r/QuitCorporate

I saw on a job application. Like why do we have to pretend that we live and breathe for this shit lol. No one ever woke up dreaming of smashing out excel spreadsheets their whole life.

Yet we’re supposed to do this dance and pretend it’s all we ever dreamed of.

We are brainwashed lol

I’ve had the last couple of months to reflect on my career and current job. Just found out a contractor was hired to cover for an additional executive and to take some duties off my plate, since the EA team & myself have voiced our concerns of being stretched thin. This contractor was given a higher title than me.
For context: I am a senior administrative assistant. I have communicated for the last two years my interest in progressing and integrating in other departments. The workload has increased tremendously but, the recognition has not.

I believe this is my im done moment …

What it says on the box! For reference I took this job out of desperation since my last job let go almost all of the staff due to budget.

This is my third week and I already feel over it. I made the terrible mistake taking a claims support job for a large insurance company.

- It's an hour each way in a busy city. My fault but God it's the worst.

- I have to park in a parking garage that I have to pay up front each month and get reimbursed later if I keep my receipts. It will take weeks for me to be reimbursed for that $100+ dollars.

- The job entails an insane workload each day where everything you do is calculated to show how long you spent on each and how productive you are.

-My current manager is retiring and a woman that doesn't know what we do will be taking over...so I'll have no one to answer my questions.

- My manager has reiterated to me several times that mistakes can cost the company thousands. Not only do I need to be insanely fast, I can't make mistakes. No pressure.

- two people can't be off at the same time.

- my coworker is pregnant both bosses tell her over and over and OVER "don't have that baby now, we need you." Or "please just one more week". They try to make it sound like a joke but it is not.

- the culture is soulless. Everyone is miserable and too busy trying to make production that they don't interact with each other.

-The recent lunch the company provided the other day was pathetic and my boss was encouraging us to hurry it up and go back to work.

-they tell me over and over and over how glad they are I'm here and that they need to get me up to speed.

- I was just told today I'll be training on "the hard stuff" tomorrow. This vexes me because what I'm already doing feels pretty hard.

- I had to work overtime already because the system crashed today. I have to do it again tomorrow too.

I'm just complaining and I chose this job but I feel my soul weakening every time I go in there.

An old coworker told me that after I quit, the place fell apart. Nobody realized that I was doing like 3 different jobs and everyone was too burnt out to take any of these jobs on.

Managers had to step up and fill in, especially the one that was the biggest bully!

They have an additional manager now who nobody likes. He doesn’t fix anything, just adds on even more and pressures everyone to work faster.

I was never going to be happy to hear that everyone’s suffering, but I thought that at least knowing that the managers have to do my job/s would make me feel incredible.

Why do I feel so neutral?

I've dedicated my career to being loyal and hardworking. I've been with my current company for 14 years, and I've only had four jobs since I started working at 15.

I've always believed in staying with employers who treat their people well. Lately, though, I've been feeling completely burned out, and a recent accident has forced me to step away from work. Right now, I'm off work while I focus on healing and the idea of not going back is more appealing every day.

What I'm struggling with most is that I have no desire to go back. I've worked hard my entire life, and I think I'm simply burned out. I don't know if I can retire yet, but the thought of updating my résumé, interviewing, and starting over somewhere new is exhausting.

I have a good job with solid pay and benefits, and I know many people would hesitate to leave that behind. Still, something inside me keeps telling me it's time to move on. I just don't know what that next step looks like.

I finally got the job that I applied for (forklift warehouse) but how do I make a resignation letter for my job that I’m about to leave with a week notice?

I held 9 accounting jobs during my 7 year career. Here’s what my experience looks like:

Graduated university in 2017

2017: 3 month internship
2018: 3 month temp contract job
2018: 6 month job, got fired because I had imposter syndrome and the old ladies I reported to were mean to me
2019: 2.5 years job, my first real big girl job 🫶
2021: 9 months, got laid off after being promised to be promoted
2022: 3 months job, panicked and accepted the first job offer I got after the lay off. Hated it.
2022: 3 week job! I accepted this job because I wanted to get out of the job above, but was anticipating an offer from the job below. Left as soon as I got the offer from the below position. This company went bankrupt so it worked out the best for me.
2023: 2 years job, my most tolerable accounting job ❤️
2025: 6 months, lost patience and wanted to leave accounting for good.

