I'm 29 and currently make around $78k working in corporate communications.

Got approached about a position paying $130k for a CEO at a midsize company. Went through two interviews and found out the actual job is pretty much managing his entire public personality.

LinkedIn posts, replies to comments, congratulating employees, sharing personal stories, even writing opinions on industry news. All under his name. Apparently he doesn't have time for any of it but wants to appear more involved and approachable.

The recruiter called it executive communications, which I know is an actual career. But during the second interview they made it clear he wouldn't even be reviewing most of what I write.

I'm having trouble deciding whether this is a great opportunity or a really weird direction to take my career.

Would you consider this legitimate experience for future communications roles? Because explaining that I spent 3 years pretending to be somebody's CEO on LinkedIn sounds ridiculous.

I spent the last four years being the undisputed workhorse of our operations department. I was the one who fixed the broken vendor pipelines, worked late during client emergencies, and trained every single onboarding class. When our department lead resigned in November, I figured the promotion was a no-brainer.

They passed on me and hired an external guy who spent his first two months asking me how to pull basic internal metrics. During a casual lunch last week, my manager finally let his guard down. He told me: "Honestly, if I promoted you, my entire department would fall apart because you are the only one who actually knows how to run this place."

I sat there staring at him while my salad sat untouched. Being indispensable is the fastest way to get TRAPPED. If you are too good at the gritty, load-bearing work, they will never move you into leadership because replacing you is too inconvenient for management.

I stopped being the office savior on Monday morning. I deleted my weekend Slack notifications, stopped jumping onto unassigned tickets, and started letting broken processes sit until someone officially asks for them in writing. Its crazy how much loyalty gets weaponized against women who keep the lights on. Why should being competent at your job be the exact reason your career stalls? Why is this even a thing?

About 6 months ago, I took an opportunity with a much higher salary than my last job. At my last job I was swamped with work, in office 5 days a week, and in a much smaller firm, but I enjoyed being busy every day. Now at this job, I spend pretty much all day with nothing to do. I ask for work constantly, but my co workers are inundated with tasks they can’t always delegate to me, and my manager just keeps telling me “the work will pick up it will I promise” and now that i’m approaching the 6 month mark i’m starting to lose hope. I commute almost an hour each way, and spend $10 a day on train station parking. I am grateful for my one WFH day on fridays because atleast then I can do things around the house and feel somewhat productive. But the other 4 days of the week, I come into the office to just sit here and take up space. I feel as if I have no purpose at this job, despite being told in the interview process that there was a great amount of work that would need to be done that my co-workers simply don’t have time for. I genuinely feel as if it’s taking a toll on my mental and physical health as i’m exhausted every day from nothing. And I know I sound silly and ungrateful to complain about being paid a great salary, with great benefits to do jack all day because I know that’s some peoples dream. But I genuinely don’t know how much more of it I can take. Is this normal? How do people deal with this?? I feel like i’m going insane since it just has not picked up or gotten better. I know I am qualified, capable, and have more than enough work ethic to want to do more but no matter how hard I try nothing comes to fruition here. I’m consumed by the thought of this being my life forever and it makes me so sad.

Offered the team lead position on Thursday. It came with a 7% salary bump, exempt status, and the unspoken expectation of being on call for weekend fires and attending 25 hours of useless sync meetings every week.

I did the math on my actual hourly rate, looked at how miserable our current director looks every single day, and politely declined. Told them I prefer staying strictly IC because I genuinely enjoy the hands-on technical work.

You would think I insulted their mothers. My manager spent twenty minutes trying to figure out what was "wrong" with me, asking if I had personal issues at home or if I was planning to quit. Even a couple of senior coworkers caught wind of it and pulled me aside like I was throwing away my entire future.

It feels like corporate culture has conditioned people to believe that if you aren't actively trying to trade your sanity for a marginally shinier title, you must be clinically depressed. i just want to do my 40 hours, get paid, and close my laptop at 5 PM without dreaming about spreadsheets. Is not wanting to climb the ladder really that radical now?

