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I bitched out an executive for not knowing any of his underlings, now I have a meeting and don’t know what to say. Any advice on how to handle it?
I (32 M) recently had an opportunity to give feedback on my work experience with an executive (39 M). I really don’t have many opportunities to speak with executives, mostly because my direct boss (37 F) excludes me from them (she bottlenecks and gatekeeps). Truthfully, I hate my job. It’s at a failing property that has an expiration date. I make the least amount in my department and I work circles around employees who have “seniority”. My job is also filled with nepotism, and play favorites.
I felt tired of being overlooked and disregarded. Especially since I took on someone’s job for more than half a year and I was being treated like dirt. I vocalized some frustrations, one of them being their lack of interest in our development , and just us overall as people. Well, they listened. Now we all have one on ones. Problem is, I don’t even care about them at this point. I’m just staying until I get a new job. But now I’m wondering what to say? I still want my point across because it is the truth.. also I’m not a doormat.
Any advice on what I should say?
Jobadvisor
Sounds like you're in a rough spot — burned out, underpaid relative to your effort, watching favoritism happen, and now stuck with a meeting you didn't really want but asked for indirectly. Let's figure out how to make it work for you, since you're going to it either way.
First, decide what you actually want out of it. You said two things that pull in different directions: you're checked out and job hunting, but you also don't want to be a doormat and you want your point heard. Both can be true. You don't have to pretend to be invested in a five-year development plan to also be honest and direct. Think of this less as "performance review" and more as "one data point I get to control."
A few ways this meeting could go, depending on what matters most to you:
If you want to protect your reputation/references: Keep it professional and forward-looking. Talk about workload, being handed a coworker's responsibilities for six months without adjustment in pay or title, and ask directly what that path looks like. This gives you leverage even if you leave — sometimes it prompts a raise or promotion offer, sometimes it just gets it on record that you raised it.
If you want to say the true thing and let the chips fall: Be honest but specific, not just "you don't know us." Concrete example: "I took on [X responsibilities] for six months. I don't think that was recognized appropriately, and I'd like to understand how the team defines who gets opportunities here." Specifics land better than general complaints and are harder to wave off.
If you're mentally already gone: You can keep it short and low-effort without being rude — general updates, no oversharing, redirect personal stuff back to work topics. Nobody can force enthusiasm out of you.
A few concrete things that tend to work in these one-on-ones regardless of which route you pick:
- Lead with one specific ask or observation, not a list of grievances. One clear point lands; five vague ones read as venting.
- Facts over feelings when talking to the exec — "I covered this role for 6 months without a title/pay change" hits differently than "I feel disregarded," even if both are true.
- Decide in advance if you want to name your boss's gatekeeping directly or leave it implied. Naming it can be effective but also has more risk — think about whether you want that fight right now given you're already leaving.
- You don't owe him a roadmap for your career at this company. It's fine to be vague about your plans if he asks.
One thing worth being honest with yourself about: since you're planning to leave anyway, this meeting has low stakes for you and actual stakes for him — he asked for feedback and is trying to act on it. That gives you more leverage than it might feel like right now.
Want help drafting a couple of specific lines you could actually say in the room, tailored to whichever route feels right to you?
Not sure if this belongs here, but my (17M) dad claims I simply cannot make a livable wage off of luthiering (repairing and building guitars), and that software development/IT is the *only* way for me to go. Any input?
For the past year it's been a genuine dream of mine to start my own luthiering business/guitar shop and be able to live off of that here in Norway, with no expectations of some massive business boom or anything, just a decent comfortable income after I put in the work to grow and settle. Except when I pitched this to my dad, he immediately shut it down, claiming the only way for me to achieve a "comfortable" income is by going to university and studying IT.
Some much needed context, my dad ALSO happens to be a conservative trump supporter and a billionaire bootlicker, and while he's definitely experienced when it comes to business, I'm afraid his perspectives on this topic may have been somewhat clouded by his political views...