Total: about 7 years of accounting, left it for good now.

Obviously I know this is a huge red flag. The reason I kept jumping around was because I just wasn’t happy in accounting. I kept thinking maybe this next job will be good. Man was I wrong. Every few weeks, I was anticipating quitting. I was completely drained 🫩

Half way thru my career, I realized I just couldn’t tolderate accounting anymore. I spent 3 years thinking of ways to either pivot into something else or do a complete career change. It took me 3 years to work up the courage to walk away from a career that I started to hate. The pay didn’t even matter to me anymore. I couldn’t work in accounting for another minute.

I applied to hundreds, maybe even thousands of jobs. And yes, I did become an expert at doing interviews 😅.

For those who are curious, I only included the ones that are in bold are on my resume.

For the past year, I went into a human services and I love it. I wish I had made the change sooner. Best decision of my life.

I'm a consultant, I've been to 18 different companies, and for me moving on is not a big deal.

But for people, in general, it seems to be a very big step. Even if they are not happy where they are. Usually it has to be VERY bad before people consider changing jobs. Over the years they become bitter and angry instead of moving on.

Even money is often not enough to motivate people to move on. The pay at another company might be better but it's not THAT much better.

It's almost like a feeling of the devil you know is better than the devil you don't.

I recently began my position as an auto liability adjuster and every morning I wake up to go to the job I’m filled with dread and despair. My team is great and my boss is awesome. The work itself is what I hate. It’s hybrid, the benefits are amazing, and the upward mobility seems above average so I feel bad complaining. However, I find the work bleak and I don’t feel like I’m actually helping anyone.

My background is in customer service and I love to actually make a difference. I think I messed up choosing this job because I don’t like cars, I’m pretty girly, and I crave a more whimsical/feminine energy in my workplace. My last job was a mixologist at a fine dining restaurant for years and I loved it but I had to move on because the hours weren’t letting me see my family. I’m wondering how long I should put my feelings to the side. I’ve also been waiting to pull the trigger on finally becoming a therapist and getting my masters in counseling and I feel like the soullessness of this job has been pushing me towards my dream. My boss always compliments my empathy on and off calls and says I have an incredible voice on the phones.

I’m turning 30 this year and I felt that this would be a great start to my career as my first big girl job, but is any of this even worth it if I never feel happiness? The only time I’m happy is either when I’m fantasizing about quitting or distracting myself from my job on the weekends. I had to start an SNRI and a beta blocker for my newfound panic attacks as a result of this job. I had to leave work early once because I could not stop crying. As a quick disclaimer, I actually love hard work. I’m not lazy. Something about this job though just feels so cursed. We’ve been in onboard/licensing/training for two months and I’ve had my own claims for maybe three weeks now and my performance is improving but I feel extremely dissatisfied. My boyfriend is being encouraging and saying to give it time, but life is short and I don’t want to feel this way anymore. Will this change?

should I hate my job this much?

I want to quit my job and want to know what steps to take from now, until my PTO runs out, on how to do it.

Here is my PTO breakdown

12 hours of VTO (Volunteer time off)
31 hours of Sick leave
17+ hours of regular PTO (gaining 3 hours PTO this week)

My supervisor said they only need a weeks notice for doctors appointments and I believe sick leave request which I want to use.

Then the second week which, I will have to request by tomorrow, I want to use my VTO and rest of PTO. I work 40 hours standard.

Is this a good plan? How else could I use my sick PTO? I am close with a couple of co-workers and if I even tell my supervisors I want to quit in 2 weeks, word will spread a lot and I want to leave quietly despite my office being small and work getting around fast.

What do you suggest for 2 weeks notice?

