"I hate my job": 6 things you can do today & Job Checker Tool

Introduction

Are you dreading going to bed on Sunday? Don’t you feel valued at work? Or worse, are you holding back tears when thinking about your job or your colleagues?

Everybody has gone through this gruelling feeling of hating their job. Yet, it should not be this way. Just think of a time when you were excited to wake up in the morning. A time when you learnt new skills or processes at work. A time when you loved working with your boss and colleagues and felt valued.

Here at RemoteCorgi, we believe that great work makes life much better. We know your occupation is not your entire life, and you should not define yourself by it, but since you spend so much time working, you should take your dislike for your job seriously. You need to explore whether there's something more serious behind this feeling towards your work.

I personally also have struggled for many years with my different roles at work, and I know this crushing feeling of frustration and mental exhaustion too well. After years of reflection and work on myself, I believe I have developed a useful framework to find the role and job you like again and spot early signs when it turns potentially toxic. This is why I have written this article, in the hope that it helps you if you hate your job right now.

In this article, we will go through the 6 actions you can take today that actually work. It is chronologically ordered, so that you first need to understand what your problem is, try to reframe it, or fix it if it is worse, whereas if it is worse, you need to either find an exit strategy, which is either an internal switch or, if worse, a company switch. In the first step of identifying your problem, we also have a “Job Checker Tool” to help you understand the source of this feeling about your job.

Let’s get started:

1. Identify your problems

Why do you hate your job? What in particular makes your work life so difficult?

In this section, we want to help you identify the aspects that you don’t like about your job. The first step to finding a solution is to know and articulate exactly what is triggering you and causing problems. This is why we have created our “Job Checker Tool”.

Take 2 minutes to rate your current situation:

Rate Your Job with our “Job Checker Tool”

We have built a free and useful “Job Checker Tool” that asks you to rate your job across 5 dimensions:

• “Your Actual Work”, which asks you about your actual tasks at work and how you like the day-to-day
• “Pay, Benefits & Security”, which asks you if you are happy with your compensation, work-life balance and job security
• “Work Environment”, which covers aspects of your team, your boss, and the company culture. To see if you feel comfortable in this environment
• “Growth & Meaning”, which asks you about your future prospects and how you can further grow in this field
• “Fix one area with a magic wand”, which wants you to identify the area with the biggest impact for improvement. Basically, it asks you if you have a magic wand and change only one aspect, which one of the previous 4 aspects would change your work life the most?

Once you rate all 5 dimensions, we assess your job reality and showcase your overall profile, the dimensions of how you like your job, displaying top pain points, and how you can take action. The results are then locally saved in the browser, and if you retake the test in the future, you can see how you fare compared to your previous replies. If you do not want your results saved, feel free to clear your browser history on RemoteCorgi.

While answering, be aware that there are no right or wrong answers, but just answer how you feel at the moment.

Background on the 7 profiles in the “Job Checker Tool”

Once you have answered all the questions, our tool will display one of 7 profiles that best explain your current job situation. Our goal with the profile interpretation is to help you articulate your situation as best as possible. We want to give you that “aha!” moment in order to help you realise why you feel the way you do. For the 7 profile interpretations, here are some deeper backgrounds to these profile interpretations:

1. Golden Handcuffs

You have this situation, when you are very well paid, but feel the work you do is meaningless or (worse) makes you unhappy. In this situation, it feels as if you are in literal golden handcuffs, which give you a great lifestyle, money, and even prestige, but you feel you cannot break out of them anymore. You cannot just leave. Now, you are stuck earning this salary because you feel psychologically and financially dependent. The ultimate problem is that you will lose touch with what truly motivates you and trade financial security for happiness or meaning.

Golden Handcuffs have this rating pattern:

• High: 💰 Compensation, 🔒 Job Security
• Low: 🎨 Daily Tasks, 🎯 Personal Values, 😊 Overall Fulfillment, 😤 Stress

What we recommend for people in this situation:

• Immediately: Reduce your hours and find ways to improve your work-life balance. It is important to reduce your hours so that you have more time to assess your situation.
• Future: Plan your exit safely. Golden handcuffs are rarely fixable, since the core is a lack of fulfilment from the work itself. You need to check how you can afford to quit and maybe lower your expenses to gain more freedom to change to a new career path.

2. Burnout Track

If you are in this situation, you feel as if you are achieving a lot and advancing quickly in your career, but you might also realise that your current pace is too fast and unsustainable. You might even sacrifice your personal life and health for your career.

