In my late 30s, still doing it. I don't expect to be rewarded though, I just want to toil away without being a dick to people around me.

In my late 30s I realized I could work a little less hard, ask for support, and ask for what I wanted without expectations. It's an improvement so far.

Thankfully, around 7-8th grade. The English and History teachers worked in tandem to impose a critical thinking background to their lessons. Of course, it made me and others cynical as shit, but we were at least less surprised when life decided to go in dry.

At 15, on my first job. There were 3 others in the same position. I finished first, perfectly, while they goofed off. Told the manager, all excited. She had me clean out a closet while I waited for the others to catch up. It was a real defining moment.

I teach for a living, yet I never learn.

Ok but if I'm even slightly mean to someone they try to screw me over for the rest of my life. Meanwhile, I see people getting away with it. I need a tutorial on being an asshole that people tolerate.

30s. Earning well, no issues yet.

Being good to the people around me and those in my community isn't an act. It's just how I feel I should be.

I now work on projects I'm passionate about, and spent years prior swinging a tool.

Everyone's path is different. I was lucky, but I didn't act a certain way because I was trying to put up an act. It's just how I conduct myself.

I am constantly reminded that knowledge isn't free. We live in a world where everything could be so so so much better if information were shared, instead it is locked up and sold as a product. So to answer the question, every single day, I'm still hopeful that a positive change could happen.

Let you know when it happens.

For the most part the more active and nicer you are the happier you will be. Yeah yeah you get taken advantage of, you know the same result if you are a lazy asshole.

Your insurance company is going to deny your claim, your stuff is going to break down, you will be ripped off, you will be injured, you will be robbied, and eventually you will die. All of this stuff will happen in your existence and there is fuck all you can do about it.

What you can do is stay active and stay giving. You can surround yourself with people who very much want you to be happy in life and your happiness almost completely depends on it.

So go ahead and make your decision. Do you want to pass judgement on a world that doesn't care what you think about it and rot with whatever pathetic little you have or do you want deep connections and a lifetime of achievement.

Way, way later than I should have. Or wish I had.

25; I'm still waiting on a title change and raise I was promised in October. Turns out doing system administration work, software deployment, RMM management, and CADD support all while being payed as a support tech isn't such a great idea. Oh well, at least my resume is stacked for when I leave.

Jokes on you, i never had a plan

23 - no one liked me...

28 when they try to fire me during abrunout after doing 14h a day for 6 month while fighting for custody.

I was about 25. I did actually work my way up through sheer knowledge base within the first 6 years at the company. But after several years of going for a more technical position the boss slept with a new hire who was new to the industry and gave them the position.

I promptly left the company and heard that the person who gain the position through I'll gotten means not only messed up a lot but also injured themselves doing stupid shit anyone who's been in the industry would not do.

Still trying to fully realise this.

33 - After burning out from taking too much on 😅

As a kid I somehow figured I could be both a world famous Hollywood actress and a stay at home mom at the same time. And achieve all of that by like 20.

I mean at least one of these things happened temporarily but not until my late 20s.

Sadly, not until the late nineties.

When my angel of a tee totaling mother who would cry from the stress of working unpaid OT, making every family member custom holiday sweatshirts, or hosting other little girl's birthday parties at their lazy mother's request, died rather quickly from a brain tumor after her quack therapist ignored her months of aphasia. Selflessness guarantees nothing.

I was pretty young when I knew this in my brain.

I was way too old before I really believed and felt it in my soul.

I was 21yo. I am thankful mandatory internships taught me that much.

1st internship at 20yo. Completed 2 full-fledged programming projects in 8 weeks, while I was supposed to complete 1 project in the entire 10 weeks. Spent the last 2 weeks unboxing and reboxing hundreds of products all day. Was paid 500€/month (minimum legally required). Worked my ass off from 8am until 18am. No one ever invited me to go for lunch with them. Boss treated me like an idiot. He once shouted at me at 8am because he didn't like my handshake and I didn't smile, I didn't look motivated and grateful enough to his liking.

2nd internship. 4 months long. Still paid the 500€/month minimum. Did my job alright, completed the tasks that were given to me and nothing more. Spent most of every Fridays just chatting with coworkers and drinking coffee. "Oh, it's 15:55 already! I better pack my things and leave". They loved me, told me they will have a position for me after I finish my studies. Colleagues offered me presents on my last day.

3rd and last internship. Applied the same principles. They offered me a job starting at 54k€/year (as a reference, other offers I got at the time maxed at 34k€/year).

I am thankful for this lesson. Be nice and socialize. Just do your job well with the time your are paid for and absolutely nothing extra. I have been nothing but successful in my career so far :)

P.S: all internships were in different companies

I thought I learned it in the army. Then I thought I learned it in college. Then the VA actually taught me the lesson.

Don't be a doormat, but be nice and take a little time to be a bro at work. I've been given many great opportunities because I tried to be nice. As long as you're competent and you care, you don't even need to be competitive.

My wife is in her mid 40s and hasnt figured it out yet. Constantly pissed at the company she works for screwing over people in her position with more and more responsibility for no pay increase. An opportunity came up and it was going to be rather inexpensive to open a competing business three miles down the road and it would have screwed over the company she works for, and she won't even let me look into it. She will never get by at her current job.

Then: Work hard and you'll be rewarded for your efforts!

Now: HaRd WoRk Is NoT vAlUAbLe WoRk. EfFoRt DoEs NoT eQuAl OuTcOme!

At least we're being honest now.

The sad thing is that I was significantly younger when I realised it vs when I knew how to change myself (into doing the "wrong" thing).

As soon as we started having group projects in like 6th grade.

Well, my original plan was "time to go to college now, this should be just as easy as school was up until senior year, but I was just coasting and certainly that won't be a sign of things to come"

Narrator: it was

26 late enough not to make me completely cynical... enough to make me highly cynical hehehehe

sadly enough, it was my own fam taking advantage of my good will that flipped the switch for me

Oh, way too young. Grade school. I didn’t give up on the nice part, but I realized that extra work got a brief notice - and you constantly had to apply more effort to get that notice, the rest of the time you were the same as anyone else. So why work extra all the time for little reward? Guess I’m not very approval- or reward-driven.

Been in union gigs for decades now. You do your work, do it right because that’s what you do, and you get paid pretty well. Generally nobody’s in your business offering or retracting rewards based on how they feel about you or your work.

Funnily enough, I was well aware of this while I was young, and planning on not participating and dying young. Somehow I still got suckered in for 10 years of service before I woke up again.

Around 16 or 17. I was already aware that "studying hard" was bullshit by 13, which made my grades fall from 90-100% to just passing, which in turn led to lots of complaining from my mom until I finished high school.