I recently lost my corporate job, and honestly, the job hunt has been brutal. But today, I had a realization: I am absolutely terrified of going back to the corporate world.My last role completely drained me. I faced constant micromanagement, workplace bullying, extreme exploitation, long grueling hours, and zero financial reward or salary hikes. I am completely burnt out and exhausted to my core. The thought of sitting through another interview just to mask my trauma and sell my soul to another toxic manager makes me sick to my stomach.I need a mental break. I need to heal.So, I’ve decided to stop forcing myself into another office cubicle for now. Instead, I’m going to sign up for food delivery (UberEats/DoorDash/Deliveroo).I know it’s not a traditional career path, and it has its own challenges, but right now, the trade-offs sound like heaven to me:No bosses breathing down my neck or micromanaging my every move.No corporate politics, fake small talk, or toxic workplace bullying.Complete control over my schedule—I log on when I want and log off when I am done.Just me, my music, and the road.I just want a simple job where I do the task, get paid, and don't take the emotional stress home with me. I need to reclaim my peace of mind before I even think about what comes next.Has anyone else transitioned from a toxic corporate gig to gig work just to save their mental health? How did it go for you?

A different take on Led Zeppelin's Kashmir and how the song is absolutely relevant to modern corporate life. I guess this is my way of rebelling against the fact that I am still a corporate slave.

I resigned from my big4 job today as an Architect for a permanent WFH start-up. Anyone else serving notice period? Would love to connect...

One of the biggest mistakes successful professionals make is believing that doing their job well will protect them. It won’t always.

I’ve watched highly competent people become blindsided by changes they never saw coming. Not because they were poor performers, but because they were so focused on doing their jobs that they stopped paying attention to what was happening around them.

Organizations rarely change overnight. They usually signal change long before they announce it:

• A restructuring
• A new vice-president
• Departments merging
• Budgets quietly shifting
• Experienced employees leaving
• Different language being used by leadership
• Skills that were once valued becoming less important
• Changes in the customers the organization wants to serve

The problem is that we often notice these things and explain them away because we want to believe our position is secure.

We tell ourselves:

• My experience makes me indispensable.
• My department is too important to be cut.
• Things will eventually return to normal.
• My loyalty will be rewarded.
• If something were wrong, leadership would tell us.
• My work speaks for itself.

But what if those assumptions are no longer true?

That may be one of the most important career questions you can ask yourself.

Protecting your career does not mean panicking every time something changes. It means staying alert. It means documenting your achievements, watching your industry, developing skills before you urgently need them, maintaining professional relationships and understanding how your experience creates value beyond your current organization.

It also means asking yourself:

• What is changing?
• What should I be learning now?
• If my position disappeared tomorrow, where else could I create value?
• Am I preparing for a possible career change, or am I assuming my experience will speak for itself?

Your organization controls your position. It can restructure it, rename it, reduce it or eliminate it.

But your career belongs to you.

What warning signs have you seen people dismiss because they wanted to believe their position was safe?

After more than nine years in leadership roles within the pharmaceutical industry, first as a Divisional Head, then Director, and ultimately Senior Global Director of Operations, I decided to take a step back and resign from my position.

Looking back, I feel incredibly grateful for everything those years have given me. I gained valuable experience, built strong teams, delivered successful projects, and had the opportunity to create several initiatives from the ground up. It was a demanding chapter of my career, but also an incredibly rewarding one.

The compensation was very good, and for a long time, I saw that as part of the reward for the level of responsibility and commitment the job required. But over the years, I gradually realized something else: I had invested most of my time, energy, and attention into my career, often leaving very little space for my personal life.

For many months, I had been thinking about resigning. I knew that something needed to change, but making the decision was not easy. Then, last week, I finally made it.

And honestly, I feel freer than I have in years.

The constant pressure suddenly feels lighter. For the first time in a long time, I have the space to focus on the things that had gradually moved to the background: my personal life, my health, and spending more time with the people I love.

When I was younger, I was completely career driven. Success, professional growth, and the next goal were incredibly important to me. And there is nothing wrong with that. Those ambitions brought me to where I am today.

But at 39, I see success differently.

