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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1150 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 16, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I think losing my old job the way I did hit me with some deep rooted impostor syndrome. I'm probably going to spend the next 3 weeks until my start date studying up on what they told me about their tech stack so far. It's a senior position, so I feel like I need to show up like I know things.

I don't know if this pertains to your situation, but in general a pretty common thing for people is the employment lifecycle:

Get annoyed/bored/lazy/too comfortable with job ->
Performance suffers ->
Get PIPed/fired/laid off/managed out ->
Develop sudden sense of urgency to reskill and upskill while desperately finding next job ->
Finally find next job ->
Highly motivated to start off new job strong ->
Continue with job for a while ->
Get annoyed/bored/lazy/too comfortable with job...

I tried to follow this plan, but it went more like this:

Get annoyed/bored/lazy/too comfortable with job ->
Performance suffers ->
Promoted to management in a line of work where no one wants the job and I would massively have to fuck up to get fired ->
Stuck with golden silver tin? handcuffs

Failing upward is a #Winning state. One can soak up any trepidations related to guilt, imposter syndrome, or golden handcuffs along the lines of the wiping_tears_with_money.gif meme.

golden handcuffs along the lines of the wiping_tears_with_money.gif meme.

More like "plastic coated with aluminum foil" handcuffs, and I'm only wiping up tears with money if I'm using (and reusing) a bunch of singles.

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