I personally know this situation too well, since I have been struggling with this for years. I have high expectations of myself and always want to push myself out of my own comfort zone. Yet, what I have eventually realised is that if I push too much and do not take care of myself, I reach my destination not faster but slower, while having lots of issues on the way. You need to realise that high achievement is meaningless without well-being, and you can run into complete mental and physical exhaustion if you don’t take care of yourself.

Burnout Track has this rating pattern:

• High: 📈 Growth Opportunities, 🚀 Career Advancement, 🏆 Recognition, 😤 Stress (very high)
• Low: ⏰ Work-Life Balance, 😊 Overall Fulfillment

What we recommend for people in this situation:

• Immediately: If you are reading this, take immediate action. Book a meeting with your boss, be transparent with them and find ways to set up boundaries. Start delegating more and managing your work-life balance. Try to reduce your work hours.
• Future: If the company culture makes setting boundaries impossible, plan your exit and interview with other companies that offer a more sustainable work-life balance.

3. Dead End

In this situation, you are likely feeling financially stable, comfortable at work and in a low-stress environment. Unfortunately, you are not growing or learning; you feel stagnant. It might feel easy, but you likely make it difficult to market in the future by not developing yourself.

Dead End has this rating pattern:

• High: 🔒 Job Security, ⏰ Work-Life Balance
• Low: 📈 Growth Opportunities, 💡 Learning New Skills, 🚀 Career Advancement, 😤 Stress

What we recommend for people in this situation:

• Immediately: Be proactive in finding new challenges. Search for new projects in your current job, and ask for further training to become an expert in your field. You are in a seemingly comfortable position, but it can become dangerous if you do not progress and further your skill sets.
• Future: Find a new job, make a career switch or simply push to be in a new work environment, so that you start learning new skills and progress. Become a person with high agency to grow personally and professionally. A person with a high agency mentality is highly active, enthusiastic, and optimistic. They see life as something they have complete control over and are accountable for, and they see themselves as the protagonist and writer of their own life, not as a supporting character in someone else's story.

4. Toxic Trap

You might like the work, but the company culture and the team dynamic feel dysfunctional or drain you. The best way to realise you are in this situation is when you dread talking with your boss or colleagues. This can cause great damage to your mental health and confidence. Even worse, the longer you are around this toxicity, the more it can impact how you view work and even life, potentially for years.

Toxic Trap has this rating pattern:

• High: 😤 Stress
• Low: 🤝 Manager Relationship, 👥 Team Dynamics, 🏢 Company Culture Fit
• Other scores can vary, making this particularly difficult to spot.

What we recommend for people in this situation:

• Immediately: Plan your exit. It is unlikely that you can fix this toxic work culture. If you dread only your specific team, consider an internal switch, but be aware that you should prioritise yourself and protect yourself from toxicity. You do not need to accept this situation and should move away.
• Future: Make sure you contemplate this situation. How did you get into this situation? What were the red flags in the beginning for you, and how can you avoid going into a similar situation again? In this sense, you should avoid ever going into a similar situation, and reflecting on the factors and red flags helps you be prepared.

5. Passion Project

In this situation, you love your day-to-day, feel you are working on something meaningful, but at the same time, you struggle to make ends meet. You might feel underpaid, overworked, and feel like you have no job security. Maybe you have reached the point where you feel burnt out, making sacrifices that your employer has taken for granted. Financial instability might constantly nag at the back of your mind, creating chronic stress and making the work itself unbearable.

Passion Project has this rating pattern:

• High: 🎯 Personal Values, 🎨 Daily Tasks, 😊 Overall Fulfillment
• Low: 💰 Compensation, 🔒 Job Security, ⏰ Work-Life Balance

What we recommend for people in this situation:

• Immediately: The first step is to stand up for yourself and accept that you need more resources to live. Find a safe way to discuss your concerns with your boss and negotiate a raise, reduced hours for the same pay, or other ways to increase your benefits. Usually, low pay isn't your fault; often, the difficult market sets these prices. Too much supply and too little demand, which, unfortunately, is especially true in the creative sphere.
• Future: If your employer is unwilling or can not offer you higher compensation, we would recommend that you find a path that makes your life more sustainable. For example, you can switch roles within the same field to a higher-paying role, get a supporting and safe gig, or change careers to a more sustainable and economical safe option.

