One Comment, A Thousand Thoughts (And One More Post)

Hi,

After posting my previous and first post, I shared it on Reddit. The post was seen by more than 1,000 people. Roughly 10 people actually visited my blog, and I received one comment. It might sound like a failure, but it's actually a success to me. I enjoyed writing the last post, and I feel it won't hurt to write at least one more.

I don't want you to think that I'm getting arrogant. One comment is just one comment, and there's a 99.99% chance that the person who pleased me with the comment won't come back again.

Anyway, I wanted to thank you for taking the time to read me.

I'm not sure what I can talk about in this new post.

Let me think...

I'm honestly thinking at my desk.

Let's talk about career and use it as an excuse to introduce myself to you a bit more.

I'm 32 years old. It's a weird age, isn't it?

I don't know how old you are, but I feel that younger people wouldn't consider me young, and more mature people wouldn't consider me part of their team.

I'm not young, I'm not old.

Anyway, I have 7 years of experience in the career world.

Actually, I started "working" when I was 16. I say "working" because I'm referring to the type of jobs a young person can do in the Western world. I worked as a pizza delivery guy, part-time postman—these types of jobs. I worked part-time during all my university studies. I completed my studies at the end of 2017, and I immediately went abroad.

Why did I leave my country?

That's too long a story for now—it can be material for a future post.

Anyway, once I arrived abroad, I found a job within a couple of weeks (to my big surprise).

I worked in a big corporation with more than 700k people for 4 years (2018–2022). Then I decided to leave and work for a company with fewer than 300 employees. I'm still working there since 2022.

I've always considered myself as someone with no particular qualities or skills. I had no idea what to do when I was looking for my first job (I was 25).

I still remember my first job interviews, the pressure I felt, and how clueless I was. To my huge surprise, I got the offer—an entry-level position. Nothing special for lots of people, but it was amazing for me.

Since the first days, I realized that the people at the office were very nice and the job didn't seem to be too complicated. Even the payslip wasn't bad at all. For a first job, I was already getting roughly 2k net per month.

Not too bad at all for someone like me, with very low expectations.

2k of what? Dollars? Yen? Indian Rupees?

Two thousand euros.

It might be my last post here, so I can already share with you that I'm Italian and I moved to Ireland in 2018.

Now you know.

I didn't necessarily want to say it so early, but as I'm writing, I'm realizing that this post makes more sense if I at least specify dates and locations.

Anyway...

Those 4 years were amazing. People were great, the job was pretty easy but interesting enough, the workload was appropriate. From the first months, I started receiving recognition for what I was doing.

"Best Rookie of the Year", "Best Employee of the Month", "Best Employee of the Quarter", etc., etc.

Things were going great, I was happy, and I was feeling fulfilled.

First lesson: your happiness and sense of fulfillment won't grow along with your salary. Years later, I get twice the amount of money I was getting there, and I'm not twice as happy (professionally speaking).

I realized in concrete terms what lots of experts say out there: money is not the first reason why a certain person wants to work in a company. Or let's rephrase it—money is not the main reason why a person decides to leave.

Years later, I understood the main reason why I was feeling happy there. It's because:

1. The people around me fed my self-confidence.

2. I admired the people I was working for.

3. I felt like my job was helpful to someone else.

Making more money was never the goal for me. I saw colleagues leaving for companies that offered more money and, within a few months, becoming very depressed. I also saw people accepting a salary cut for a new start-up and being very excited.

As long as you can pay your expenses, money should not be your North Star (at least when you're 25 with no wife or kids).

Money, at least for me, became a consequence of that excitement and "hard" work. Within those 4 years, I got 5 salary increases. One every 9 months on average. My salary grew by 61.54%, and I never asked for it.

Every now and then, my manager would come to me and say something like, "Hey, we’re promoting you," or "Hey, we have a salary increase for you." You have to believe me—I never asked for it.

You might think, "Wow, amazing. Why did you leave then?"

My answer is: yes, it was amazing. And yes, at some point I decided to leave, and I had my good reasons.

But this, my friend, will be the material for a new post.

For now, if there's anyone on the other side of the screen, thank you for reading.

We’ll talk later.

Maybe.

The Writer