Hi,

I graduated with a bachelor degree in business. Graduated years ago. I have been unemployed all my life. I literally never worked a single job my entire life. I’m upset with that and I feel like I lost it. Some of my peers even called me a “loser.” I’m terrified of turning 30 and remaining unemployed especially with AI displacing entry level jobs even professional ones. I am on the spectrum and got some low motivation issues. What should I do?

I work in operations at a company with around 60 employees. My director recently offered me a management position with a $25k raise, which would've been an easy yes under normal circumstances.

The catch is they're restructuring our department and eliminating 3 positions. If I accept, I'll be expected to evaluate the team and recommend who stays. HR will handle the actual layoffs, but my input will carry a lot of weight.

I've worked alongside these people for almost 4 years. One of them literally trained me when I started.

My director keeps framing it as a great opportunity to prove myself as a leader, but I'm struggling to see how I could manage the remaining team after being involved in that decision.

Has anyone taken a promotion under similar circumstances? Feels like I'm being offered a better career at the expense of my reputation with everyone I work with.

I graduated from college about 18 months ago and got a job as an engineer at a small company. I was excited because I'd be the only engineer, and during the interview, they presented all these new things they wanted to do. The first few months were great. I had plenty of engaging projects and challenges, stayed busy without being overwhelmed, and felt like I'd found the perfect job.

Eventually, I started working on what is by far our largest and most complicated project. It'll likely span multiple years, with dozens of smaller projects along the way. One of the first steps required purchasing new capital equipment. I did extensive research, presented the best options to the GM and company president, and they thought everything looked great and wanted to move forward.

Then the company owners got involved. There are three of them, and they essentially inherited ownership when the founder retired. None have ever worked here or have much technical knowledge. Despite previously supporting the project, they suddenly put everything on hold when it came time to purchase the equipment. They bombarded us with questions, many of which were incredibly basic or things we'd already considered. One issue is that it all came from AI. The main owner, who's around 70, seems to believe AI is all-knowing and infallible. We'd carefully answer every question and explain the technical details to get him up to speed on a subject he knows nothing about, resolving every concern, but nothing has moved forward.

That was about eight months ago. The president and owners still meet occasionally to discuss it, but all I hear is that they're "still considering it." I don't know what the real issue is. The investment is around $200k, which sounds significant, but three of our four largest customers, representing about 40% of our sales, are asking for this capability. Based on the volume they're projecting, we'd recover the investment in roughly 3–6 months. From a business perspective, it seems like a no-brainer. My only theory is that the owners are content collecting their monthly profits and don't want to take any risks to grow the company. I'm not the only one. The GM has said the same explicitly and the president has implied that he's correct. So its a big divide not just between engineering and the owners, but even between upper management and the owners.

The problem is that this is seriously limiting my professional growth. This project was supposed to take up like 70-80% of my time. Without it, I often have very little to do and spend my days trying to stay productive while feeling like I'm wasting everyone's time.

I'm not sure what to do. I genuinely like my coworkers, the pay is great for someone this early in their career, the benefits are solid, and I enjoy the work when I actually have projects to tackle. I don't necessarily want to leave, but I'm wondering if I should start looking elsewhere (maybe that'll wake them up). Ideally, I'd stay and see this project through, but I'm not in a position where I directly interact with the owners and have no idea how to get things unstuck.

