r/InterviewMan

I'm in a very stressful situation and need to see this from the perspective of people who aren't emotionally involved in it. I've been working at my current tech company for 8 years. My performance here has been good, and I've always been one of the strongest people at work, but the culture is exhausting, there are difficult personalities to deal with, and this place has a known pattern of draining people and pushing them into burnout without paying them what they deserve.

For a long time, they kept telling me there was a path ahead for me to reach a director-level role, but nothing concrete ever happened. When I asked for a fair raise at the beginning of April, they told me the budget wasn't there. That was pretty much the push I needed, so I started interviewing, and in the end I got an excellent offer from a competing company.

I accepted the new offer and submitted my resignation. Then suddenly, my current company came back to me with a very large counteroffer that's higher than the new job offer, along with a written career roadmap showing the roles they say I'll move into and the salary increases tied to each step. Honestly, I was mentally checked out and ready for a clean start somewhere else, but now I've started second-guessing everything because the money isn't insignificant.

And this is the part that's confusing me. If it had been a small raise, I would have left easily. But the number is big enough to make me stop and think, even though I know all the reasons that made me want to leave in the first place. For the past few nights, I haven't been able to sleep and I've been thinking about it, and I feel completely stuck between the safe and familiar choice and the chance to start over somewhere else.

What would you do if you were in my place? I can share the actual salary numbers if that would make the advice easier. Thanks to anyone who read all of this.

After a lot of thinking and reviewing the situation carefully, this is what I came to. The counteroffer feels like just a manipulation, not a real solution. I was underpaid, and honestly, I feel like they took advantage of me. It's time for me to leave and move on somewhere else. I'm not going to put myself in a toxic situation again, so I'll seriously reconsider the offer I received from the other company, and will try to apply all the tips mentioned in this post to be a perfect candidate for them.

I'm an analyst, and part of my role is to keep a bunch of reports constantly updated. The process was painfully manual, because almost no one here knows Power BI, Tableau, Power Query, or VBA. We have a data warehouse, but my manager still goes in every morning to export the data as a CSV, then does the usual routine of "make charts in Excel" for whatever visuals people request.

When I joined, I started building things in Power BI and Tableau, and honestly, because expectations were so low, everyone treats me like I'm a magician. I've now finished most of the initial query work, so I can put in the new file, hit refresh, and the whole report updates itself. They think it takes me half the day, but in reality it's about 8 minutes if nothing weird breaks.

The annoying part is that our data warehouse still isn't directly connected to anything we use - don't ask - so someone still has to manually grab the raw export instead of it coming through some magical API connection. So now I'm debating whether to tell my manager: "Look, put the file here and hit refresh," so the reports can get done every day without me having to keep monitoring them myself, and I can move on to better work.

Or should I keep pretending this is still a manual process and not say that most of it is now automated? Honestly, I'd rather move up here than leave, so part of me feels like if I show them I can automate the boring stuff, it might get me better projects instead of endlessly refreshing reports.

I'm a 41-year-old man, working as a plant maintenance mechanic and making about $112k a year. I've been with my wife for almost 14 years, and we have three kids. We bought our first house about 18 months ago, and both of our cars are relatively new.

I work a lot of hours, usually between 50 and 58 hours a week, and honestly I feel like I'm doing all of this just to stay in the same place. No one really warns you that owning a home turns into endless repairs, random projects, and money disappearing every time you turn around.

I feel like my life has become work, bills, fixing things, and then waking up to do the same thing all over again. On paper, it probably looks like we did everything "right," but I don't feel like I'm living any of it.

All I'm doing is working to keep up with this dream that was sold to us when we were kids. Does anyone else feel like the "American dream" is more exhausting than it's worth?

25 minutes after the start of my shift, my stomach started acting up, so I ran to the bathroom. When I got back, I found my manager already annoyed. He started interrogating me about stupid things like why I hadn't gone before clocking in. I'm one of the best people working for him, and a lot of people there have said that, but for some reason he always singles me out. So after about 3 hours, I left. Fuck slave labor. Now I'm stressed and not really sure what's going to happen next.