I personally feel like I'd be able to make it? I'm starting early at 17 already building my first guitar, going from scratch soon, I have great access to tools meaning I won't be lacking in experience by the time I've barely hit 18. I obviously know it's not as simple as just getting good at something and expecting the money to come flooding in, and that I need a clear plan, but he didn't seem keen to even consider it.
Jobadvisor
This is a real tension, and honestly, both things can be true at once: lutherie can be a viable path, and your dad might be right to worry, without either of those having anything to do with his politics.
On the actual question — can you make a living as a luthier in Norway?
The honest picture: it's a small, niche field. Norway doesn't have a big established educational pipeline for it either — Nordic instrument-maker training has historically been thin, with efforts underway to build out proper trade-education programs modeled on the German system, and Norway's own instrument-repair scene traces back to individual craftsmen setting up shop rather than a formal school system. That's not "impossible," it's "you'll likely need to piece together your own training" — via apprenticeship, a program abroad (there are respected schools in the UK, France, Spain, US), or self-teaching plus mentorship, since a dedicated Norwegian luthier degree mostly doesn't exist yet.
Income-wise, most full-time luthiers make a living through some mix of: repair work (steadier income than building from scratch), building custom instruments (slower, higher margin but harder to scale), and often a day job or adjacent work (working for a music shop, an orchestra's instrument department, teaching, touring as an instrument tech) especially in the early years. Very few people support themselves purely on high-end custom builds from year one — most build the reputation and client base over 5-10+ years while doing repair work as the bread and butter.
So your dad isn't wrong that it's a tough, slow-to-monetize path. He's overstating it if he's saying it's literally impossible or that IT is the only option — that's not true, it's just riskier and slower than a CS degree with a predictable salary ladder.
One reframe that might help the conversation with him: you don't have to choose between "pure luthier dream" and "pure IT" as an either/or right now at 17. A lot of people in trades like this keep a stable income stream (including tech, which pays well and is remote-friendly) while building the luthier business on the side until it can support them — then transition once it's proven out. That's not selling out the dream, it's derisking it. It might also be an easier sell to your dad than "I'm skipping university entirely."You're 17 with a year of head start already and access to tools — that's a genuinely good position to be in, better than most people who eventually go into this field. That's worth being confident about, even while taking the "is this realistic" question seriously.
One last thing: you brought up your dad's politics as a possible reason for his skepticism. I'd let that go, honestly — not because it's wrong to notice it, but because it doesn't help you here. If you walk into round two of this conversation implying his objection is really about Trump, he'll get defensive and stop engaging with your actual plan. If you walk in with data and a concrete hybrid path, you're arguing on the strongest possible ground regardless of what's driving his skepticism.
Lost my job, what now ?
It’s a weird feeling. One day there’s constant teams calls, deadlines and passive aggressive emails. Then all of a sudden, you lose your job. The next morning, there’s nothing.
I woke up this morning, it was calm and quiet. There was a noticeable lack of stress. No anxiety provoking teams ring tone, no professionally threatening emails from my line manager, no constant deadlines and always feeling behind. All replaced by the sound of a train in the distance and birds chirping outside. The contrast is staggering. I almost don’t know what to do with myself.
Still things feel abnormal. I’ve heard my teams ringtone go off several times today, I know that can’t be the case because I’ve returned all my equipment. I think I’m still reeling from my employer’s abuse.
I know I’ve got to start applying for new roles but I don’t want to start yet. Luckily I’ve got 6 months of savings, but I think this also means I won’t get many unemployment benefits. But with this newfound peace and quiet, I feel like I never want to go back to a 9-5.
What do I do ?
Jobadvisor
- Step away completely: Do not touch your resume, LinkedIn, or job boards for at least a full week. Your brain needs time to clear out the residue of your last role.
- Quiet the phantom stress: When you hear that phantom Teams call or feel a sudden surge of adrenaline, ground yourself physically. Go outside, grab a cold drink, or listen to those birds. Remind yourself: Nobody is waiting on me.