6. Boreout Zone

This happens if you do not mind your job too much; it is just not challenging enough, and you feel like coasting. It’s not bad, but it feels like nothing. The longer you stay, the more apathetic and irrelevant your job feels, and the more you lose drive and ambition. This situation is the “quiet” version of the “3. Dead End” situation.

Boreout Zone has this rating pattern:

• High: 🔒 Job Security
• Mid-range: Pay, Team, and other factors are likely “fine, but not great.”
• Low: 💡 Learning New Skills, 🎨 Liking your actual tasks (they are boring), 📈 Growth, 😤 Stress

What we recommend for people in this situation:

• Immediately: Identify new opportunities and challenges within your company and take the initiative. This is a perfect situation for intrapreneurship: basically, acting like an entrepreneur within an organisation that isn't owned by you. For example, propose new projects, automate your boring tasks to free up time for more interesting work, or ask your employer to pay for your further education.
• Future: Find a new job, make a career switch or simply push to be in a new work environment, so that you start learning new skills and progress. Become a person with high agency to grow personally and professionally. A person with a high agency mentality is highly active, enthusiastic, and optimistic. They see themselves as the protagonist and writer of their own life, not as a supporting character in someone else's story.

7. Great Misalignment

In this situation, your job looks great on paper. You are paid fairly, and the people seem nice, but something feels weird. The industry or the company values do not align with what you prioritise in life. Something feels awfully off, and you feel persistently inauthentic or an imposter. I have been in this situation, and it took a lot of energy and motivation to deal with this feeling. I started questioning all my past choices and was unsure whether this was the right pathway for my future.

Great Misalignment has this rating pattern:

• High/Mid: Most scores are decent (💰, ⏰, 🤝, 👥).
• Low: 🎯 Personal Values Alignment, 😊 Overall Fulfilment.

What we recommend for people in this situation:

• Immediately: Make a thoughtful exit and likely career change. You need to engage in deep self-reflection to understand why your understanding of life does not align with the company's values. You need to understand that the goal is not just to find another job, but to deliberately find a role and company that aligns with your personal values.
• Future: Deeply reflect on your work life and your values. Use this mental image: imagine yourself towards the end of your life. Looking back at your life, what would you regret or what legacy would you like to leave behind? Make proactive choices now that will make your future self proud.

Introduction to the next 5 actions

After this first step, you hopefully have a better understanding of your situation. What follows are 5 steps you can take for your specific situation. They are listed according to severity. That means the second action, “Reframe it”, is when you have a slightly difficult, but fixable situation at work, whereas the last “Leave Now” action is when you actually can not stand your toxic workplace anymore. When your hatred towards your job is not only how you feel in this moment, but is substantiated by hard evidence.

2. Reframe it

As discussed before, this second step is the subtlest action, or rather, reaction, you can take about your job situation. You can do this, when you feel this hatred on your job might be short-lived, and the benefits of this role outweigh the effort to switch work or careers, even.

This second step is about reframing your views on your job. It is essentially a different way of looking at your work. Marcel Proust famously said: “The real voyage of discovery…consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes”. The same goes for your job. Oftentimes, there are minor inconsistencies or friction points at work that, at times, can feel overwhelming. For me, this was often complicated and unfriendly customers, who did not appreciate my service, despite my service exceeding what was promised in the first place.

At its core, framing (whether defined by the social sciences as semantic, cognitive, or communicative) is how you perceive, interpret, and communicate your reality (Sullivan, 2023); in this case, about your job. In other words, try to see your work in a different light. See the positive aspects. See what you like, while you try to find solutions for the aspects of your job you do not like.

In its essence, if you focus on a specific aspect, this usually grows. That means, if you ask yourself why you hate your job, this aversion feels bigger and bigger the longer you think of it. Whereas, when you think about the aspects you appreciate and like of your job, this can make you value your job situation more, as it helps you find ways to improve it, since you know what you like and would like to do more of.

Reframing helps you have a positive relationship with your job again. It can help you find your why for doing this work. For example, for me, realising that unfriendly customers are not this way, because of me, but because they have problems themselves, which they are often not even aware of. So being able turn someone's bad day into something positive makes interactions with difficult customers so much easier for me. Essentially, it is a way to see the world as an opportunity to take on agency, action and positively impact a person's life.

3. Fix it first

While discussing taking action and agency in the previous paragraph, this third action specifically addresses and emphasises this point. A person with a high agency attitude is very proactive and considers themselves the author of their own life, rather than a supporting role in someone else's (Vallacher and Wegner, 1989).

