Work Sucks

[bluengreen]

Let me get this straight ... We collectively agree to leave our families and slave away for 8+ hours a day. Come home totally spent, without the time or energy to meaningfully connect with spouse and kids, let alone do the chores and all the other life management that comes with being a respectable member of society. Entertainment complex anesthetizes us with shitty TV, superhero movies, and doom scrolling; schools socially condition our kids in this rat race from age 5; psychiatry drugs them into submission when they start experiencing ADHD, depression, and anxiety caused by this sick culture. What a fucking scam.

Who actually thinks this is the best way to live? If we reduced the work day to 4-6 hours, that would be a start. Most companies produce useless sh!t anyway.

 

[grapedrink]

Yeah, it's lame. That's why schools punish independent thinkers who find more efficient ways of doing things ("show your work!" ) and question the system because if too many of us rebel, their way of doing things falls apart. So they condition to sit through a long day and follow orders doing busy work to prepare us for the next 4-5 decades of drudgery.

The key is to get more work done in less time. Helps if you work remote. However if you work a job with a high work load and/or are expected to be at your desk for the full 8-5 5x/week then you are kinda screwed. Best thing you can do is find another job at that point, and there has never been a better time in history for that than now.

Otherwise, if you have some stability the next step is to make investments that make money for you. That's the only way for us peasants to beat the system.

 

[Joshua2415]

 

[doc_flavonoid]

sorta related

when i was in high school i told my father that i thought money was human's worst invention.

he didnt miss a beat. looked at me over his coffee and said, no. surfing is human's worst invention.

he may have been because all i know now is that ive been failing miserably at retirement ever since

 

[Subway]

I would NOT be doing this if the trade offs weren’t absurdly worth it.
And I don’t have kids so I can bail whenever.

The Prussian education system desperately an overhaul

unless you love your work and/or make a lot of money, work sucks. It even sucks with the money sometimes

 

[bird.LA]

It even sucks with the money sometimes

Can confirm. I don't know how you keep doing this media sales sh!t Sub. It's fkn killing me right now.

 

[ElOgro]

sorta related

when i was in high school i told my father that i thought money was human's worst invention.

he didnt miss a beat. looked at me over his coffee and said, no. surfing is human's worst invention.

he may have been because all i know now is that ive been failing miserably at retirement ever since

You were both right.

When I got out of high school literally everything I needed fit in a backpack and a board bag.

You're off the grid like me, you’re gonna have a storage room of “just in case” stuff, along with your kid’s motos and gear, property maintenance stuff, the list is endless. Go looking for a pvc valve to replace a leaker in boxes full of fittings and junk and the one you need isn’t there. Next time you buy two. And on it goes.

 

[manbearpig]

I Feel lucky to enjoy what I do but it took a lot of hard work and patience to get to a point of flexibility. I’m glad I got there while still young but it definitely took a lot of patience.

 

[CutnSnip]

luck to be where im at but each and every day i get the feeling this isnt what im supposed to be doing with my time. then i want to buy something expensive and im like oh okay - thats why.

 

[Random Guy]

I Feel lucky to enjoy what I do but it took a lot of hard work and patience to get to a point of flexibility. I’m glad I got there while still young but it definitely took a lot of patience.

At what point did you realize you were meant to do what you do?
and how did that happen?

 

[manbearpig]

At what point did you realize you were meant to do what you do?
and how did that happen?

I tried a lot of different stuff in my teens-20’s but it was my late 20’s I just narrowed it down to the industry I liked. I kept an open and positive mindset; and just kept my nose to the grindstone knowing if I was patient and confident that I would find a niche it would work out. Going back to school for a relevant degree was ultimately what got me to where I am now. I found a company through school that had all the traditional paths one could take in my line of work but the uniqueness of a privately owned research lab. So I knew if I just stayed focused on my own path I could avoid the grind of moving into a sales position from production or the grind of being in production for the rest of my life.

