u/cplm1948

I’ve been in operations finance for about 4 years now and I’ve managed to work my way into a leadership position. The thing is, I don’t like what I do, and I never have, and I’m starting to disengage from my work. I don’t even have a finance or accounting background. The only reason I ended up in finance is because my undergrad and graduate studies were in history, political science, and economics, and I couldn’t find work in these fields so I ended up going down the finance route. Fast forward to now and I’ve had enough of finance. I’m sick of the close cycles, audits, high expectations, toxic culture, and uninteresting work, especially now that I’m in a high visibility role that requires much more engagement and effort than ever before. I’ve realized that this is probably my limit, and that I don’t think I can maintain the required level of engagement needed for a lead/managerial role within finance.

My main passions are history and political science, but the job market is abysmal for these fields, especially if you’re without a PhD (and even if you have a PhD). Are there any finance adjacent fields/careers that break out from the typical finance mold but still value the skills that one would gain from spending years in finance?

So I joined a new company back in January for a finance position on a team with just me and my director. The start was very slow as I could tell I arrived in the middle of some chaos and org changes. Within 1.5 months in, my boss announces he’s getting moved and a manager for another team is quitting. My boss urges me to consider applying to replace this guy and that he’ll help facilitate the move. He hints that my current position may be outsourced once change roles as a result of org changes and instability caused by budget issues. I’m quite under qualified for the new role and I’m basically a stranger to the company but I’m assured by HR and my former boss that the role is being adjusted as they understand that there is a clear disconnect in seniority and experience requirements. I ended up taking the position as I felt my position was in danger otherwise.

Fast forward to now and things are pretty shitty. My new manager is new with the org and struggling so she’s not really much support and now they’re forcing us to cut a team member. The workload already sucks and I’m working 10 hour days pretty often. Not to mention I’m dealing with things that were way over my head just a few months ago.

I really want to leave but I don’t have a ton of work experience (only 3 years) and I’ve only been here like 5 months. Not only will it look bad on my resume but I also received a sign on bonus that I will have to pay back in full if I resign before a year passes, and half if I resign before 2 years pass.

My plan so far is to just complete 1 year and maybe try to reason with HR to reduce the payback amount.

Any advice on a situation like this?

I’ve noticed among many Romanians in the U.S. this sense of strong disdain towards Romania. It’s usually amongst those who left Romania during Ceausescu’s regime or shortly after it fell. Almost every conversation on the subject is about how Romania is insignificant in history and cultural influence, has low quality of life and a poor culture, and how they don’t understand why any Romanians who left Romania would still engage with Romania or anything related to Romania (unless they still have strong family ties there). They get upset if you demonstrate you have any appreciation or affinity towards your heritage. Ive had people go as far as saying they couldn’t care less if the country sank into the ocean and that they don’t plan to expose their children to their heritage and that they’ll actively avoid speaking Romanian with them because Romanian is a useless language.

This baffles me because I have a ton of other people in my life who are from other countries with way worse poverty and violence, yet they still feel affinity towards their culture and love their country of origin. My family isn’t blindly patriotic or ultranationalist, and they’re quite pessimistic about the country, but we still eat a lot of Romanian dishes, love partying with Romanian friends and drunkenly singing classic songs, rooting for the national team, following the politics, visiting in the summers. Idk for me and my family it’s just not that deep.

Is this level of disdain common amongst the diaspora of other Balkan countries?