Right now, you might be in a job situation where you believe your negative feelings and experiences still can be fixed, and you want to stay. To do this successfully, it is important to reflect on what exactly in your role you do not like and find a person or a boss you can trust to discuss this in a calm, professional manner.

Whenever I am in a situation like that, I always make a small list of things that bother me or that I view as problems at work, come up with a solution for each, and then book a meeting with my boss. In this one-on-one meeting with my boss, I try to explain each problem to them in a neutral, friendly manner and present my suggestions. For example, originally, I never got the clients I wanted at work, and through research, I found certificates I can take that could increase my chances of getting the specific clients I want. There, I approached my boss and asked him whether my employer would pay for these certificates so I could eventually switch clients.

Being transparent at work with people you can trust is key in dealing with your current negative emotions with your job. After you have confided, maybe your boss even understands your hatred for your current role. By discussing your frustrations in a constructive manner, you may resolve the situation or, at the very least, reach an agreement that buys you more time.

The most common action you can take to address your current workplace hatred is to set boundaries. For example, reduce your work hours from full-time to part-time so you have time to contemplate what you want to do. Assign time for yourself and protect it fiercely. Maybe you want to dedicate a specific day to fresh, new ideas or experiences, so that you feel inspired again. Or set boundaries at work with the tasks you don’t like to do. The goal of setting these boundaries is to refill your tank.

I also reduced my hours at my current employer because I felt drained by work, health and wanted to do my own thing with my wife, which is now RemoteCorgi. Reducing my work hours really helped me reflect more, recharge my energy, and know where I want to go in the future. Setting these boundaries up was really helpful for me, and I also gained my boss's respect, as they understood I needed to take care of myself, my cystic fibrosis, and take this seriously.

4. Work arrangement changes

If you hate your specific job role but still like your company and their culture, this fourth action point might be a good fit. It is doing more drastic work arrangement changes to your current role, which can include an internal transfer, reduced schedule, sabbatical or a remote switch.

Consider an internal transfer if you know a certain team or role is a better fit for you and you can do the job. I made this transfer while working at a fast-growing startup. When I started, I realised that the fast-growing Sales team I was working with was not at all aligned with how I think, work or vibe. It was too aggressive for me, and I felt overwhelmed. At that time, I reached out to the HR person at our company and asked her if I could switch teams to a Customer Success (or short, CSM) role. What followed were intense interview rounds to join the CSM team, but I made the cut and joined. After that, I stayed in this role for almost 2 years because I loved my team so much and, to this day, often think of them.

My message here is to consider an internal transfer if you believe it will improve your work-life. It might not be easy, but in my case, it was the right decision with invaluable positive experiences.

Other ways, such as the previously discussed reduced schedule or a sabbatical, are definitely worth it to fuel up your energy and help you reflect on what you truly want to do with your work life. At times, there are also remote opportunities. For example, at my current company, I can work completely remotely if my clients do not need me in the office. Maybe there are options like that in your company as well.

Essentially, the key question to ask yourself is what makes a workday feel good to you and take actions towards that.

5. Plan your next career move

This fifth action is when you hate your job for a while and feel this toxicity slowly infiltrate your personal life. Now, you probably realised you need to take action, and make a lasting change.

The most obvious option is to find another job. We have a great collection of top Work from Home Jobs you might like.

Otherwise, you can also consider a career change, freelance opportunities, or even self-employment (if you have gained some positive experience before). Or you can consider furthering your academic path.

In this stage, we would not recommend quitting immediately with no option afterwards, since you do not know how your situation will be in a few months without a job and under stress. You are not doing anything wrong by staying employed and looking for a new job at the same time, since it makes you more marketable as a candidate and gives you more negotiation power.

6. Leave Now

You should use this last action only in very rare, extreme cases where an urgent exit is absolutely necessary for your psychological well-being and safety. When you don’t just hate your job, but are almost falling into a depression. In this case, it is advisable to bring in professional external help, such as a psychologist, to support you and also to assess the social protection you can get to survive without an income for some months, possibly years.

Last remarks

We hope you found this article helpful. If you have any feedback or questions, feel free to reach out to us at any time.

References

• Sullivan, K., 2023. Three levels of framing. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science, 14(5), p.e1651.

• Vallacher, R.R. and Wegner, D.M., 1989. Levels of personal agency: Individual variation in action identification. Journal of Personality and Social psychology, 57(4), p.660.