- Check your benefits anyway: Apply for unemployment regardless of your savings. In many jurisdictions, eligibility is based on prior earnings and the nature of your separation, not your bank balance. Don't leave money on the table that you've paid into.
- Anchor your days: Without a structure, days can blur together, which eventually breeds anxiety. Create simple anchors: wake up at a consistent time, go for a morning walk, and cook a good lunch.
- Audit your burnout: Write down what specific aspects of your last job destroyed your peace (e.g., micromanagement, always-on expectations, corporate politics) so you know what red flags to avoid next time.
- Contract / Freelance Work: Offers control over your hours and client selection, putting a barrier between you and corporate politics.
- Shorter Work Weeks / Remote Roles: Look specifically for companies with asynchronous communication styles, which eliminate the pressure of instant messaging pinging all day.
- Career Pivot: Ask yourself if it was the industry or just the environment that burned you out.
Husband is lost in his job search, how do I help?
My (38f) husband (38m) left his job two years ago because of miserable work conditions and decided to take a year or two to recover from that terrible experience to follow his passions and learn how to do game design while doing consulting work on the side.
Well, two years later and sadly as the economy has tightened the consulting roles are drying up, so he's back to looking for full time work. He loves game dev but let's not even talk about how bleak things are for that industry right now, it's not an option for steady employment, he'll just keep working on his games during his free time as a passion.
His experience is in IT but he doesn't have a computer science degree and his recent experience used fairly niche software, so he feels like he's out of the game.
In general he's feeling discouraged before he even starts looking in earnest. I keep telling him 20+ years of professional experience brings transferrable skills and a lot of maturity, but he's just feeling useless/unwanted.
Any advice for me as his partner? Any ways I could encourage him? Any easy ways for him to add to his skills in the meantime?
I'm having my own day of feeling discouraged/lost and don't want to put it on him so appreciate any advice you have.
Jobadvisor
1. Shift Your Support Strategy
- Separate "Listening" from "Problem-Solving": When he expresses feeling unwanted or useless, ask him directly: "Do you want to vent right now, or do you want me to help you brainstorm?" Often, jumping straight to reassuring him makes him feel like his very real fear is being dismissed.
- Be his "Fact Checker": Imposter syndrome relies on distorted narratives (e.g., "My tech stack is obsolete, so I'm worthless"). Help him separate his feelings from facts. The fact is he has 20 years of continuous problem-solving, adaptability, and professional reliability.
- Take care of your own cup: It is okay to tell him gently, "I love you and want to support you, but today I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed myself, so let's take a break from job-search talk tonight." Mutually agreed-upon "job-free zones" prevent the job hunt from swallowing your marriage.
2. Low-Friction Ways to Bridge His Skill Gap
- Target High-Demand, Tangible Certifications: Instead of broad learning, pick one short, industry-standard cert that immediately signals modern relevance on a resume:
- Cloud Fundamentals: AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner or Microsoft Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900). These take just a few weeks of studying and validate modern IT infrastructure knowledge.
- Agile/Project Management: Certified ScrumMaster (CSM) or CAPM. Showcases his 20 years of maturity and ability to lead teams or projects.
- Frame Game Dev as Modern Tech Experience: He hasn't been "idle" for two years. Building games requires logic, project management, performance optimization, and version control (Git). Frame his game dev work on his resume not as a gap or a hobby, but as Independent Software Project Development.
- Leverage the IT "Soft Skills" Advantage: Niche software skills fade, but IT operations management, vendor management, troubleshooting methodology, and cross-functional communication never go out of style. Emphasize senior roles like IT Project Manager, Systems Analyst, Implementation Specialist, or Technical Support Manager.
3. Tactical Ways You Can Help (Without Doing the Work for Him)
- Micro-Goals over Massive Job Searches: Looking at thousands of job postings is paralyzing. Ask him to commit to one small action per day: updating one section of his resume, reaching out to one former colleague, or doing 20 minutes of a cert course.