[edit] First off thanks to several of you for your input. It's given me a few things to think about and I have found that helpful. Next, I want to clarify that this is not my idea or my proposal. This is something they were discussing for years before I was hired. Hiring me was supposed to be the first step in making it actually happen. The owners knew it was coming and allegedly even said they wanted to start investing more back into the company. So it is not like I sprung this on them unwarranted. It is also not just a "me"/engineering problem. We've involved the finance manager, the sales manager, the general manager, and the president. We all agree this is the right way forward and makes sense from a business perspective. It's just that this problem impacts me the most. The sales guy can still sell the products we already make, theres obviously still plenty of stuff for the GM and president to do to run the company, but if we're not going to innovate what is the point of an engineer? I guess what I'm trying to say is that we've analyzed everything we possibly can, and made every argument we can currently think of. What I want to know if if anyone has had any similar situations should I move on, should I wait another 6-months, should I propose we abandon this project and move onto another smaller one (I have some ideas I just don't want to add them to the list). So, thoughts?

I've wanted to get into trade for quite some time and i'm particularly interested in plumbing, but i've been hesitant because of my size and people in my life have been discouraging or look at me like i'm crazy. I'm not easily grossed out by things, I'm stubborn and have a lot of willpower, i'm not the strongest yet but I'm also interested in strength training. But practically speaking, does it sound like a lost cause? I imagine there might be some limitations to what I can do by myself, but is there a place for me in this field?

I’ve been working in corporate marketing for several years and have steadily progressed into management. On paper, my career is going well. I’ve received promotions, increased my salary, and taken on more responsibility.

The problem is that I’m completely burned out, and it has very little to do with the actual work.

My company has undergone significant restructuring, with layoffs and departures resulting in increasingly large workloads being distributed among fewer employees. Responsibilities that previously belonged to multiple people are now being consolidated into individual roles, and the expectations haven’t really adjusted to reflect that.

On top of everything, the company is pushing a return-to-office mandate that would require me to relocate. It’s becoming difficult to justify uprooting my life for a job that’s already taking a toll on my mental well-being.
Recently, I came across an opportunity managing a small outdoor recreation business. The position involves overseeing daily operations, interacting with customers, managing a small team, and spending a considerable amount of time outdoors.

It’s a completely different environment from what I’m accustomed to, and the idea of doing something tangible, physical, and relatively straightforward sounds incredibly appealing.

The catch is that it would involve taking roughly a 40–50% pay cut. $90k - about $50k

I’m not necessarily looking to abandon my professional career permanently. I have experience and skills I could return to, and I could potentially supplement my income with freelance work. But part of me wonders whether stepping away from the corporate world for a year or two might be exactly what I need.

There’s also the psychological aspect of walking away from a career you’ve spent years building. It feels counterintuitive to voluntarily move backward financially after working so hard to progress.

At the same time, I’m starting to question the value of a higher salary when the trade-off is constant stress, uncertainty, and increasingly little control over my own life. There’s also the option of serving tables a few nights a week in addition to the nature tour manager gig.

Has anyone here taken a substantial pay cut to leave a corporate environment for something simpler or more fulfilling? Did it improve your quality of life, or did the financial trade-off eventually create a different kind of stress?

I’d especially appreciate hearing from people who made the change temporarily and later returned to their original careers.

I dropped out of a top university over a decade ago and I've only worked in restaurants. I haven't worked the past 3 years. My resume is pitiful. I want to find an office job but I feel unemployable. I have no direction.

I want to go back to school and get a degree but I think the years of rotting alone at home have deteriorated my neuroplasticity and now I have a difficult time grasping concepts. I feel like I might genuinely be too stupid to understand things like IT, even though that's the only thing that I could conceivably see myself doing, since I have an interest in computers and technology. I'm bad at math, I can't even do algebra.

Am I relegated to working as a waiter my entire life?

I’m a fresh engineering graduate, and I recently started my first full-time job.
I’m currently finishing my second week and about to start my third, but I still don’t have clear responsibilities or specific tasks assigned to me.
I’ve been attending meetings, reading project documents, and trying to understand how everything works, but I feel a bit lost because I’m not sure what I’m actually expected to do.
I know there’s a learning curve, especially as a fresh graduate, but I’m wondering if this is normal.
Has anyone experienced something similar? How long did it take before you started getting involved in actual work?

