The retail work was not huge and important but it was definitely work - people came into the shop looking for a thing the shop might be able to provide, and many of them left with the thing they wanted.
You would not have anything to show for three years of that beyond a series of paystubs, but every day you would have seen the fruits of your work.
Laboring for years on something that ends up trashed and under corporate NDAs, with nothing to show beyond a series of paystubs, is different from that. Most of my friends who work for corporations have felt this at least once in their career, to be honest. It generally pays better than the retail job, at least.
> Laboring for years on something that ends up trashed and under corporate NDAs, with nothing to show beyond a series of paystubs, is different from that
I'm struggling to relate to this. Me and the rest of my team were literally laid off just a few weeks ago. What I'm hearing from the inside is that half of our work is now in maintenance mode (it's kinda necessary for KTL) and the Big Project™ we were working on is fully abandoned.
I guess I'm sad the Big Project™ will no longer exist, but I learned dozens of lessons while working on it, and I'm more confident and a better engineer because of those lessons and effort. And I get to add some nice things to my resumé.
It doesn't truly feel like a loss. Hundreds of other companies will do similar things and I will try to join them or I'll be interested in some other field in a few years.
But I'm already familiar with changing jobs every few years so perhaps that's why I find it harder to relate.
You would not have anything to show for three years of that beyond a series of paystubs, but every day you would have seen the fruits of your work.
Laboring for years on something that ends up trashed and under corporate NDAs, with nothing to show beyond a series of paystubs, is different from that. Most of my friends who work for corporations have felt this at least once in their career, to be honest. It generally pays better than the retail job, at least.