- The "Reconnection" Tour: Cold applying online with an unconventional resume is brutal right now. His strongest asset is his 20-year network. Encourage him to send low-pressure messages to old coworkers: "Hey [Name], catching up on life after spending time on personal projects. Looking to jump back into full-time IT roles. Would love to grab coffee/catch up on Zoom."
What do you do when there’s no entry level jobs anymore, and you might be on the verge of burnout?
I had put in a great deal of effort into my studies, to make sure that I’d get a good job and finally be financially secure. That kind of worked out… I have two degrees, a well-paying job, and I finally make enough to support myself. And yet, I’m miserable. I dislike my job. The work is not what I expected. I didn’t know what corporate is truly like. And my coworkers are cringy, egotistical, and lately, are showing clear signs of AI psychosis. I should also mention I’m one of the few women and I’m surrounded by tech bros who care very little about the ethical and environmental impact of AI, or at least they pretend they do under their corporate image.
And speaking of AI, the career I originally studied for has been replaced by “agentic workflows” and “vibe coding”, so I’m not learning anything new. I’m just going in circles, prompting Claude all day long, and somehow my workload has also increased. It’s paradoxical, isn’t it? How can I be creating more and more, but learning less and less?
And more importantly, how does one even begin shifting to a different job when there’s so few left and I feel as if I have no more skills to show? No more energy to build a whole new portfolio, resume, and so on, and to perform for each interview like a monkey in a circus…
Between my dislike for my coworkers and my planned career path essentially falling apart, I feel that everything I’ve worked so hard for has vanished. I don’t have a financial safety net, and I have loans to pay off. I hate that I’m peddling AI because my livelihood at this moment depends on it. I feel so stuck. I dread going to work, whether it be a weekday or the weekend.
I didn’t expect to feel this way in my mid-20s. The other day I was ranting to a friend about my situation, and she expressed that she’s worried for me. She mentioned that I haven’t said a single positive thing about this job since I got it. And she‘s right /:
I made an appointment with my GP to get a therapist and until then, I just really needed a space to rant, and maybe hear if other people are going through something similar... thanks for reading this far <3
Jobadvisor
1. Shift to "Quiet Preservation" Mode
- Lower the bar for your output: AI tools are artificially inflating expectations. Stop trying to produce at 100% capacity. Slow down your response times and hit "good enough" rather than perfection. Use the time you gain back to protect your nervous system.
- Detach emotionally from your toxic peers: You don't need to change the tech bros, and you don't need to fit into their culture. Treat their behavior like background noise. Limit your interactions strictly to brief, polite, professional exchanges.
- Clock out fully: When your workday ends, step away entirely. Do not check emails or Slack. Use your off-hours to aggressively rest, eat well, and do things that make you feel human again.
2. De-hypnotize Yourself from the "No Entry-Level Jobs" Trap
- Your core skills are human, not technical: You hold two degrees. You know how to solve complex problems, synthesize information, manage projects, and navigate high-stakes environments. Those transferable skills do not evaporate just because your day job degenerates into prompting an LLM.
- Look at adjacencies, not complete re-inventions: You do not need to build a massive new portfolio from scratch right now. Look for lateral moves into industries or roles where your ethics, critical thinking, and communication are valued over raw tech-bro output (e.g., tech policy, operations, digital ethics, specialized project management, domain-specific research, or non-profit tech).
- The job market is shifting, not dying: Roles that rely purely on assembly-line coding or basic content generation are shrinking, but roles requiring strategic oversight, human judgment, regulatory compliance, and cross-functional coordination are growing.
3. Take Micro-Steps (Without the "Circus Performance")
- Set a 15-minute daily boundary: Dedicate no more than 15 minutes a day to non-work prep—whether that's browsing job boards just to see what exists, updating one bullet point on your master resume, or reaching out to a friend in a different industry.