I’m in my early 20s with a bachelor’s degree in business I.T, currently working for the federal government making around $56K. I also have previous state government experience in quality assurance, data auditing, and reporting.
I’m looking to get out of my current job and find something with better pay and more room to grow. Ideally something remote or hybrid, starting around $65K–$80K with the potential to make $100K+ down the road.
I’ve been looking into business analyst, operations, and project management roles, but I’m open to other ideas. Just not looking to get into heavy coding or go back to school.
Anyone been in a similar position or know of any careers or companies worth look into?

I work for a company that just started taking their marketing a bit more seriously, so they hired me and another person to be the graphic designer for their marketing material. I'm a seasoned professional, but this other person is far from it.

While I design in Adobe Creative Suite from scratch - pretty standard for a graphic designer -, he uses pre-made Canva templates that don't align with brand identity. He knows nothing about colour theory, he uses about 8 font sizes in one document, he edits material in Microsoft Word, he's extremely inconsistent, he knows nothing about text margins, layouts, has no idea what he's doing and he's clearly not creative. I'm not sure why he wanted to do this. I'm shit with numbers, I know I'd be useless in finance, hence I don't work in it.

Turns out, he's friends with one of the managers who hired him.

I'm very conflicted, because I'm trying to do my job as best as I can but he's holding me back, as I need to act like I take him seriously, although he's not qualified to be paired up with me. It makes me annoyed constantly. I have also started questioning whether the company wants to properly utilize my creativity and whether they take this marketing stuff - or even me - seriously enough. I have to sit through meetings where this person is treated like a creative professional, on the same level as me, and it insults my intelligence and integrity. I just don't find it ethical.

I need to vocalize this at some point, but not sure how.

I'm 26 years old, living in the Kansas City area, and honestly feeling pretty lost about my career progression.

I graduated in December 2021 with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and a 3.6 GPA. In March 2022, I started working at Cerner (later acquired by Oracle) as a Business Systems Analyst, making $65K annually.

I stayed with Oracle for about 3.5 years, eventually moving into a Program Manager title and getting some exposure to AI product management. Unfortunately, I never received a salary increase during my time there.

In September 2025, I was laid off as part of a reduction in force.

After months of applying and interviewing, I finally landed a Systems Analyst II position at Commerce Bank in August 2026, making $68K annually.

Here's what's bothering me:

• I have nearly five years of professional experience and a Computer Science degree, yet I'm still making under $70K.
• My salary has barely increased since I graduated.
• I feel like I've fallen behind financially and professionally compared to where I expected to be at this age.
• I have experience in business systems analysis, enterprise applications, and some AI product management, but I'm struggling to figure out which career direction offers the best long-term opportunities.

I'm grateful to be employed again, especially after experiencing a layoff, but I don't want to spend another three or four years barely progressing financially.

Ideally, I'd like to move into a role paying $100K–$120K+ within the next couple of years. I'm open to systems analysis, technical product management, project management, or other technology-related roles.

My questions are:

1. With my background, which career path would you recommend pursuing?
2. Is earning $68K with my experience significantly below market, or am I being unrealistic?
3. Should I focus on building technical skills, earning certifications, or pursuing an MBA?
4. Would you recommend staying at my current company for a year or two, or actively looking for better opportunities sooner?

I'd especially appreciate advice from people who have worked in business systems analysis, product management, or corporate technology. I'm not particularly interested in pursuing software engineering, as coding isn't my strongest skill. I'd prefer a career path that combines technology, business, and project or product management.

I'm based in Missouri, if that helps provide some salary context.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Hello! I am 19F, and am currently in my sophomore year studying Biology. Im pretty much at a crossroads for picking a career to go into.

I have looked into a lot of different fields, and have consistently came back to healthcare. As cliche as it sounds, I feel so drawn to helping people in the physical aspect. I’m also so intrigued by the way the human body functions and how it heals itself.

