Dear young people entering the work force: your extra efforts will be rewarded with extra work. You won't be paid more or experience progress going this way; you'll be Sisyphus. If you work enough on networking and making the right friends, you might climb the ladder, but it will be at the expense of wife and kids, if you have those. Only a select few can have it all. Remember to focus on the important things while you can.

I know i serve for at least 2 examples. First one was as a a security guard, though that was back in my early 20s, on what not to do at work on some seminar. There was a video of me dosing off standing up. In my defense, i have ADHD and it was boring as hell job and it was impossible to make a living wage with normal hours so everyone had to do overtime massively.

Other one is at my current job, as a printing machine operator. It's rather important to make sure that the active runn in the machine is in correct way, aka facing the machine or the operator, etc. primarily for the next steps in production.

For one specific job i constantly messed it up and printed it the wrong way. Eventually design department did a special picture just for me, with my name on it. On how this certain run must face while in the machine. It had a human figure on it(with my name) the run and machine.

This picture still goes along with that job up to this day, though no one else afterwards hasn't messed it up in the threat that my name will be replaced by theirs.

I'm the reason a single hardware store in a chain of stores has a specific policy. After they mix a can of paint, they offer the hammer to the customer and ask if they want to seal the lid themselves.

My ambition in my 40s

Don't. Draw. Attention.
Just keep my head down, quietly complete the minimum acceptable requirements, only submit them when their deadlines are imminent. Aim for the equivalent of a "B" on my performance reviews.
Dress plainly, don't talk about hobbies or personal life, don't reflect or amplify drama, never volunteer my opinion.

A place I used to work had to add a rule banning unicycles from the parking lot because of me.

If you're too competent you'll get promoted. Now you have to do all the same stuff you already did plus deal with a bunch of management shit. Literally anything is better than attending meeting after meeting, even work.

My 20s were spent in grad school hoping to change the world. My 30s were spent trying to survive.

The second half of this post is how I got through highschool. And college. And the military. “I didn't see anything about it in the handbook/UCMJ” was my motto. And I already realized hard work didn’t pay off, cuz I watched my siblings do that.

There are two ways to get through life. You can conform, which is hard for you but easy for everyone else, or you can find and exploit every loophole you can which is hard for you AND hard for everyone else. I’m not one to make things easy for other people unless its also easier for me, so..

If you live in two countries and one is much cheaper than the other then you can work in the expensive one for higher pay and retire at 35 to 45 in the cheaper one.

I want to always be the reason the angle grinder is missing.

God damn if you were working that hard in your 20s that would suck.

Well yes, but also it's my hard work in my 20s that put me in a place where I'm paid enough that 50 hour months aren't catastrophic to my livelihood.

In my 20s, I was definitely pulling extra hours for no OT or just off the clock. I'm now in my 30s and am suing my previous employer for wage theft.

If they're doing it to you, they're doing it to co-workers. Save ALL your receipts, stubs, emails, chats... Collect contact info from other employees, so you have that info when they/you quit. Found out it was actually pretty easy to find a lawyer willing to take a (in the grand scheme of things) small payout case on contingency. Don't know how it's going to play out yet, but it's looking good for something the employer considered me being petty.

Apparently I've been in my 30's for my entire 20's

Word to the wise: if you work extra hours and weekends to prevent a layoff, you are on a sinking ship using a shot glass to keep water out. Let the ship sink.

20's: learn to read the room, if your manager doesn't move people on merit, don't do extra shit for them. If you really want to try step one, you're going to have to bounce around until you find a manager willing to give you what you're worth.

The dress code at my last job was written to address one specific woman. That was a wild summer.

In my 20s and it is really true that I am ready to work for free just so that I can get some sort of start

In my 40s: I'll do anything I can to not work and be lazy and it'll be fine. (You have to be good at what you do for this to work.)