I no longer want my career to be the only measure of whether I am moving forward. I want to have time to actually enjoy the life I have worked so hard to build.

And, for the first time in a long time, I feel like I am truly living, rather than constantly working toward the next goal.

I don't have a clear idea yet of what comes next, and I'm completely comfortable with that.

For the next two months, I simply want to slow down. Give my mind some space. Recharge. Spend time with the people who matter most. Take care of myself. And enjoy having some freedom again.

After that, I'll slowly start thinking about what the next chapter should look like.

For once, I'm not in a rush to figure it out.

Last year I had decided to do something to change my situation. Everyday waking up to go the corporate hellhole started making me feel dizzy and disoriented in the mornings. It was actually not the work but the people. Some of them are straight up undiagnosed sociopaths. I started thinking about next 30 years. I absolutely started shivering and had panic attacks at the thought of doing this long term. I am pretty sure if I continue I will be gone early due to heart attack or some shit.

Then it just hit me. I had to do something radical. A radical shift in my thinking and means to earn. I signed up for a Become a Tennis coach program with my local tennis federation. I have been playing tennis for a couple of years and pretty good at it. It is something I really enjoy and teaching others the game is something I had been wanting to do.

Now happy to say, I am finishing up my course in next two weeks and would be teaching tennis very soon. I am so happy I cannot describe in words.

I will be physically active all day, interact with people and get to play my fav sports everyday a bit too. Is it gonna be a lot of hard work? Indeed. But is it gonna be soul crushing like the corporate bs? No.

For anyone else looking to exit corporate, think about this. You get one life. Do you really want to spend it on some bullshit for some retirement savings? Or do you want to go out be in the open, around people and partake in society with empathy? Exiting corporate will be a radical move. They will call you a radical. But you will be happier for it. And lastly, I just want to say we wont be doing something vastly different than what most humans have done throughout time. Corporate is new, it’s only been there since the end of WW2. Even factory work was better than corporate because you atleast did not have to take the bs home with you. It’s the fake performative nature of corporate I really think ruins our mental and physical health. People play games in corporate that cause chronic stress. Trust me, none of us need it.

I’m 21, and after experiencing two corporate workplaces, I’ve already seen enough corporate politics to wonder how adults managed to recreate high school, add spreadsheets and performance reviews, and call it a career.

I was never particularly bright academically. My final high-school exams came around during the COVID lockdown period, I couldn’t study properly, and I failed.

That pushed me in a different direction. One field I genuinely thought I could be good at was aviation, so in 2023, when I was 18, I joined SriLankan Airlines, the national carrier of Sri Lanka, as a Customer Service Representative.

My salary was LKR 40,000 before EPF and ETF deductions, around LKR 37,000 in hand. In dollar terms, that was roughly around $100 at the time.

At 18, I didn’t really care about the money. I was happy to be working in an industry I was interested in.

In the beginning, everything was fine.

The job was basically sitting at a desk, waiting for calls to enter the queue and answering them. An agent could receive around 50 calls a day, sometimes going up to 80.

The shift was around nine hours, and most of those nine hours were spent sitting there answering passengers.

Some passengers were perfectly nice.

Others were frustrated.

Some would just unload their anger on you because their flight was delayed, cancelled, changed, or because they were having a terrible day.

Eventually, the predictability started consuming me.

You know exactly what you’re going to do tomorrow.

Wake up.

Go to work.

Sit down.

Answer calls.

Deal with angry passengers.

Take your break.

Come back.

Answer more calls.

Go home.

Sleep.

Repeat.

And then I discovered something I genuinely didn’t expect from adult workplaces: corporate politics.

I had just come out of school, so I honestly thought this kind of behaviour was something you left behind when you became an adult.

Apparently not.

At one point, I was working night shifts, roughly 7 PM to 7 AM.

Some of the senior employees on the night shift weren’t particularly supportive and were often unavailable when we needed help.

I raised the issue with the operating manager because it was making the work difficult.

Once they found out I had complained, I felt like I became a target.