That being said, I have looked into so many difference careers in healthcare. MD, DO, Pa School, radiology, pharmacy, PT, OT, DMD,OD, DPM, Pharma, you NAME IT!!!!!

What doesn’t help is the job market. Some of my values in finding a career are: a predictable schedule (im very family oriented and would love to live for my family), job stability, good salary, good debt to income.

Now I do understand we can’t have the best of every world, and I’m flexible on some of those more than others.

But I just wanted to hear from some people in the field and their careers! To hear a bit about your life, what you love about it, etc.
Thank you guys!!!

I am in CA and thinking about pursuing esti because I feel like skincare and aesthetics is something I’m more passionate about. But I’m also doing this bc it requires a license and would want to improve my job prospects. Is it really hard to find a job as a new graduate? Or should I just pursue something else as I am considering taking classes in accounting instead. I really just want a job fast.

Edit: also I am verryyy introverted and sensitive so I was worried about esthetician being a more extroverted job

Hey everyone

I’m 27f and I’ve just completed a graduate scheme and landed an analytics role at a top insurer. But due to ai and the state of the world/ the future, for some reason I keep having doubts about my career. How do you manage the doubts and worries about the future in regard to your career?

I left my job about six months ago but I keep catching myself using phrases that were super common there. We had all these weird acronyms for projects and inside jokes about specific software glitches. It's like a secret language that no one else gets. My new colleagues just look at me funny when I talk about 'circling back on the Q3 synergy push' or 'avoiding the legacy data vortex'. Is this a normal part of job hopping or am I just stuck in the past?

Hello! I am 28F, from India. For the last several years I've worked but never felt fulfilled. I completed my Bachelor's and Master's in Literature as it was really something I liked and enjoyed. I couldn't go farther for education due to some constraints.

Worked as a freelance content editor and writer for a good 2-3 years around and after that time. It was not high paying and not consistent at all. It got worse after COVID when the scene became saturated here with all BTech/BCom/BBA pass outs starting working the same jobs. No offense to them since the unemployment was (and still is) very bad in our country, but their low rates really affected work for literature/language graduates.

Started working as an AI trainer FTE in 2024 with a solid paycheck, easy money ~ around 7LPA. WFH, living w my parents, no excessive expenditure. This was my first proper job as in the previous jobs I was not paid (ahhh startup and "will pay you when we receive funds"). Work was pretty chill here with some phases of overwork. Salary bumped to 7.5 in year 2.

I recently left my employment after 2.5 years due to excessive mental strain, lack of personal life and toxic environment. I also started to question the ethical implications of the work I was doing and how I was doing and it did not sit well with me. Good for me for leaving when i did because the company laid-off the whole department 2 weeks later.

Now- i don't know what to do. I feel so stuck and in a limbo. I love creative, helping professions. Have always felt attracted towards those. I am a jack of all trades, happy and eager to learn- that makes things quite difficult since that route doesn't have a fixed trajectory.

I am great with brainstorming and idea generation, looking at the big picture, helping my close friends in suggestions (about events, products, shoots, creative aspects). Unfortunately, the city I come from has a very elitist culture, groupism, kitty type. Rich people know rich people since school and they mingle and work amongst themselves. I've never had a supportive friend group who'd help in outreach or promotion- have a very limited one now.

Phew, typing this out feels very humiliating at my age when many of my friends are settled in their lives. If anyone has any ideas, could offer suggestions, inputs, I'd love to hear <3 Thank you

For context I am 20 and in my second year of college. I wanted to choose International Relations as my major because I am hoping to join the state department as a Foreign Service Officer (childhood dream of mine). I am registered for the FSOT and will take it in a few days, which is the civil service exam to be eligible.

To become an FSO, it is a highly competitive process where thousands are filtered out at every step. I believe that around 20,000 people recruit every year, but only a few hundred are selected.