 

[Subway]

I grew my book by 105% in 2022. (Granted a chunk of 2021 was still very much pandemic level sales) and now I have to do another 25% just to “hit budget”. I grew Q1 by 400 k and was still only 86% of budget

I still have to sell a million bucks of Q2 IN Q2 to make budget, and i have a healthy number for the quarter already. That’s a tall order but we have 8 weeks. It will be close

It’s always tough to hit budget after a big year, nobody’s getting in trouble. But normally we are tagged with 6-8% growth for budget. I’m veteran enough to NGAF but it’s hard on some of the newer guys who got in on the 2022 boom and are now facing big 2023 numbers they haven’t a prayer of making

If you are a proven earner who needs no rattan cane, the work life balance can be exceptional.

 

[keenfish]

I do between $20-30 million in annual sales and that isn't just a paper transaction like real estate and most other sales.
Then I have to ship the lumber to the jobsite... and get it right.
Talk about grind.
Fuckmerunning!

 

[grapedrink]

I grew my book by 105% in 2022. (Granted a chunk of 2021 was still very much pandemic level sales) and now I have to do another 25% just to “hit budget”. I grew Q1 by 400 k and was still only 86% of budget

I still have to sell a million bucks of Q2 IN Q2 to make budget, and i have a healthy number for the quarter already. That’s a tall order but we have 8 weeks. It will be close

Is your company Euro based The reason I ask is because my last company (US based founders/owners) called it a forecast, and when they were bought by a Euro company it became a "Budget". That simple change in nomenclature means more than you think at first glance. What goes from being an aspirational number with some built in wiggle room becomes a hard number that you have to hit just to stay afloat. And that's exactly how it played out

Ultimately you have to transition out of Trading Hours for Dollars. Time is the great equalizer because it's the one resource that nobody can buy. Find a way to make your dollars make dollars for you instead

 

[Subway]

Yeah I’m the seller, ceo, file trafficker, nag/pest to get things done promptly and correctly (both internally and externally) the photographer and the problem solver

The more you sell, the more chit there is that can go wrong. Each day can bring a big fat piece of ink; or a steaming pile of crap. Often both

 

[Subway]

Is your company Euro based The reason I ask is because my last company (US based founders/owners) called it a forecast, and when they were bought by a Euro company it became a "Budget". That simple change in nomenclature means more than you think at first glance. What goes from being an aspirational number with some built in wiggle room becomes a hard number that you have to hit just to stay afloat. And that's exactly how it played out

Ultimately you have to transition out of Trading Hours for Dollars. Time is the great equalizer because it's the one resource that nobody can buy. Find a way to make your dollars make dollars for you instead

Nah the “budget” thing came about in the 90s. Euphemism for quota for the reasons you mentioned. There are some nuances to it that make it make sense in normal years; but this weird “post covid boom”’year is a mess. Hard to forecast in our biz

if you don’t make budget occasionally it’s fine. If you are always missing you just aren’t showing up and you are probably not going to last

 

[grapedrink]

Nah the “budget” thing came about in the 90s. Euphemism for quota for the reasons you mentioned. There are some nuances to it that make it make sense in normal years; but this weird “post covid boom”’year is a mess. Hard to forecast in our biz

Vastly different industry but similar boat. New owners thought that you could simply grow the business by 15-20% YOY with no extra resources for marketing, R&D, etc and by hiring salespeople who are willing to work for 70% of the median going rate. I bounced and was like . . .

 

[ElOgro]

I do between $20-30 million in annual sales and that isn't just a paper transaction like real estate and most other sales.
Then I have to ship the lumber to the jobsite... and get it right.
Talk about grind.
Fuckmerunning!

You could be offloading and carrying the lumber at the job site and eating toxic burritos off the catering truck. Sissy.

 

[PRCD]

Vastly different industry but similar boat. New owners thought that you could simply grow the business by 15-20% YOY with no extra resources for marketing, R&D, etc and by hiring salespeople who are willing to work for 70% of the median going rate. I bounced and was like . . .

View attachment 152961

I love to see this.

edit: I got an extra rep b/c of your poast

 

[Subway]

Hey I would get out and post my own campaigns but I’d literally be arrested, if I wasn’t killed first by my own namesake in a twist of irony worthy of Wolfe