Suddenly, the workplace wasn’t just about doing your job anymore.

It became about who liked you.

Who didn’t.

Who said what about whom.

Who was friends with whom.

Who complained about whom.

It genuinely felt like school again, except everyone was older and getting paid.

After one year, I left.

And by that point, I was completely burnt out.

One year of work, internal conflict, politics and dealing with people had drained me so much that I became afraid of going into another corporate environment.

So I didn’t work for around a year and a half.

I tried studying. I tried finding a college.

Eventually, I returned to aviation through another program, completed it, and in 2026 I received another opportunity.

This time it was with a UK-based travel agency that outsourced work to Sri Lanka.

The salary was LKR 70,000, which was roughly around $200 at the exchange rate at the time.

By Sri Lankan standards, that wasn’t a terrible salary, especially for someone my age.

The company also provided one-way transportation.

And the actual job was much better suited to me.

I wasn’t answering calls all day.

I was working as a Schedule Change Assistant.

We dealt with airline schedule changes, contacted passengers by email, made arrangements and basically solved problems.

For the first few months, everything was good.

Then they realized I was actually pretty good at the job.

And that’s when the workload started increasing.

We worked nine-hour shifts, six days a week.

Even the supposed day off could sometimes turn into a working day because of the workload.

Eventually, my team leader started assigning me additional tasks.

One particular situation really bothered me.

He assigned me a task that originally belonged to another colleague.

I understood that there could have been a reason for doing that. Maybe that colleague had a particularly heavy workload or there was some other operational reason.

But I was already carrying a lot of work myself.

So I questioned it.

Not aggressively.

I simply asked why that particular task was being assigned to me.

And I had a reason for asking.

There had previously been a situation where this same colleague hadn’t completed something that was originally my responsibility.

Instead of completing it, the task eventually came back to me.

So when the situation was reversed, I thought it was reasonable to ask why the workload was being distributed this way.

I wasn’t refusing to do the task.

I wasn’t saying, “I’m not doing this.”

I was asking for an explanation.

Instead of explaining the decision, my team leader responded:

“Why are you whining like a bitch?”

That genuinely pissed me off.

Not because I couldn’t handle the additional work.

Because I expected a professional answer to a professional question.

If there was a legitimate operational reason for giving me the task, fine. Tell me.

If the other colleague was overloaded, tell me.

If there was an urgent deadline, tell me.

I’m an employee. I’m perfectly capable of understanding these things.

But apparently asking why something is being assigned to you makes you a “whiner.”

That was one of the moments where I started thinking seriously about leaving.

And there were other things I had already noticed.

One of the assistant team leaders would talk about people behind their backs and create stories that eventually turned into workplace politics.

People would form little groups.

People would get cornered socially.

Information would travel around the office.

Again, it reminded me of school.

Except this time everyone had salaries and responsibilities.

So I decided to resign.

Interestingly, my manager, HR and even the director didn’t want me to leave.

They asked me to reconsider and come back.

Initially, I considered it.

But then I thought about why I was leaving in the first place.

I didn’t want to stay until I eventually got into a confrontation with someone and damaged my own reputation.

So I submitted my immediate resignation, explaining that I felt there was unfairness in how certain things were being handled and that when I questioned it, I was responded to in a vulgar and disrespectful manner.

And that’s when I started seriously questioning corporate life altogether.

I don’t expect a workplace to be perfect.

I don’t expect everyone to like me.

I don’t expect my employer to treat me like family.

Actually, I don’t WANT my employer to treat me like family.

A company isn’t your family.

Your colleagues aren’t automatically your friends.

Your manager isn’t your parent.

And your company doesn’t owe you lifelong loyalty.

You’re exchanging your time and skills for money.

Do your job.

Get paid.

Go home.

Live your actual life.

What I find strange about corporate culture is how emotionally invested people sometimes become in the company.

People fight over positions.

They gossip.

They create enemies.

They compete for recognition.

They become loyal to management.

They defend decisions as if they personally own the company.

And sometimes they destroy relationships with other employees over things that ultimately don’t matter.