I plan on retaking the test and studying every year until I get in. I don't expect to become an FSO straight out of college. The chances I have of that happening are probably in the single digit percentages. Assuming I don't get in after college, I still want to ensure myself a stable job so that I can live independently from my parents (HCOL area). I'm very grateful for their support, but I want to repay their generosity by not living at home forever.

I have a few options. In my major, I have a job (basically) lined up since I can speak Spanish, which is becoming an English teacher in Spain via the Spanish Ministry of Education.

Alternatively, I was looking into supply chain management, finance, construction management, or law. This would give me a decently paying job right out of college as I try to continue taking the exam. I won't graduate with any debt, but I probably will if I continue my education in law.

Money isn't the only thing that is important to me, of course. I want to be able to start a family sometime in the future with a woman I care deeply about. Of course, in the present time, this is becoming more expensive than ever. I want to have a job that I can count on not becoming irrelevant in the coming years, and in the long term have the ability to scale that career into something I can hopefully monetize as a business owner. Appreciate any advice.

So many of my peers are fixated on escaping the 9-5 and I see so many romanticized things online about doing more with your life and career to make more money and enjoy doing it.

I’m 22 in a very good finance program, I’m getting my mba part time while making 90k a year, in 2.5 years upon off-placement from the program i’ll be making 130k with a great resume at 25. Logically I know I have a great setup.

Then I think of the people I know and see in big cities, or traveling, or trying to start something, and It makes me feel behind and unsure if I’ll ever live the life I want or just be a slightly wealthier rat in the race.

I know comparison is the thief of joy but I’d love some reassurance that this is a good thing. It’s not like I have the balls to do anything else or throw away what i’ve built, I just wish I knew that it’d all be worth it.

For people with more life experience than me: How did the people that went down a hardcore career-focused path turn out compared to those who didn’t? I want to make a lot of money, I want to enjoy the fruits of my labor and have the luxurious things I’ve dreamed of. It’s just really hard to look down the barrel of 30-40 years and say I’ll enjoy my life or that it will feel fulfilling.

I have the opportunity to make a lateral move in my organization that would quite literally change nothing except for the work duties - same pay, same boss and team, but I would move into a Data Specialist role and out of my Communications Specialist role.

The Data specialist duties interest me - my degree was in communications with a scientific focus, conducting surveys and creating data stories. I LOVE the content of that type of work. It would also open up more data-related opportunities for future jobs, and round out my resume well. So far, I’ve only ever held content creation and marketing roles.

HOWEVER, I really enjoy my job right now. I do more grunt work, and the duties can get tiring (mostly graphic design and social media content) but I get to interact with my coworkers and community in really collaborative ways every week. Which is still a step down from my last job, where I got to do that every day.

I’m worried that lack of face time with patrons and staff would figuratively kill me. It helps ground me, remind me why I work in public service, and prevents my social anxiety from rearing its ugly head. If I’m forced to interact with large groups of people every week I can’t lose that muscle, so to speak.

The Data specialist position would be uniquely isolating - I would have monthly meetings with admin, virtually no face time with staff in other departments or patrons, and wouldn’t even share an office with my marketing team. I’d be popped into a basement corner where IT is based (but are never there because they travel between locations).

Would you give up a job you’re okay with that keeps you sane, for a job you would generally like but that isolates you in a major way?

I’ve made like 6 pros and cons list, the roles are quite literally a mirror of each other. What would you do?

Hello, all! I (24, very soon 25F) graduated with a BFA in art education a few years ago (end of ‘23), and I realized at the end that, though I love visual art, I really was not cut out for the education field. After graduating, I got a part-time job selling tickets at a venue, which I liked, and later became an office administrator with a college when I wanted to find something full-time. I have been at my job for a bit under two years (almost 20 months). I mostly do behind-the-scenes stuff, like travel settlements, reimbursements, and budget tracking. I recently interviewed for a new role that was just created at my undergraduate alma mater. This job pays about 14% more (from ~$35,000 to ~$40,000) and is related to college admissions, recruitment, and retention.

