‘Should I just suck it up… or leave?’: Man nearing 30 feels stuck after 5 years on S$3,000 salary

SINGAPORE: People can end up feeling trapped by the timelines they set for themselves. Sometimes it’s because of a lack of career progression, other times it’s because of stagnant pay, but for some, it’s both.

A Singaporean man approaching 30 wrote on r/askSingapore about the same dilemma after feeling stuck working at a small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) for five years, on the same S$3,000 salary, with no sign of career progression — prompting him to ask others: “I hate working here because my manager is my boss’s wife — it’s a whole family business. What should I do? Should I take a break for the time being, or should I just suck it up?”

According to him, he also felt left behind after finding out his friends were earning significantly more than him.

While he tried looking for opportunities offering better pay, he said recruiters often contacted him during office hours, leaving him hesitant to take their calls for fear of being overheard by colleagues.

Some commenters, however, criticised his hesitation, saying that at 30, he should be able to figure out how to take calls from recruiters. Another noted that it shouldn’t do him any harm to have his colleagues overhear that he’s looking for a new opportunity.

Meanwhile, a third said that before deciding on his next step, the more important thing was to ask himself what he truly wants to do.

When Mark Manson turned 30, the author of the New York Times bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck asked his subscribers what advice and life lessons they would give their 30-year-old selves. From their responses, he wrote, “10 Life Lessons to Excel in Your 30s”.

Lesson number six was: “Don’t be afraid of taking risks; you can still change.”

Among the responses he highlighted was one from 41-year-old Richard, who said that by 30, people mostly “feel they should have their career dialled in,” but, he added, “it is never too late to reset”.

“The individuals that I have seen with the biggest regrets during this decade are those that stay in something that they know is not right. It is such an easy decade to have the days turn to weeks to years, only to wake up at 40 with a mid-life crisis for not taking action on a problem they were aware of 10 years prior but failed to act,” he added.

Forty-seven-year-old Sam also added that the things he regrets most are those he did not do.

In America, data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that Americans in their 30s and 40s have changed jobs multiple times. Notably, the average age at which Americans switch careers is 39. /TISG

Read also: Two-thirds of Gen Z plan to switch jobs but struggle to stand out in a competitive market