I (23M, American) feel completely paralyzed from a career perspective because I have no idea what the hell to do. If I choose the wrong degree program, I have to pay back all the debt with nothing to show for it. Even if I get a job, there’s no telling how long that will last. Everything keeps changing so fucking fast and it seems like any field I could go to college for could cease to be viable by the time I finish. On top of that, I have chronic health conditions to worry about that limit what I can even do.
(Edit: Basically I have POTS and a neck injury, so it’s hard to do physical labor and I suffer from dizziness, brain fog, and fatigue from being up for an hour or so. I don’t know my exact limits yet, since the severity of my condition varies by day and there appear to be ways to partially recover from the fatigue without having to lay down.)
I think stuff like urban planning and designing walkable environments would be cool, but I’m not sure if that’s a viable path in 2027 and beyond. I also used to be interested in programming, but ever since AI and mass layoffs hit the scene, I’ve become disillusioned and stopped pursuing that path.
I used to feel like the world was stable and I could pick a career based on my passion and be fine. But ever since 2020, everything has felt increasingly more uncertain. The world seems to be losing its collective shit and that doesn’t appear to be changing anytime soon.
Is staking your sense of stability on your career the wrong way to think about this? Should I be trying to find close friends or some kind of supportive community that could act as a safety net? Or is everyone too hyperindividualist to look out for each other?
go find a really boring unglamorous job.
it will be stable.
the problem is people don’tw ant stable jobs that are boring. they want glamorous jobs with high salaries and from big name companies… and wonder why they can’t get those, but they won’t work for a small business because they ‘don’t pay enough’.
I’ve spent most of my life working for & in small businesses, and stability has never been part of the deal lmao
cool. i’ve had nothing but stability and stellar benefits.
but when i mention this people always say the paycheck isn’t enough and tell me how much more i could be making if i was working for a corporation.
State government jobs are often boring and stable. My degree sadly means nothing to my state job but it pays my rent.
For small businesses, pay is only part of the issue. Small business owners often get put on a pedestal in the States as the cornerstone of the economy, but they’re often petty tyrants who subject you to their whims for the most trivial things. At my previous corporate job, my process to take things of was:
Once it was approved, it was locked in, and quite difficult for my bosses to wiggle out of if they realize they needed more people present than anticipated for the time I would be away.
In contrast, my current job at a small business:
It’s the same song and dance if I need a doctor’s appointment or anything. I’ve also only gotten a $3/hr raise over 2.5 years there, since “We’re a small business, we can’t afford to give raises,” while the owner has acquired several new vehicles, gone on international vacations, bought and sold a boat, and generally thrown his money around on everything and anything but retaining his employees.
Small businesses can be decent jobs when run by the right people, but they’re miserable when the thinks the universe revolves around them, and anyone else is a secondary consideration, at best. You also lose several workers protections if your small business employer is small enough to be exempt from meeting basic requirements, like my current job doesn’t even have 10 employees, counting the owner and his son, so now FMLA protections for us if we fall seriously ill.
Climbing the corporate ladder and grinding 24/7 is a fool’s errand, but I’ve certainly found more stability in a corporate environment than most small businesses I’ve worked for, with superior working conditions and pay, provided you’re happy with doing a less prominent role. LIke, nah, I definitely don’t want to be plant manager at my previous job, but I would go back in a minute if Document Control offered me a job in batch reviewing. Set schedule, decent pay, minimal OT, solid benefits, and nice, boring work of reviewing paperwork for mistakes certainly isn’t glamorous, but it’ll do you fine and I’d take it over a small business position any day of the week.
cool. i’ve worked for small business my entire life had nothing but great benefits and great experiences.
the only major difference is lower pay than you’d get in corporate america, and most people I meet cannot look past that and cite that as the reason they could never work for one. my total compensation is actually on par or better than most corporate jobs.
and everyone i know who works corporate works 60+hr weeks and is miserable and never uses their ‘unlimited PTO’.
I wouldn’t mind being a garbage truck driver, but I do mind being forced to pee in a bottle to make a quota
pee in the trash