The only catch is that I am currently in my university’s MBA program as well as another certificate program with 15 credits left to complete, and I get a tuition waiver that is worth more than the raise by a non-insignificant amount (remaining tuition + fees would be around $10,000 over 8 months, and the waiver would cover about $8,500 of that). I MAY be able to have my parents chip in, but that is TBD. I have enough money saved up, but I would rather not blow through all my savings if I can help it as I want to have it on hand for traveling and real emergencies.

I was recently rejected from a marketing director job that pays nearly double my current salary after being in the top 2-3 applicants due to my lack of relevant experience, and I thought this would be something the admissions/recruitment-related job may help. My grades have been great in undergrad and graduate school, but I have had a bit of trouble finding my footing after graduating. I do painting commissions and design for some local organizations and individuals and have made a good amount of pocket change with that (a few hundred to a few thousand a year), but I still want a full-time, stable career.

Would this switch be worth it? Additionally, would leaving a job in under a year appear too much like job-hopping? TYIA for the advice. I want to think about everything before I make any kind of big jump.

Additional context and qualitative factors: I am a big-time introvert, but I do enjoy sharing information and helping people out. Both areas have a pretty low COL (as may be gathered by my salary.) I currently rent. Rent is more expensive in the new area, so I would likely live with my partner (28M) of about two and a half years who already works in that area and split rent, making it cost about the same amount I pay now. My commute would also not change a ton. The new area is a town, which I prefer to the current city I live in. The jobs have similar benefits. The new requires some evenings and weekends, though these seem like they’ll be rare. The new team I interviewed with, including my would-be supervisor, seemed very friendly, but my current team, including my immediate supervisor and bosses, are also very kind, so I am not too worried about the work environment of either place. The new job is slightly farther from “home” (my parents, siblings, and my best friend), who I visit sometimes, but closer to some other friends. If any kind of “planning for the future” is a factor, I would love to eventually make around 70k-80k if I continue to live in this area, and I have no plans of children to factor extra savings/expenses into.

Ahh! I’m so torn! I feel all confused and like I’m falling behind. Anything from someone more experienced is appreciated!

I am a 26F, I have been caregiving 1:1 (6 years in-home, 1 year I/DD support) since I was 18. I went back to school when I was 25 because I wanted to focus more on IT. I got a dual AAS degree in Cybersecurity and Network Administration from a CC and graduated top of the class. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find in a job in the field due to the tech industry taking a beating and having ‘no prior experience’.

I’ve been told healthcare for the most part is AI-proof, so for now I’m working in In-Home Hospice, but am making very little money.

I am considering going to a University for 2 years to get my Bachelors in Cyber Investigation and Enforcement, but I have no idea if by the time I graduate, how much AI will have advanced for me to even begin in the field. I am also afraid of going further into debt with no job guarantee. I feel like my in-home CG experience and degree I could do something that combines healthcare and tech, or maybe something remote, but I’m unsure what. I’m in a huge quandary on whether to continue with school in Cyber or just make a career in Healthcare. Any advice appreciated.

Edit: I’m not really interested in becoming a Hygienist or a CNA.

I am 6 months into a job at a respected tech company doing communications, something I've been doing for 15 years across several companies. But my heart isn't in it anymore, and I'm ready to leave corporate life. I just do not care anymore, although the money is very good. I'm tired of AI, and I'm tired of whiny stakeholders acting like we work in the ER.

The thing is though that I have no idea where to go or what to do. I was thinking I could shift to being an executive assistant or something along those lines, find work at a local business, or even go out on my own for consulting (although that would just keep me in comms, and I'm not sure that's where I will want to be). But nothing has really inspired me yet.

I'd love to hear stories of how you may have pivoted - doesn't have to be from comms to another profession or lane, although those would be appreciated. Did you take a pay cut for a "lighter" job? Change careers altogether? How did you know when it was time?

Thanks in advance for your wisdom!