i quit
i was working at one of the largest tech companies in the entire world and i was making more money
than i thought would ever be possible for myself to make i got free lunches every day i got free
snacks free drinks i got to travel the world they flew me to germany they flew me to ireland
i went to california many times i was doing a job that would make my parents proud and by
current societal standards it was a job that proved that i made it however the one little issue
with this whole thing is that i was completely miserable and yet it still took me eight years to
do something about it i'm going to share a little bit about my experience in quitting my great job i
have waited a year since quitting to make this video and i just felt like the time was right
i hope that sharing this can give you a different perspective and if you are in the same position as
me i hope that this can help you or in the very least make you feel like you're not so alone
so i went to business school and after i graduated i got a job in tech that was my
first job at a school i was super grateful to have that job i was making slightly more than average
which meant that i had enough money to live my life sustained my life a little bit of savings
and those were the pros but there were cons i was working insane hours i was super stressed
and to top that off i had a really toxic boss they were
horrible not only to me but to everyone that they managed over time i kind of just was sucking it up
because you know you can't leave especially if it hasn't been two years or three years because
that would be just like a red mark on your resume right have to do the right things for the resume i
think at that point it was a year and my boss to my surprise and delight left the company except
then came the next boss that i had at that company they were even worse than my original boss a snake
you could say after a year and a half of working at this company i really had just had enough so i
finally got another corporate job this is the job at the big tech company that i felt so blessed to
have i didn't think that there was ever a way that i could do anything other than corporate
so of all my possibilities this was the best possibility i could ever think of for myself
now the thing with working this type of job is that every year you get a pretty big
cash bonus and stock bonus and your salary especially if you get promotions can go up
and up and up and um over time that means that you just make well you make more money and you
also get more stock to the company so i felt so grateful to be in that position for the money
but i also felt like i was wasting my life literally one day at a time and that bleek
out look it never changed one of the main reasons that led me to want to quit corporate
was because of my realization around the lack of control you have with your bosses in eight years
of working corporate i had 10 bosses and of the 10 bosses only one was a truly good boss only one saw
my true skills in strategy nurtured it fought for me to get promoted fought for me to get pay raises
that were fair worked with me but also let me lead when the times were right only one was a truly
good leader only one was a truly good manager and all of these skills that i mentioned are
ceo type qualities and not that many people have them so that one in 10 statistic was really sad
to me it also was a similar statistic to what i saw with my friends and families and their
work situations as well so that lack of control sucks because what does that mean that you have
to do for the other 9 out of 10 bosses it meant that i had to prove myself over and over to show
that i was worthy to position myself in the right position with the right people to get the right
eyeballs to get what was fair in other words you could call that you need to play politics a lot of
people say that they find that really challenging for me it wasn't challenging i knew how to do it
my dad was a ceo so i knew how to do it it's just that it's exhausting you can't really let your
whole true self be seen and that's the part that i hated the most so i'll give you a little example
i've talked on here a little bit about how i have adhd and that's never limited me professionally
in my outputs or achievements however i did not think it would be politically wise aka
i thought it would be to my detriment to share with nine of 10 of my bosses that i have adhd
so obviously i didn't share it but how stupid is that and how much does that suck
basically means you can't show your true self you can't show your true weaknesses you can't
really be vulnerable at work because that will probably screw you most of the time based on those
statistics that i experienced so go to your work but don't show all of yourself don't be vulnerable
because that can screw you but make your money take that home buy your fancy house buy your car
go and travel have all the stuff that you want in life in having that job that makes you miserable
that makes your outlook on life really bad at least you're making the money that allows you to
live the life that you want and you can live out that life on the evenings and weekends except in
my experience i might be alone here but i wouldn't actually be happy on the evenings from monday to
thursday because monday to thursday evenings it's like there's work the next day fridays
were great friday nights awesome saturday mornings awesome but by the time it was like saturday night
that creeping feeling that the weekend's half over has already come in i'm a little bit sad on sunday
i'm like dang i'm really sad because tomorrow is monday and then it repeats over and over and
over and i would just do that and i did that for eight years straight and that's why my outlook was
so bleak i just couldn't get over it for some people i think you don't feel that way but if
you do feel like that then you know it's worth it right worth it for the money society pretty much
tells you that that's the price you have to pay to be successful but to me it's not worth it so many
people will actually work themselves to the bone and sacrifice even their weekends and evenings
i think if you dig deeper and deeper down i do think it was about achieving some sort of
success and deep down deeper than that it's really proving that you're worthy of success and deeper
deeper than that proving that you're worthy of love and by that what i really mean is worthy
of your parents love a lot of times it comes back to that and for me doing this fancy corporate job
was one of the first times ever that i was truly doing something that made my parents proud but let
me tell you you can do something that makes your parents proud and completely be letting yourself
down in life and wasting your life and if your motivation is solely to make your parents proud
and to prove that you're successful it's kind of like a paper bridge it's like self-worth that in a
breath can be knocked down and also if you felt something was missing before then you're still
gonna feel like something's missing after and you'll probably never really you might think that
you've filled that void but you probably haven't now i was truly desperate to have a life for
myself where i didn't dread my everyday working and two years ago i started this youtube channel
and my goal was like i mentioned to be able to make enough money for myself so that i didn't feel
the dread of working a typical corporate job and it took me two years to get to the point where i
