I can’t speak for everyone but I find myself thinking back to my previous 8 years of working in corporate. I have worked for a government-linked investment company, the central bank, and now a unit trust fund management company. I have learned many things, many of which through hard work and perseverance but I won’t say I am the most experienced person out there.

Many times, I felt like I could have done better in hindsight, and when I look at the careers of my peers, I can’t help but feel that I could definitely have done better. It is a nagging feeling in all of us. However, I do know we all go through different paths in life and that nothing is linear in life. Looking back, I wish I had known these 3 things.

The Path that Everyone Goes in Life Wildly Differs, and There’s no Way to Compare … Even if you Want To

Early on in my career, I use to compare the career path I am going on to my peers around me. How old are they? What position are they in? What important things have they done? I use to benchmark myself against all these things to judge whether I am doing well in life or not. What I found throughout was just crippling anxiety and depression of knowing that I will never be able to achieve what they had. The problem was that I thought we were all on the same path but the reality was that we were all not.

Now that I think about it, the reason to me on this were all rooted in economics. You see, almost half of my generation went to university with the latest figure for tertiary school enrollment at 42% in 2021. My father’s generation’s enrollment rate in universities was a dismal 3.8% in 1978. When I talk to the older managers, many talked about how having income stability was more important back then, and that promotions were one way of securing that and getting a bit more money. However, when I talk to my peers, they look at climbing the corporate ladder and getting promotions as a measure of “progress” in their life. Of course, money factors in quite important too but many talked about achieving things in their life.

However, they also talked about the “sacrifice” that they had to take on their family, friends, personal interest, and sometimes mental health to be where they are. Some didn’t mind it as they saw the end goal of being someone high up and respectable as worth it, but some cited that it was unsustainable and was at the brink of just quitting everything. In the end, we are all walking different paths in life but for some reason, we want to equate our paths as being the same as everyone else.

Overtime is Rarely Worth It in the Long-term No Matter How I See It

Let’s face it. To get that promotion you have been gunning for, you probably have to outwork your peers. I was like that once too, working 18 hours a day, trying to show that I was good at my job. I tell myself that this will all be worth it in the end. I did get the recognition I wanted, but it came at the expense of taking more sick leaves and having more severe anxiety breakdowns the more I worked. Each time I delivered something, the expectations for the next task just grew higher and I have to spend even more time working on it.

My employers always dangle that carrot in front of me, by “incentivising” with recognition, promotions, higher pay, and better benefits but in the end, nothing really came out of it. Some were delivered, but most were not. I lost time with my spouse, family, and friends. I didn’t get to do the things I enjoyed the most. Kuala Lumpur was voted the 3rd most overworked city in the world, where the competition is so intense that people are working more than ever before. This had all lead to a higher prevalence of mental health issues which was estimated to incur a cost of RM14.5 billion in 2020.

My father and mother used to talk about how they wished that they hadn’t worked harder and spent more time with us when they were working. Now that I am 31 years old and on the cusp of wanting to have little humans in my life, the prospect of working overtime seemed so daunting.

Getting Good at Corporate Politics is What Gets you Promoted, Not your Work

Yes, I said it. To rise up the ranks, the most important thing is to be good at the corporate politics game. I experienced this firsthand when I thought delivering good work to people is what got me the promotion but that is not the case. I have seen people who don’t really work and regularly “tai chi” their work to other colleagues, get promoted because they say the right things with the right people. I am not saying that’s bad, don’t get me wrong. I am just saying that’s the reality of the corporate culture now. You have to be aligned with some people higher-up in order for them to promote you. You have to push the blame to someone else to make yourself look a bit better. Unfortunately for me, I admit I don’t play that game well and have been on the receiving end of this multiple times.

At this point in my career, I have chosen to protect myself in the corporate environment out of necessity, but have refrained from getting involved in corporate politics. To me, working for someone else is just a stepping stone now to doing things on my own.