A reader writes:
I work for the largest employer in region and have been in my current job for over four years. For four years, I have been telling myself that my job will get better but it hasn’t. My employer is a mess with constant scandals in the news, reorganizations and firings with no explanations, and poor outcomes. In my role, I am being underutilized, don’t have enough work to keep me busy, and have no one to advocate for me due to the numerous leadership changes. The morale is terrible at work and I feel like this job is destroying my self-confidence and sucking the life out of me. When I actually have work related to what I was hired to do, I enjoy the work. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case, so most days I hate my job. For reference, I was in my previous position for 10 years and supervised 22 individuals and oversaw numerous multi-million dollar projects at a time. Now I don’t supervise anyone and my projects are much smaller.
However, my job works great for my family and personal life. My job pays very well (especially given how little work I have), has great health insurance, and lots of vacation and sick time. I am also part of the state retirement system which I already have 17 years into, and if I stayed in my job for 13 more years I could retire with 30 years of service at age 55. I also have significant flexibility with my hours which allows me to pick up my elementary age kids from school, attend school events during the day, etc.
Do I stay at my current job because it works well for my family, has great pay and benefits, and I can potentially retire young or is it time for me to look for a new job? Unfortunately, I know I will not find another job in this region that pays as well or has as good of benefits. We moved here four years ago to be close to our families and do not want to move out of the area as we love our personal lives here. If I should stay in my current job, what strategies should I employ to make my work days more enjoyable and tolerable?
I get a lot of “should I stay or should I go?” questions and my answer is usually “you have nothing to lose by looking around — and applying other places doesn’t commit you to leaving.” And while I think that’s true here too, I suspect you know what you’re talking about when you say you won’t find another job in your area with benefits like this, particularly the retirement benefits. But it wouldn’t hurt to look around and make sure that’s true because if you’re able to find something that gets pretty close, presumably that would change your calculation significantly.
My answer to these types of questions is also normally “when a job is destroying your self-confidence and sucking the life out of you, it’s time to go” … but it’s also true that sometimes there are ways to mentally reframe things for yourself so that’s not happening.
Sometimes you can decide that you’re just going to see your job as a job, that you’re being paid to be there and do the work you’re assigned rather than investing any more deeply than that. In theory, you could decide to accept that the many downsides of the job aren’t going to change, to stop caring that they won’t, and to focus on the reasons you’ve chosen to be there anyway. That’s easier said than done, but when you can pull it off, it can be a pretty powerful change.
But you’re also not a failure if you can’t do that! Sometimes things are bad enough that it’s truly impossible to do that. Or you might be the type of person who simply won’t be happy if you have to go to a job every day that you can’t be invested in. But in that case, I do think that you should seriously consider leaving. If you were just saying “meh, I don’t like it here,” that would be different — and the upsides to you still might make it worthwhile to stay. But you’re saying you’re miserable and it’s affecting your mental health. If there’s no way to change that, I do think you need to get out.
If that’s the case, keep in mind that the choice here isn’t between (a) being miserable but well paid with health insurance and (b) being happy but poorly paid and with no benefits. It’s probably between (a) being miserable but well paid with great benefits and (b) being happy with pay/benefits that are decent but just not as unusually stellar as you have now. In other words, the gap between what you get if you stay and what you get it if you leave is probably smaller than you might be fearing.
should I leave my awful job with great pay and great benefits? was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.
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