To clarify, when I say I'm not sure what's going to happen next, it's because I have college expenses coming up and I'm still waiting for my student loans to be approved. I'm staying with my parents, so I'm not completely screwed financially. But seriously, you have no idea how bad this place is. They don't even pay us for public holidays unless we use PTO, and you have to work there for about 14 months before you're even eligible to take PTO.

Honestly, this job seems like trash, right?

Update: Woow, I didn’t imagine my post would blow up like this. I read most of the comments, and honestly, I agree with you guys I can’t keep working there anymore.

I also saw this post here on reddit about something called 'cold emailing' to find a job, and I really liked the idea. I’m going to try it and hopefully find a better opportunity soon. I’ll definitely update you all.

I see a lot of people going straight from undergrad into a master's or further study without any work experience and without a clear plan, and that's very strange. "I need this degree so I can get to xyz role." Fine, but has an employer said that? Have recruiters, hiring managers, or job postings repeatedly proven that? 8 out of 10 companies will choose the new graduate with a bachelor's who can prove they're capable, and if they like your performance, many places have tuition help or programs that can pay for grad school later.

A lot of people spend huge amounts of money because they assume companies are sitting around waiting for candidates with master's degrees. Most of the time, you're just delaying your career and taking on more debt without even knowing whether it will help you or not. Get into the field first, then decide whether more education makes sense.

Of course, this doesn't apply to medicine, law, clinical tracks, or fields where an advanced degree is literally required. But if you're in business, data/analytics, most sciences, computer science, teaching, etc., look for internships, co-ops, entry-level roles, research experience - anything that gives you real exposure. Turn that into a job, learn what the market rewards, and then get a master's if you still think it's necessary.

We're not in pre-2012 anymore. Your skills, experience, and ability to do the work matter more than stacking another degree on top of a bachelor's just because you're anxious about starting.

This has been sitting in my head for a while, and a conversation at a cookout a few weeks ago is what finally made me write it.

My friend Matt and I have known each other since college. Same major, similar grades, and our first jobs were at very similar places. We're both 36 now. Matt has had 7 jobs in 12 years. I've had 3. He makes about $55k more than I do. On LinkedIn, he looks like he's crushing it. But a few Sundays ago, after his third beer, he told me he feels like he's running in place.

New company, same adjustment period, same 5 months where he has to prove himself, same office politics but with new names on the org chart. He said, "Every time I make more money just to feel the same feeling."

By contrast, I've been at my current company for almost 5 years (project management, a mid-sized industrial supplier in the Midwest). I know the org, I know the people, and I've helped build a few things I'm honestly proud of. But I'd be lying if I said I don't currently feel like I want a change. It's like the learning curve flattened out about 18 months ago, and now I'm just repeating the same playbook over and over. My wife keeps sending me job posts and I keep closing the tab.

Then I talked to my other friend Jenna, who has been at her company for about 11 years. Eleven years. And yet she doesn't seem trapped or stalled at all. She's moved between teams within the company, basically shaped her role herself over time, and she genuinely seems happy with what she does. I asked her if she ever thinks about leaving, and she looked at me like I was asking whether she was planning to move to the moon.

So now I'm looking at three people.

Matt jumps from job to job and has money but no roots. I stayed where I am and have roots but feel like I'm standing still. Jenna stayed where she is and somehow has both. What is Jenna doing that Matt and I aren't?

I keep coming back to the idea that maybe it's not about the strategy itself. Maybe it's about whether that strategy fits the person. Matt might be the kind of person who likes movement and new problems, but he keeps jumping to the same type of companies, so the new feeling wears off quickly. And maybe my problem isn't that I have to leave; maybe I need to find what Jenna found: a better way to grow inside a place that still suits me.

But how does someone know that? Because the phrase "know yourself" is nice, but it literally doesn't tell you anything!!!