u/WestMaintenance1787

I'm a bit over 40, single, childless, living in Europe. I'm trying to figure out where my job fits into my life now. I've always been extremely dedicated, but I feel like I'm past that stage. What would you do in the following situation?

I have over 10 years of technical experience and I've been in Big Tech for 4 years. My salary is very good for my part of Europe, though nowhere near what my US colleagues earn.

I'm looking around for several reasons:

1. Discrimination. There are a lot of sexist comments and similar behaviour that make me depressed. My (male) colleagues are clearly preferred by management. There's a lot of gaslighting, and it takes a personal toll on me.
2. Very long work hours. Working 10–12 hours a day is expected, with no predictability. Sometimes you're expected to travel on short notice and return late, e.g., at 8 p.m. It makes difficult to plan workouts and hobbies.
3. Unpredictable bonus. My bonus makes up about 20% of my yearly salary, and it's dependent on my manager's preferences and factors outside my control.
4. My cliff is coming. Due to the equity vesting schedule, I'll lose around 20% of my salary within weeks.
5. Stagnation in technical growth. I learned a lot in my first two years. In the last year, I've barely learned anything because my role has shifted into pure sales. I'm glad I picked up some sales skills - they're valuable - but becoming a full-time salesperson was never part of my plan. It doesn't align with my life goals and introverted nature. It's important to keep developing technical skills in tech, and I'm afraid I'm becoming obsolete.
6. Financial security. I'm in a stable financial situation that would allow me to soft-FIRE or barista-FIRE even now.

I have many interviews, mostly with startups or smaller organizations, since the pool of big companies is limited. They're interested in my profile but would mostly pay 20–30% less than what I earn now (I reject those offering 50% less). I'm afraid I'll face the same issues I'm dealing with now, just for less money.

I could also stay where I am and coast - I feel that mentally I'm just not in a position to devote myself to my job anymore, I hate it so much. (But I don't feel like devoting myself to my next job either, I don't feel like working anymore). Still it's difficult to fire people here so I could live like that even for a year, just increasing my savings. It's fair given how much I devoted for this job before. I wouldn't make a career but I would survive.

What would you do if you were me?

I'm a cloud solution engineer working with the biggest customers of one of the hyperscalers. I help them to create architectures, check feasibility of their projects, advise on the cloud services. I create POCs, upskill, evangelize about the technology. Lastly, I sometimes also unblock them during the projects. I'm good in what I do, have been exceeding expectations for all the years since I joined.

My job is very sales-driven meaning that it's the salespeople who decide what I do and I have a very limited influence on that. My salary is however very much dependant on reaching my sales targets, which, as mentioned are more dependant on the salespeople than me. The processes are inefficient and people expect me to work unsustainable hours because of their lack of planning.

I'm burned out and need to switch. What would be your advice? I'm more of a platform engineer than a software engineer. I like working with customers and customers like me but the unsustainable sales culture is killing me.

I've just switched from the Huawei GT5 to the Garmin Venu 4.

I'm using the standard features: lifestyle logging, sleep analysis, ECG (though honestly, it's a bit underwhelming), hydration tracking, stress tracking (these were completely random numbers on Huawei, on Garmin they reflect my feelings really well) and activity tracking. Are there any other functionalities you find valuable?

F40 here. I've been living alone for about six years now. I have a comfortable 3‑room flat that I own, so I can change anything I want. Before that I shared flats since starting the uni and absolutely hated it.

Overall I love living alone. I love cooking, I love having a full control over who I let in.

But in the last few months I've started to hate being here. I hate the quiet, the emptiness, the association with work I hate (I work from home). I almost feel nauseous when I walk in. I can't stand the sameness of it - every day, the same rooms, the same routine. I just came back from a week abroad and enjoyed it so much, but the feeling returned the moment I got home. It's like I know this place too well. I can't travel too frequently.

Until around 32 my life was extremely varied. I lived in a few countries, then travelled constantly for work - 4–5 days a week in different places. Maybe this is connected to the fact that my life is much more stable now.

What would you do in my situation? Please don't advise to renovate - I've done that several times.

Just wanted to share my experience. I've been using a Hooga panel for several months, just 4 minutes a day. I mostly noticed one effect: my adult acne was gone just a few days after I started using it.

My skin has become a bit better when it comes to its structure too but I had sculptra a year ago and also started weight lifting last autumn, so I'm not sure which factor has played a role. Overall, I wasn't sure what played the biggest role.

