A workplace with no one you want to become is rough
Sometimes you look around at work and realize there's nobody you want to turn into.
I'm not saying everyone there is a bad person. Some are good at what they do. Some work hard. Some are perfectly nice once you talk to them.
But if you ask whether you'd want to be them someday, the answer is no.
Work like that person does.
Age like that person does.
Keep the kind of family life, hobbies and breathing room that person has.
Carry yourself the way that person does.
Very few people at the company make you think any of that.
I think this is a pretty big warning sign.
If you push hard to win the company's approval in a place like this, you end up adopting the values of the people you don't want to become.
You move to please your boss.
You adapt to the unwritten rules.
You earn trust as the go-to person who handles everything.
You pile on meetings, behind-the-scenes lobbying and mind-reading.
Before you know it, you've drifted toward exactly what you disliked.
That's what scares me.
Separate your direct boss's path from the view of top management
That said, not everyone is a lost cause.
People near the top may have a perspective worth learning from. They look at the whole company, spot where departments get stuck, judge what really matters and think about what's best overall. That way of seeing things is useful.
But learning from it is a different matter from wanting to climb the middle rungs of this company.
You can learn the executive's point of view.
That doesn't mean the road up through section chief, department manager and division head looks appealing.
Along the way there are people who get validation by lording it over others.
There are defensive people.
There are people who keep multiplying the number of go-to fixers.
There are people whose lives fall apart while they work.
There are people who don't seem any freer even after moving up.
In that case, just steal the top-level perspective.
See things in terms of the whole.
See where departments get stuck.
See what matters most to the company.
Take your boss's abstract direction and turn it into concrete moves on the shop floor.
Turn chaos into a system.
Those skills become your own assets.
But you don't have to chase internal approval so hard that you bend toward the values of a middle layer you never wanted to join.
Treat your company as a place to collect from, not a place to climb
If there's nobody you want to become, you don't have to make this company the home base of your life.
See it as a place to collect from, not a place to climb.
Here's what to collect:
Salary.
Bonuses.
Money to invest.
Chances to transfer to another role.
Achievements you can put on your résumé.
Experience improving how work gets done.
Experience with AI, VBA (macros that automate Excel tasks) and other automation.
Experience standardizing work, writing manuals and creating training material.
A real understanding of how a manufacturing floor works.
Results you can explain in the job market.
And here's what you don't need to collect:
Internal approval.
Loyalty to your boss.
A reputation as the person who'll do anything.
Over-adapting to unwritten rules.
Emotional labor for a boss who lords it over people.
Effort so intense it wrecks your life.
Giving everything to win the approval of people you don't want to become is dangerous.
What you need isn't to be absorbed by the company.
It's to carry out of the company only the things your future self can use.
Earning trust and getting trapped are not the same thing
Being trusted at work matters.
But there are two kinds of trust.
One kind leads to freedom.
When you take it on, the work gets organized.
This person can translate between the shop floor and the back office.
This person can standardize and automate manual work.
This person can clarify the goal and scope and move things forward.
This kind of trust goes on your résumé. You can take it outside the company. You can talk about it in job interviews. It becomes your expertise.
The other kind leads to being tied down.
Ask this person and they'll do anything.
Toss them the annoying stuff and they'll deal with it.
They never say no.
They'll teach you.
They'll clean up your mistakes.
They'll somehow turn the vague orders from above into something real.
That's the trust you get as a human Swiss Army knife.
Earn that kind and your workload grows.
Your freedom doesn't.
Your evaluation and pay barely move.
If anything, your life starts to fall apart.
So if you're going to build trust at work, choose which kind.
Not "the person who does everything,"
but "the person who can turn chaos into a system."
Not "the person who never says no,"
but "the person who delivers once the goal, scope and deadline are set."
Aim for that kind of trust.
Build a system instead of doing IT babysitting
Work improvement, RPA (software robots that handle repetitive computer tasks), AI and VBA fall into the same trap.
Teaching people isn't bad in itself. It's actually valuable.
But in the wrong environment, it stops being "digital transformation" and turns into IT babysitting.
You get asked the same questions again and again.
Nobody reads the manual.
You sit next to people every time and walk them through the clicks.
They never learn to do it on their own.
Your own workload doesn't shrink.
Yet you keep getting called in as "the one who knows this stuff."
That's dangerous.
If you're going to do it, stop at building a system.
Teach it once.
Write the manual.
Make a video or a sample.
Make "check the material first" the rule for repeat questions.
Take only the problems that are truly stuck.
Don't accept dumped tasks or the same question over and over.
Done this way, it counts on your résumé as training, standardization and process improvement.
If it turns into plain sit-beside-them babysitting, all you're left with is exhaustion.