- Focus on financial stabilization: Map out your loans and baseline living costs. Knowing the exact date you could survive on a slightly lower-paying, lower-stress job (or knowing how long your emergency buffer would last if you had to take a break) strips away the existential terror.
- Build an escape pod, not an empire: Your next move doesn't have to be your dream career. It just has to be a safer, healthier stepping stone out of your current environment.
My health is collapsing. How do I manage my career now?
I am in a very precarious situation. Around last year I had a very bad episode where I couldn’t breathe suddenly. Later I found out thanks to chronic blood pressure my heart’s left ventricular is damaged too severely and cannot relax. The options to treat this condition are too daunting. More importantly, they’re not really proven to work for someone at my age (26 y.o). Last month, I had another health disaster. I have an acute kidney failure and require kidney dialysis treatment for at least 6 months.
Things are just looking bleak and unsolvable. No one knows a thing about this. I left my latest job after I realised I couldn’t handle work at this state. I’m now offered a great position at a bank I’ve been dreaming to work at for years. Whether I can accept or not depends on how willing I am to neglect my health. It can get very painful easily and I myself am not very cautious about the complications. I’m already depressed about being stuck between clinics & home. Rejecting this current offer at least for a few months means a golden opportunity is lost. Going through this process seems depressing enough. I talked to a doctor about it, he said that preferably I shouldn’t be working for the time being. But given how painful recruiting has been, I’m not sure if I can find some middle ground.
Thoughts?
Jobadvisor
1. Reframe the Offer: Pause, Don't Destroy
- Request a Deferred Start Date: Reach out to the recruiter or hiring manager and explain that you have encountered an urgent, unexpected medical situation that requires immediate short-term treatment over the next few months. Request to push your start date back (e.g., by 3–6 months). Frame this as a commitment to ensuring you are operating at 100% capacity when you join.
- Explore Part-Time or Hybrid Flexibility: If a full deferral isn't possible, ask if the role can temporarily start as part-time, project-based, or fully remote to accommodate a medical treatment schedule.
- Protect Your Privacy: You are not legally or professionally required to disclose specific diagnoses like kidney failure or heart conditions. Keep it professional and high-level: "I am managing an acute, temporary medical condition that requires a intensive treatment protocol over the next few months."
2. The Reality of Working on Dialysis
- Dialysis Exhaustion is Real: In-center or home hemodialysis causes significant fluid shifts and blood pressure fluctuations. Post-dialysis fatigue ("dialysis washout") often leaves patients severely fatigued for hours after a session.
- Cardiac Strain: Because your heart's left ventricle cannot relax efficiently, sudden stress, fluid retention, or exhaustion directly increases the risk of fluid in your lungs and severe shortness of breath.
- Schedules Require Precision: Dialysis schedules are rigid (typically 3 times a week for 3–4 hours per session). Trying to balance a high-pressure banking role without formal workplace accommodations (like remote days or flexible hours) will rapidly lead to medical emergency.
3. Shift Your Mindset on "Golden Opportunities"
- Your Skills Don't Expire: You proved you are qualified for top-tier banking roles by landing this offer at age 26. That talent, resume, and capability do not vanish while you take 6 months to stabilize your kidneys and heart.
- Prioritize Long-Term Viability over Short-Term Prestige: Pushing through a high-stress banking environment with unmanaged heart failure and acute kidney failure can permanently worsen your prognosis or lead to life-threatening complications. Getting through these 6 months of dialysis and stabilizing your heart is what unlocks the next 40 years of your career.
Next Steps to Take Today
- Speak with your Nephrologist and Cardiologist again: Ask them directly: "If I request workplace accommodations or a 4-month start deferral, can you provide a formal medical note supporting my request?"
- Contact the Bank's HR/Recruiter: Initiate the conversation about pushing back your start date before making any decision to decline or blindly accept.
- Connect with Medical Social Workers: Dialysis clinics have dedicated social workers who specialize in helping patients navigate employment rights, disability benefits, and career preservation during treatment.