was making maybe like a third of what i was making in my corporate job and at that point that's when
i quit and that was one year ago by the way now getting to the point of quitting was the hardest
thing i've ever done and you might think that it was the grind of the money that made it hard it
wasn't it wasn't the hard work it wasn't the fact that i didn't have a single day off for two years
the hardest part was that i didn't actually get any encouragement to do this
i didn't get any encouragement to quit or to have that as a goal i would say i got the support from
a couple people maybe one two people supported me now the difference between that is encouragement
is like i think it's a good idea for you to quit you should quit when the time is right
that's encouragement supporting is kind of like oh you want to quit okay like i support you in
quitting so i didn't get any encouragement mostly what i actually saw was fear from my loved ones
of me giving up what made me successful so essentially me giving up my worth and that was
really a hard pill to swallow however i am here to tell you that money does not make you successful
making your parents proud contrary to popular belief because i feel like that's very popularized
but making your parents proud also doesn't make you successful but the quality of your outlook on
life means so much more to be honest since i quit my corporate job i probably am five times more
stressed and i work way more hours but i don't have that dread and that makes the work that
i'm doing and how i'm spending my time every day feels so much more worth it i don't have the lack
of fear over whether or not i'll have a toxic boss i don't have to spend hours and hours preparing
presentations to make sure that when i present to like a vp he's seeing me in a positive light
and thinks that i'm smart i don't need to have one-on-ones with my boss where i need to prepare
what i'm gonna say those are all things that just brought me well not happiness i won't call that
that it brought me any happiness at all now i don't think that all companies are bad i
don't think all of them are toxic environments i don't think all of them want you to work yourself
to the bone and want the most out of you but i have kind of observed that a lot of businesses
well that is what that is exactly what what they're like countless times i've seen companies
letting go whole teams letting go whole division turning around three months later rehiring for the
exact same positions hiring new people paying them way more than existing more valuable more
knowledgeable employees not giving people raises unless they have a job in hand and are basically
ready to quit not promoting people that should be promoted asking people to sacrifice their personal
time but then turning around and firing them because they need to show better profit margins
for shareholders there's so many things like this that happen and this just doesn't sound like you
know the most loving enjoyable environment to be in sometimes it isn't like this and if you're
not in that type of position you are very lucky but a lot of times it is like that
it's a lot of times it is toxic it's chaotic and you have to play politics to get ahead and all in
all if you're in that type of toxic position over and over you're in it to either prove your worth
prove your worthiness of love and or to make money and here's the thing about money okay obviously
we need money to live our lives to sustain our lives to save for the future to have security
to care for our families and our livelihood but past a certain point
it doesn't really make a big impact on the quality of our lives it doesn't really add to
your self-worth it doesn't make you cooler it doesn't make you more lovable it might on the
surface but it doesn't actually deep down inside it also really doesn't help that there's so much
societal pressure to achieve because money's idolized success is idolized the fancy things
in life are so idolized but you really need at the million dollar house or the luxury car
because those things are certainly idolized you definitely will feel cooler if you have those
things to be honest i idolized those things a lot growing up i really wanted a cadillac
xlrv that was my dream car and as i thought about it more i reflected on it when i got
older and i realized that a lot of my wanting that stuff was actually at its root to do with
either influencing how people would see me or how even i would see myself and it's obviously
fine to have nice things in life it's just that everything should be in balance i'd also like to
mention that it wasn't actually those rich life aspirations that kept me in corporate for as long
as it did but what actually kept me was probably two things one was around this deep-seated fear
of financial security um feeling like i won't have enough money to retire i need more money just to
feel comfortable doing it to an extent obviously that's fine that's a smart decision to make but
on the other hand i had to work a lot on myself to really believe that if i work hard and i keep
working hard i will be provided for in this earth and then the other thing that was also really hard
was around having the people closest to me going from thinking that i make really good decisions
and i am really successful to thinking that maybe i make questionable decisions and maybe now i'm
less worthy of success or i am less successful or i am giving away the thing that makes me
successful in their eyes that was very hard to overcome for me especially after having the
position that brought that sentiment of like i'm making people proud and if there is a deep-seated
reason for why you're working so hard in a bad environment while still having a feeling of dread
or while dreaming of doing something different whether that be dreaming of working for yourself
or working for a startup or doing something completely different even just at a different
company i want to encourage you then to dig deep and figure out what's holding you back what's
stopping you because if it's anything i mentioned in this video then your life is being driven
by something that is unlikely to bring you contentment i believe that what is
the most important is doing what's right for you what's right for your soul and what's the most
likely to bring you contentment in life on this channel i do videos about home projects
other things that i find interesting but the real purpose that i haven't actually vocalized before
although people who do watch me would see undertones of this my real purpose is to kind
of inspire people to think about things a little bit differently to question the limits that our
friends families and society at large place on us about what we should and shouldn't do
how we should and shouldn't think to also look at the world and see wonder and opportunity
and also to just take life a little bit slower at whatever pace is right for you i feel so thankful
to be able to be in this position to have had this opportunity i'm so happy that i get to share with
you i really hope that this video helped some of you if you're in a similar position to me
and you're working towards quitting your corporate job if you're in a corporate job and it's not
anything that i described here at least i hope that this gives you some insights maybe you have
some friends or family that are in this type of position um so thank you so much for watching and
i will see you next week please don't forget to like this video and subscribe love you bye