Software engineering graduate, I work in IT for a consulting company.

I make a little over 100k plus bonus, company stocks, RRSP employer contribution and other benefits.

The industry has killed my passion for all things computer related. And the constant negative feedback to try to get me to do more has destroyed by self esteem and confidence.

I don’t know how many hours I’ve given in unpaid overtime to get things done only to be told at my year end review that I didn’t do enough only because the company wasn’t doing well and didn’t want to increase its employee’s salaries. And companies were stingy as fuck. But that’s what happens when you graduate in 2008 smack in a global financial meltdown. You get the same fucking pay for 10 years.

And then when you finally get the right opportunity, things start looking up, but then a global pandemic happens a couple years later and you end up being burnt out from the workload to support every fucking system the world now relies on to make the economy work.

And with the increasing cost of living in Canada, in comfortable with my salary, but I still feel like I could end up homeless anytime. All my savings went in my recent condo purchase so I’m not looking forward to a very rich retirement living off the fruits of my labor.

Honestly I now often ask myself why the fuck are we working so hard if it doesn’t even matter in the end? For most people it’s barely enough to pay both food and shelter. And then we see those CEOs making hundreds of millions and billions of dollars off of our labor and greedily increasing the price of everything just because they can and nothing is stopping them.

Had I had this job back in the 80’s and 90’s, the same period as my boomer parents, I’d be living in a fucking castle. But instead I’m stuck in a small condo with barely enough storage for two people to live in with basic necessities.

Then I look at my boomer parents and relatives who are all starting to retire and they’re all stuck with lots of health issues. One of my aunts just died last weekend from cancer at the age of 61, and my uncle was still expected to go to work during her final days instead of spending his time with his wife. Like wtf is this bullshit? We grind and hustle our whole lives and line the pockets of our rich overlords with our labor only to die without really living our lives to their fullest, spending time doing what we love and with people we love, because we have to work jobs that can barely afford us our bare necessities.

And I’m not even gonna go into the whole global climate change cataclysm that’s about to happen due to that same corporate greed.

The whole fucking system is broken.

Fuck it. It’s time for a revolution. Or burn it all down.

/Rant

I used to work as a fraud analyst in a call center for a financial institution, salary was great and the benefits were quite generous. Management were dillholes and clients made me lose faith in humanity quite quickly and I wanted to cry every day before work so much I was burnt out from it. Now I work as nightwatchman for a vacation resort, make less money and not much in terms of benefits but I’m easy as Sunday morning and my partner enjoys being around me again. Plus, when you consider how much income tax more I was paying before, I’m not making THAT much less when all is said an done. I was always frugal in my lifestyle anyway, I don’t drink or smoke, I don’t play video games, I don’t really go out, I learned to repair my own clothes rather than buy new ones and I don’t like brand names, and I pay a mortgage rather than rent so I have money left after the 1st of the month. So I don’t have an exciting and extravagant life, but I’m quite content.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk!