Does anyone else just work to live, and have no real desire to 'succeed' beyond living comfortably?

[Housey]

Remind me again how much you are paid?


In threads like this it's interesting to note (amongst the thinly-disguised humble-bragging) that comments about money not being everything tend to come from people with a fair amount of it. I appreciate that it's a lot more complicated than that, but it's easy to claim the family comes first (for example) when you could easily afford to reduce your hours and still be in the top ten percent. People who barely get enough to survive on may sometimes say the same, but nowhere near as much.

You miss my point I think and I've never told anyone exactly how much I earn so no reminder needed. I've had good times, I've had bad times and I prioritise things differently today than I did 20 years ago and would forgo material things to maintain the other things if I needed to. Because I don't today is irrelevant to the point as the fact is I've had to before and would again.

These threads tend to always end the same way. Those that believe they have debating with those who think they are unlucky because they don't or can't. Can't win really as to imply humble bragging is dismissive and suggests because in the eyes of some you have, your point is irrelevant as how could you possible know, which again shows a badly formed argument that assumes that people who might today be ok have always been ok. Fact is most people start very similar and some are just better at doing business, but that debate has happened a 1000 times already and ended with everyone with their heads up their ass.

 

[scotty365]

Basically, this is me. Yes, I'd love to be rich and have amazing cars etc., but I have a good job in an industry that I've been in for over 7-8 years now, I get paid a salary that I'd quite happily just stay on for the forseeable future. I don't want to take on more responsibility, of course I want to succeed at work and do well, but I don't really have any desire for that to take me anywhere. I don't love work, but I do love the company and people I work for/with.

People my age that I know and I've worked with obviously do have that drive, and one in particular is now a Commercial Director at a similar company, and clearly doing very well for himself.

I think a lot of it is lack of belief in what I can do, even though I do have moments where I realise I'm good at what I do, this lingering lack of belief must surely have held me back. I think about how I can change that but then I just realise that I'm happy with my work/life balance right now. I'm terrible with money and have debts to pay, so the obvious driver would be money I guess. I am living kind of comfortably in that I can afford to pay my debts off and still enjoy myself.

Sorry, I'm rambling, but does anyone else feel like this?

Yes, I empathise with you very much here - although you have a good relationship at work with everone much the same as I do, maybe the difference is that I believe I can do better in my career, however, I have a nagging doubt that maybe, just maybe, I'm not as good as I think I am.
You seem to have a similar realtionship with money as I do - the job I'm heading into will change that for me as it's a massive rise and I need it just to catch up with my friends in that reguard. I just can't leave it alone - I love my job but I feel that I can just take one more step up the ladder........but it scares the holy bejeesus out of me - the shop manager where I am now put his hand on my shoulder and said 'I know this decision has weighed heavy on you but you are going to be just fine, we are gutted to lose you but you have made your decision'. Even he has more confidence in me than I do of myself - it has made me ill to the point I have had more sick leave in the last week than I have combined in 4 years.

I would love to say that I will be happy with my income and job in the future, only time will tell.

Regards
Scotty

 

[101001101]

I think this is highly market / skill dependent, for example in I.T (I reliase this is a strictly I.T focused site, however....) the market and technology as a whole moves at an incredible pace (you don't need me to tell you that) and I think you really do need to keep up, this is where a home lab is vitally important. I think you can get away with this in certain areas, maybe VoIP being an example but it pays to keep up and expand knowledge I feel.

 

[Sandycheeks]

I sometimes feel like James McAvoy off Wanted with his attitude to all things mundane.

 

[dowie]

I think this is highly market / skill dependent, for example in I.T (I reliase this is a strictly I.T focused site, however....) the market and technology as a whole moves at an incredible pace (you don't need me to tell you that) and I think you really do need to keep up, this is where a home lab is vitally important. I think you can get away with this in certain areas, maybe VoIP being an example but it pays to keep up and expand knowledge I feel.

perhaps in some areas but in plenty of others it doesn't take much to keep skills up to date and the core skills perhaps won't have changed much if at all

I mean there are still people out there earning money coding VB, COBOL etc... if you really want to be lazy and find some skill set and stick with it then there are plenty of legacy systems out there that will require developers to make small enhancements, write small bits of code to fix minor issues etc... there are plenty of people out there seemingly not interested in learning any new technologies, ways of doing things and are happy to carry on just doing the same role until retirement.

 

[scotty365]

Time is money, so I suppose you are only truly rich if you have both.

This -

It's the main reason I took the plunge to move but the heavy down side is shift work, but then I'm working 3 days one wekk and 4 the next - I have 50% (on average) of the week to do whatever I like - do all the chores that the missus wants done. Seriously, I was fed up of working 6-7 day weeks to make ends meet, thats all I've done for the last 2 years, and while it suits many, I long to get quality time with the family and myself. Most of the fellas I work with do this because the salary for a basic week is poor, so the management allow unlimited overtime (up to 20 hours O/T isn't questioned for a normal week), it's not unusual to earn 30K to 35K for production staff and for team leaders that like to live at work 37K-40K but that takes a lot of hours.