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>I am currently indispensable to the company I work for.

That was me a few years ago.

I ended up putting up with it for an incredibly stressful 18 months and leaving anyway.

If I could do it all over again, I would have made a stand leveraging my indispensability. Either I succeed and effect change or fail and leave anyway.

>I need to support my family. Not sure if I want to risk it on a new job in the current climate.

Obviously, you'll want to find a new job before you quit, not the other way around. Less obviously, consider the impact of your "rock bottom" morale and apparently dead-end job on your family.

>The short term plan is to continue being miserable.

Short term plans have a way of becoming regrets without a long term plan.



> Less obviously, consider the impact of your "rock bottom" morale and apparently dead-end job on your family.

to add.....

When I was much younger I took my mother out to a movie. It was a comedy and a pretty good one at that (don't remember the name). We got to the parking lot and my mom said "This is the first time I've seen you smile in 6 months". Resumes went out the next day and a few recruiters I knew were called.

You might not notice the cost of a bad job, but the people around you will see the signs. I did love the "concept" of the job I was doing, but it was killing me and looking back, it took a while to actually recover. I knew I was frustrated, but not how far gone.


That's my story too, felt like leaving after a year but ended up staying for 18 months. Even got a decent pay rise, and managed to change things a little, but the enthusiasm faded quickly, it was a dead end.

The day I stepped up and tried to set everything straight was also the day I decided to quit. Fast-forward a few months, I'm earning 2x as much, and working with everything I wanted to.

I too thought I was indispensable, but the company you have in your head can be very different from the managers'.


>I too thought I was indispensable, but the company you have in your head can be very different from the managers'.

This is an important observation.

I'd wager a manager who doesn't recognize the way he/she is allowing if not creating a dysfunctional workplace doesn't recognize how/what makes it work in the first place.

The only thing that's indispensable to shitty managers is their own power/security.




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