You’re all working for somebody else’s company.

You’re not inheriting the building.

You’re not getting a statue outside headquarters.

And the company will continue operating after every single one of you leaves.

Yet people will spend years making enemies because they want to prove that they’re loyal to the organization.

I think that’s where corporate culture becomes particularly strange.

The moment you start treating your workplace as your emotional world, things can get complicated very quickly.

For me, a workplace should be transactional.

Not in a cold or cruel way.

Just realistically.

I’m there to work.

You’re paying me for my time and skills.

I’ll do my job properly.

I’ll be respectful.

You should be respectful to me.

And when the working day ends, I should be able to go home and live my actual life.

I don’t need workplace enemies.

I don’t need workplace best friends.

I don’t need office politics.

I certainly don’t need to sacrifice my peace of mind to prove that I’m loyal to a company.

And I’m not saying this because I think I’m above corporate work.

I’m saying it because I’ve realized that I personally don’t fit well into that environment.

I’m someone who actually enjoys being around people.

I’m comfortable communicating with people, and I tend to get comfortable with people fairly quickly.

But I’ve also noticed that this can sometimes work against me professionally.

When you become too comfortable with people, boundaries can disappear.

People start speaking to you in ways they wouldn’t normally speak to someone they don’t know.

People can become comfortable giving you additional work.

And sometimes being cooperative gets interpreted as being available for everything.

That’s something I’m learning to recognize.

So now I’m considering going into entrepreneurship.

My father is an entrepreneur and works on the industrial side of business.

He deals with industrial products and trading, and I’ve started considering whether I should put my energy into the family business and eventually build something of my own.

I don’t have a huge amount of savings from my previous jobs.

I had planned to stay at my latest company for at least a year, save money and take advantage of the salary increment that would eventually come.

But life doesn’t exactly follow the spreadsheet.

Sometimes it just throws the whole spreadsheet into the ocean.

I’m under no illusion that entrepreneurship is easier.

It’s probably harder.

When you’re running your own business, you’re the CEO, manager, HR, accountant, salesperson, problem solver and sometimes the person doing jobs nobody else wants to do.

But at least you’re building something that belongs to you.

If you work harder, become more creative, understand your customers and understand the market, there isn’t necessarily a fixed ceiling on what you can build.

And that’s something that appeals to me.

I’m only 21.

I’ve already failed school, worked at an airline, burned myself out, spent more than a year away from employment, returned to aviation, entered another corporate environment, dealt with workplace politics again, and eventually walked away from it.

Maybe I’m too young to judge corporate life.

Maybe I’ve just had bad experiences.

Maybe there are genuinely great companies out there with healthy cultures and good managers.

I’m sure there are.

But my experience so far has taught me one thing:

Corporate life can be incredibly childish.

People spend their days working for a company that doesn’t belong to them while creating enemies with people who are ultimately in the exact same position as them.

All for a paycheck.

And maybe that’s the part I don’t understand anymore.

I’m 21.

I’ve seen enough workplace bullshit to know that I don’t want to spend the next 40 years participating in it.

Maybe entrepreneurship will be harder.

Maybe I’ll fail at that too.

But at least if I fail, I’ll know exactly what I’m failing at.

And if I succeed, I’ll be building something that is actually mine.

That’s where I’m at right now.

So I’m curious: for those of you who have spent years in corporate life, did you eventually find a workplace where the culture was genuinely healthy, or did you also reach a point where you decided that corporate life simply wasn’t for you?

This is probably one of the hardest career situations to explain.

​You have a decent salary.

Your manager is okay.

The work isn't terrible.

​So technically, koi solid reason nahi hai job chhodne ka. Everything looks fine on paper.

​But deep down, you know you don't want to be doing the same thing 3 years from now.

​I've seen so many people stuck in this exact loop for years—sirf isliye kyunki koi bada issue ya dramatic reason nahi tha move on karne ka.

​Maybe career decisions aren't always about escaping a bad situation or a toxic workplace.

​Sometimes, it's simply about admitting that you've outgrown a phase, and that's completely okay.