I’m at wit’s end. I’m three months into a job search like the 30-month one I went through starting four years ago, and things proceed apace. I’ve gotten zero interviews despite 20 years of experience, and even finding things I think I could stand is a fucking tall ask.

I’ve always been of the mindset that if you have a good product, shockingly little marketing is required. And that investing in the product is going to have a far larger ROI than blowing money on trying to convince people your product is better than it is. Just fucking, you know, make it better.

Which is what I’ve always done. Whether it’s a redesign or significantly better editing than the audience is used to, or infographics for stories that no one is going to comprehend from text analysis. Or, process improvement that makes employees lives better even though it may challenge the necessity of salaried positions.

I cannot and will not subscribe to this notion that lying to people for pay is an ethical career. During my one stint in marketing, I got to the point of feeling physically ill that I was making the best money in my life to write saccharine copy about products we internally mocked our customers for buying.

I honestly don’t know how I can find a job that makes life worth living at this point, which is less than ideal when ideation is always on the menu (I last got out of a psych ward in late January, and all they had to offer is “you need to stop wanting what you want.”). I don’t understand why I would want to be alive to be able to pay off debt accrued because society has already discarded me as useless.

I swear to fucking god, I cannot handle being told again that I’m wrong to have the ethics and goals in life that I do. If these do not align with the positions advertised, then the logical choice is simply removing myself from this clusterfuck.

I have provable results from things I’ve done that did align, so why does saving companies six and seven figures several times by teaching myself what I needed to to accomplish my goals over the course of my career make me a bad hire? I’ve rarely worked for competent managers, so I’m generally needed to actually get improvements done. I don’t care about my title, and I’ve topped out at $48K, so it’s not like I’m looking for $150K … but I don’t like selling myself through insipid, meaningless prose just because it’s what others want to hear.

What is the point of even being alive when everyone is telling me I’m wrong to want to accomplish things that improve the lives of people other than shareholders? They sure as fuck don’t need the money. I do, but I don’t count because I’ve not already rolled over and begged to suck at the teat of immoral people who care nothing for the rest of the world, let alone the people without whom they’d have no product in the first place.

  • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.eeEnglish
    18·
    10 months ago

    I cannot and will not subscribe to this notion that lying to people for pay is an ethical career. During my one stint in marketing, I got to the point of feeling physically ill that I was making the best money in my life to write saccharine copy about products we internally mocked our customers for buying

    I hope this helps more than it hurts to hear, but there is no such thing as an ethical career. Capitalism always finds a way to usurp any meaningfully good gesture and corrupt it with a profit motive.

    I work as a provider at a children’s hospital, and I get to do a lot of good. But I also get to tell people that I can’t help them, and not because I physically can’t, but because they don’t have the coverage. I am responsible for putting already economically disenfranchised families in even more debt, because Dad worked too hard and made too much money to qualify for Medicaid. The system makes us complicit.

    I honestly don’t know how I can find a job that makes life worth living at this point

    I don’t think anyone’s job should be the only reason they get up in the morning. Even if you had the best job in the world…a job isn’t a substitution for a life.

    but I don’t like selling myself through insipid, meaningless prose just because it’s what others want to hear.

    Ethics are subjective, and you have a right to stick to your own. However, I don’t think you should feel guilty or bad about guilding your resume. Most. HR managers have no idea what they’re asking for and as I said, no job is really ethical.

    If my work knew about all the free healthcare I gave out, they would have some ethical complaints. And I have some ethical complaints for them pertaining to the price of healthcare. So as a compromise I give out as much free healthcare as I can get away with, and they don’t ask too many questions. Sometimes a decent compromise is the best we can do as individuals in this country.