ChatGPT told me I should quit my job

I’ve been quite unhappy in my job lately. I’ve taken on new responsibilities, stress seems to be piling up for no rational reason, and I am getting worked up over other people’s perceived lack of ability. It feels like if I wasn’t there, things would go to shit really quickly. I know this is not true, or if it were, I wouldn’t be doing my job right, because I don’t think anyone should be indispensable at work. That said, I’m definitely past the honeymoon phase with my job.

I’ve been there for about five years now, and have recently transitioned to becoming a manager — again, it’s something I’ve done in past jobs as well. I don’t think it suits me, and there’s evidence that points to that: every time I get promoted to a position where I’m dealing with people more, I get frustrated and end up switching jobs. This only gets harder the further up I get on the career ladder though.

1. Salaries keep increasing as you get more years of experience, quitting or switching to a lower paid job is a big thing that seems like I’m leaving money on the table, which feels hard to justify.
2. I seem to naturally gravitate towards being a technical manager, purely because, from the company’s point of view, it’s where I can add the most value compared to others. I seem to have a better overview of things than others, and I will be a gatekeeper on fronts that others don’t care about. In my experience that is something that my co-workers appreciate and value higher than someone who is off in a silo not talking to anyone.
3. Talking to people more means more people are aware of what our team does, so there is better visibility on what we’re bringing to the table. Higher-ups love that. Personally I hate that I’m not writing more code.

So I put it to ChatGPT: given my personal, professional and financial circumstances, should I put up with this a bit longer (the golden handcuffs scenario basically), or should I aim for early retirement? Its answer, across various iterations and ways of asking the question and supplying it with additional data points, was fairly consistent: I should quit now or in the next few months rather than putting up with all of the things that make me unhappy in my job.

ChatGPT gave me various reasons for choosing retirement over coping with a job I don’t like, but the reason that easily struck home the hardest was this: you’re not just paying in fatigue; you’re paying in lost identity-building years, and those aren’t recoverable.

I’ve had some serious setbacks in my personal life lately. Health scares. People dying. The one thing that’s stayed quite positive were my financials, so at least I’ve got that going for me, which is nice. At the same time, I feel like I lost my identity, and my desires. I used to have a million things I wanted to do after I retire, now I’ll just be glad to sit on the couch and recover. I think that will change. Science, rational thinking and ChatGPT all tell me that I’ll get past that, so I have no reason to doubt that. But for now, I’m in this pit, and it’s my choice to be in there. I chose to basically subvert all other choices in life because my job drains all my energy out of me. And I don’t even feel bad about it, because a lot of people don’t even have that choice. At least I get to retire early, so it feels to me like a little bit of suffering is worth that.

But I’ve been moving the goalposts on that. How much money is enough money? How long will I continue to work a job I’m not particularly enthusiastic about? ChatGPT seems to think it’s already too late and I should get out now. But here I am telling myself that if I just stick it out for one or two more years, it’ll eliminate almost all of the eliminatable uncertainty I currently have about my financials, so even if that’s going to make me unhappy in the short term, it’ll be worth it. But I’ve kept that attitude about short term so long that it has now turned into a long term, and I’ve spent ten years of my life on this. Thinking about that doesn’t make me happy, but I also don’t regret it. I did what I had to do.

I’m buying my freedom, one brain cell at a time. I just need to quit before too many of my brain cells are gone.