Now I had a week long vacation abroad and didn't take my panel with me of course. This means one week without RLT. After 4-5 days my acne was back.

Back at home and with my RLT device, it's gone again. I'm surprised that the relationship is so direct in my case.

I'm currently wearing a basic smart/ sports watch that tracks my pulse, HVR, menstrual cycle and similar.

I'm thinking about upgrading to one that allows you to track what you did and finds correlations. I mean you input that e.g you drank a coffee or took magnesium and after several days you see that the days with/without coffee are better in terms of HVR.

Is it worth it? If you have experience with this functionality, does it help you?

I'm a visitor in Berlin. I'm looking for a place where I can spend a few hours working on my laptop. I need internet access and air conditioning. It's not a problem if I have to buy a coffee or a meal of course.

Any library or restaurant that doesn't hate you when you occupy a table working? Wedding or some neighbouring area would be perfect.

I'm planning to visit Berlin for around 2 weeks. I will be attending a lot of events, so moving through Berlin and to towns such as Potsdam will be important.

I'm based in another European country. I have to decide if it's better to go by car or train.

Would somebody who's living there with a car please comment on the availability of parking slots: free ones and those paid? I will probably be sleeping in an airbnb, not a hotel, so I don't count on the host having a parking slot for guests.

I know it's possible to use S-bahn/ U-bahn while you're there but given that I will be taking a lot of stuff with me I want also to explore the car path.

Kiedyś potwornie dużo czytałam. Książki, które zrobiły na mnie największe wrażenie to było wszystko Dostojewskiego, "Catch .44", "Mdłości" Sartre'a. Poza tym lubiłam reportaże np. Kapuścińskiego.

To było 20 lat temu. Teraz czytam co najwyżej poradniki, dokumentację techniczną, czasami prasę (uwielbiam długie reportaże w The New Yorker).

Zauważyłam, że bardzo straciłam też umiejętność skupienia na książkach. Z trudnością przychodzi mi przeczytanie 2 stron bez sprawdzania mediów społecznościowych.

Chcę z tym walczyć.

Poradźcie jakąś dobrą współczesną literaturę.

I'm a F a bit over 40, interested in men. I've been on dating sites for a longer while, looking for a relationship.

What does a person's goal of "long‑term, but short‑term OK" (or similar phrasing on apps other than Tinder) actually mean?

I've always been puzzled by this. From your experience, is it just a "nicer" way of saying: "I'm looking for something casual, but most women don't want casual, so I'll phrase it in a more acceptable way"?

Because my alternative interpretation would be: "I want something long‑term, but I'm afraid that if I say that, the woman will treat even one date, two dates as a serious commitment." But that interpretation feels a bit insulting to men (and women if they write something similar).

Now again a guy with this description matched with me, and in his second message he wrote, unprompted: "I'm looking for someone for a relationship, but you never know if we will like each other. Chemistry and how we get along is the most important. I don't want to force anything."

I mean… isn't it always like that? You can't force anything anyway. Is it normal for people to hedge this much, or is this actually strange? I know you can't read their minds, but maybe you have yourself a similar description and can throw some light on the possible interpretation.

I'm at a loss. I used to have 50+ reactions per post on average, with some over 500. I used to have thousands of impressions.

I then had around 2-3 weeks of no posting - not sure if it played any role.

I now post in the same style and for the same target group as before but the reach is absolutely horrible. E.g. yesterday I posted and got 6 reactions in the first 30 minutes. The post got displayed to just 300 people in total and got 20 reactions. 20 reactions for 300 impressions doesn't seem a bad statistics so why hasn't the post been displayed to a normal number of people?

There's no link in the post. There's a nice picture. The topic is interesting to my target group - similar posts got me plenty of reactions before.

I'm an AI cloud engineer who works for a corporate that works with big companies, helping them implement AI solutions. I love working with technology and customers, no problem there. The salary is great. But the corporate culture is toxic, full of backstabbing, extreme hours, and gaslighting. It's costing me my sanity.

I'm looking for my next step. What would you do?

Apart from cloud/AI, I'm skilled in these areas:

1. Investing in the stock market
2. Art: I love art history and have experience in renovations (houses, furniture)
3. Speaking several foreign languages fluently with experience living abroad for many years (various European countries, US)
4. Teaching (experience as a lecturer) and presenting at conferences
5. Research (solid background and hands-on experience)
6. Writing

I have a driver's license, a car, and I'm based in Europe. I don't really have that many contacts (see 3.).