope creep cosplay):

1) One sentence outcome, not a list of tasks.

“Improve checkout conversion” beats “audit, research, rewrite, redesign…”

2) The stop rule in writing.

“I’ll deliver X by Friday. Anything beyond that becomes a new scope.” Clients don’t freak out when you say it early.

3) A default price ladder.

I keep 3 price points in my head so i’m not inventing numbers on a call.

4) A no-meeting version.

If they need 4 calls to decide, they’re not buying the small project anyway.

If you’ve made the switch, what did you package first? And if you’re still hourly: what’s the part you’re afraid will break if you try one fixed-scope offer?

Been in corporate for 8 years. Got so burnt out at my desk job that I started Googling wildly different careers just to escape. I spent a huge chunk of last year convinced nursing or rad tech was going to be my grand exit. The idea seemed perfect on paper: real work, working with your hands, no more endless Teams meetings. Then reality slapped me in the face.

The prerequisites take forever, clinicals are basically a full-time job, and I can't just take a massive pay cut with a mortgage and a kid. The real wake-up call was when I realized my brain was completely fried just reading through program handbooks. I was trying to use a career pivot to fix burnout without fixing the burnout first.

So I hit the brakes. Stopped volunteering for extra work, logged off at 5:30 on the dot, and started trying to figure out what was actually draining me. Even used one of those online career tests (Coached in my case) to help me map my working style and see what drains me without relying on corporate buzzwords. Turns out I don't mind technical problem-solving; I just hate office politics and pointless emails.

After shadowing and talking to actual nurses, I realized I was romanticizing it. I'd just be trading one kind of stress for another when I'm already running on empty. Now I'm looking at non-bedside roles or just trying to fix my current gig.

Anyone else made the jump from corporate to healthcare here?

This sub has the same fight every month. Sensors aren't shallow. INTPs aren't all geniuses. ESFJs aren't just people-pleasers. Someone posts a rant, everyone agrees in the comments, nothing changes.

I used to do this too. I'm an ISTP and I'd get annoyed every time someone said we're all mechanics or that we don't care about theory. I'd write whole paragraphs about how I read philosophy and have feelings and whatever.

Then I realized I was arguing against a stereotype without actually explaining what the difference is. Like yeah, ISTPs can be interested in abstract stuff, but that's not the point. The point is how Ti-Se actually works vs how Ti-Ne works, and I wasn't explaining that.

So I started asking myself: what evidence would actually change my mind about my type? Not "do I relate to the description" but "what specific behaviors would prove I'm using different functions."

For me it was:

• Do I test ideas by doing something physical first or by running mental simulations? (I build or take apart, I don't just think through scenarios.)
• When I'm stuck, do I want more information or more time to mess with what's in front of me? (I want to physically interact with the problem.)
• Do I trust a model because it's logically consistent or because I've seen it work in reality? (Reality wins every time.)

I also threw my assumptions into ChatGPT and the Coached career test to see if my self-assessment held up when the questions were framed differently. Both forced me to answer with specifics instead of vibes.

The stereotype stuff doesn't matter as much when you can actually describe how you operate. If someone says "ISTPs don't read," I don't need to defend myself, I just know that's not what Ti-Se means.

What would actually change your mind about your type? Not the description, the functions.