My cohort and I are coming up to—or already in—our mid thirties. It’s traditionally the time where we’d start rising from the junior ranks into management or mid level roles.
It’s been interesting to watch the reactions of different friends to this. Most are not dead set on advancement. We can see what these new roles entail: unpaid overtime, where you’re expected to solve the issues you’re responsible for, however long it takes. Increased stress that comes with being where the proverbial buck stops. Less time for hobbies and families, and the free time you do get is often overcast with the expectation of further problems at work.
There are obviously benefits as well: increased salary, the satisfaction that comes from further responsibility successfully managed, the ego-food of managing people.
I think questioning whether it’s right for you and your life in particular, though, is well worth it. I’ve known for half a decade that for me, it isn’t.
Fretting over meeting payroll each month so your employees can feed their families. Needing to land that next project at the risk of letting people go. Being on call for any disaster that might strike the company over a weekend. Worrying that you and your family will be okay is exhausting, stressful and miserable. Worrying that your actions might mean friends’ and coworkers’ families might not be okay is a different flavour of pain entirely.
This doesn’t mean I’m against progress, against learning new skills, against finding new clients in new areas and new industries. I’m not against adapting to these rapidly changing times, designing and building more complicated, beautiful things. It simply means that a certain type of growth, the never-enough kind, the kind that needs numbers to go up—income, employees, size, reach, scale, importance—just ain’t for me.
We live in a society obsessed and dependent on growth. It’s a huge relief checking out of it.
