@futurebird Every job I've had—with one brief horrible exception—I've known someone who worked there. I've worked at the same place, off and on, for coming up on 22 years. A good friend (and my office-mate throughout most of the '90s) worked there and was set to go on paternity leave in March 2004, and brought me on in February. His spouse went into labor early (because twins) and I got thrown into this new job with a week's training, for a manager who didn't ever say no to clients. I lasted 7 months, left, endured the aforementioned horrible exception, and then came back 18 months later on a different, better-managed, team, coincidentally run by someone I played ice hockey with. Laid off in 2010, rehired in 2012, just before the small company was bought by bigger company, went through growing pains, and then was bought by even bigger company. I exist in a little corporate tide pool 1500 miles away from the Main Office, working from home and reasonably content in an occupational sense. My hockey-playing manager married a Canadian woman we met at a co-ed tournament in BC, and fucked off to Vancouver Island when COVID hit. He's still at the company too.
Meanwhile, my old friend never came back; he became a stay-at-home dad to his twins as his spouse pursued her career as a climate scientist studying glaciers in Antarctica. In 2014, she was offered a position at a university in New Zealand. I visited them in Dunedin two years ago, in February, as their boys were turning 20.