Startup chaos is the same if you can't collect anything from it
If a big company doesn't suit you, maybe you should just go to a startup.
It's a thought that crosses your mind.
But startup chaos needs a warning too.
You fix one mess.
The next mess arrives.
You fix that.
Then another one comes.
The business direction changes.
The ground shifts before you can build a system.
You get freedom, but your responsibility is unlimited too.
And it never turns into enough salary, résumé value or stock gains.
That's just endless firefighting.
The question isn't big company versus startup.
It's whether your life ends up in the black after you've fixed the chaos.
That's what you have to look at.
A big company works if it gives you pay, a résumé, expertise, psychological safety (feeling safe to speak up without being punished) and good role models.
A startup works if it turns into autonomy, pay, equity, a résumé, growth and freedom.
And either one is a no if you only get more chaos and can't collect anything.
Aim for the side where you choose whether to work
What you ultimately want isn't to move up at the company.
It's to get to the side where you choose whether or not to work.
You can work.
You can not work.
You can change jobs.
You can stay.
You can transfer.
You can do a side gig.
You can protect yourself with investments.
The company doesn't hold your entire life in its hands.
If being an employee brings you closer to that state, it's worth it.
Your salary becomes money to invest.
Your work history is something you can take outside.
Your experience improving processes is useful at your next company.
Your track record with AI, VBA and standardization can be explained outside the company.
Your understanding of manufacturing floors connects to other kinds of work.
When that's true, being an employee has meaning.
But if you stay on and your life falls apart, your hobbies vanish, a family becomes hard to have, you start resembling your boss, and you still have to work when you're old, then it's not worth it.
Wrap-up: at a place with no one to look up to, don't climb with everything you've got
At a workplace with nobody you want to become, you don't have to force yourself to dream.
You don't have to manufacture love for the company.
You don't have to fake a hunger for promotion.
You don't have to wear yourself down to win your boss's approval.
Instead, collect calmly.
Collect your salary.
Collect your work history.
Collect your chances to transfer.
Collect your improvement achievements.
Collect material you can use in the job market.
Protect the margin in your life.
Build up investments and personal assets.
A workplace with nobody you want to become isn't a mountain to climb.
But you can still use it as a stopover.
Not to get ahead at this company,
but to get to the side where your future self gets to choose.
Seen that way, being an employee looks a little different.
Don't hand your life over to the company. Use the company to put your life in the black.
And to do that, today too, you collect just what you need.
References and background used in the text
Japan's Cabinet Office "White Paper on the Aging Society, 2025 edition" shows that many people are still working in their late 60s and early 70s. Working long is no longer unusual, which means it matters to distinguish between working because you choose to and working to stay afloat.
https://www8.cao.go.jp/kourei/whitepaper/w-2025/html/zenbun/s1_2_1.htmlTime-series statistics from JILPT (the Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training) show dual-income households rising and households with a full-time homemaker falling. When you think about family and stability in old age, the old model of one salary supporting a household no longer holds the way it once did.
https://www.jil.go.jp/kokunai/statistics/timeseries/html/g0212.htmlPsychological safety has been studied as a shared belief within a team that it's safe to take interpersonal risks. In workplaces where suggestions and questions get met with defensiveness or personal attacks, learning and improvement are slow to happen.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.2307/2666999Job Demands-Resources theory holds that even when job demands are high, whether you have resources such as autonomy, support, rewards and chances to grow decides whether you burn out or become engaged.
https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-120920-053933
Internal link candidates
- How to decide whether to change jobs when you want to quit
- An article for when you're around 30 and wonder, "Is this really okay?"
- Where to draw the line so someone good at improving processes doesn't become the go-to fixer
- Using your job as a funding machine
- Should you aim for promotion when there's no boss you want to become?
- Why you shouldn't make improvement proposals in a workplace without psychological safety
- How to protect yourself from burning out at your current job while job hunting
Related article ideas
- Trust as an asset, trust as a debt: how to be relied on without becoming the go-to fixer
- Is startup chaos growth, or endless firefighting?
- Can't salaried workers earn well? Turning your pay into investment capital
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Notes for publication
- Cut further any wording from which a real company, department or person could be guessed
- Don't use verbal habits or episodes that could identify a particular boss or coworker
- Replace strong internal expressions with "a defensive boss" and "people who get validation by lording it over others" in the public version
- Keep it a general point that "how much an employee's working life pays back depends on the place," not criticism of a current employer
- Describe personal experiences only loosely, such as "an older colleague," "a certain workplace," or "a certain boss"
- Don't name companies, famous firms or corporate groups in the public version
- While job hunting, don't publish this as a company-related article; keep it as a draft or in the backlog
