A coworker on my team who is an early 20-something was getting stressed out over his job over the months and quit today. Over the past year my team's looked to me to keep things together and our final team meeting was an emotional rollercoaster for my grumpy shut-in anti-social-ass behavior brain. It's kind of taken me a few hours to just collect my thoughts.
As he started working here, I could see how much he was practically being preyed on for being young, in the sense of being exploited to hustle and do more. I spent a lot of time telling him about the bullshit of executive culture and that XYZ or ABC things done to him are manipulation tactics to squeeze more out of workers. I would watch him doing things like working at midnight, and really be paranoid/guilty about wanting to do a good job, so I really tried to drive home that a company doesn't deserve more than your 9-5, and to keep anything about your life that could be held against you away from work as much as possible.
In the last month he started having even worse health issues from the stress, and decided to leave to take time to relax and look for something that he actually has a passion and a care for, and can build his career instead of the hot mess that this kid shouldn't have had on his shoulders.
And like, I don't think I can say I've experienced before hearing someone list off all the things I taught them. He make the communist joke before I could, that I'm really good at what I do, and most importantly, that I could be making so much more (I also found out I'm getting shafted on pay for what I do here. He makes much more and he is technically my underling).
So with that, I want to move on to a real management/lead position, instead of keep hoping I'm ever going to get the space from manual test work so much to actually properly lead and manage. Also cause as said I am getting fucked and there's no reason even with said raise I should be being paid this low.
But now that I have this extra money coming in regularly I can get that haircut, I can get new makeup, new clothes/bra/etc, I am not going to leap immediately but I now have the resources to prepare and the time to redo my corporate socials and resume and shit. I would be able to pay off most of my debt in a year at the rate I should be being paid at. I can't believe that even in my 40s I'm still so easily tricked and fooled and taken advantage of. But the fire under my ass is now lit. Therapy's gonna be wild next week