A Bad “Good” Job Isn’t Worth the Money

This past May, for the first time since completing my undergraduate education, I found myself making a living wage.  But a week into my fancy Upper East Side job, I knew it wasn’t going to work out.  The simplest explanation I could offer friends and family was that it wasn’t worth my life.

It had taken me a bit longer to realize what Kaitlyn Kochany learned right out of the gates.

Like many Americans, I spent the last three years toughing out low wages, abusive supervisors, and high stress positions in the spirit of retaining a job during the recession.

What I learned at my fancy job was that more money wouldn’t compensate for the unprofessional environments I had endured at previous firms. Good wages wouldn’t suddenly make the same kind of position a good job. Even if walking away from gainful employment meant exhausting my savings and borrowing a pile of student loans, it was time to bet on myself.

Benjamin Dean, 27, left a successful position as a software developer to attend the California Institute of Arts graduate program for sculpture.

“Watching the whole economy sort of meltdown and then seeing no one do anything to change it made me feel very skeptical of the whole idea of working for other people to get money,” Dean wrote in an email.

Dean summed up the career change with a familiar sentiment.

“I have to do my best to find a way to live that works for me… I want to be able to do my work on my terms,” he said.