A Reddit post shared by a young corporate employee experiencing early-career exhaustions and burnout due to monotonous, repetitive tasks and lack of visible progress has gone viral. The 22-year-old employee, who works with customer services, poured out a raw and honest reflection on what daily work feels like early in a career. The post begins with a powerful line: ‘I’m tired of this life. I’m just 22 years of age, and I’m dead tired.’
The post described the same monotony, the endless pressure- something which struck a chord with thousands who feel the same early-career burnout. For million of corporate workers, it’s the same routine everyday- logging in at 9 am, completing targets, submitting reports, and for the next day- it’s the same story all over again. Waking up every morning only to repeat the same cycle — targets, reports, check-ins — again and again and by evening, the tasks are done, the goals are met, yet nothing feels different the next day.
Despite working hard and fulfilling expectations, the repetitiveness of the role has left workers feeling mentally drained and stuck in an emotional loop.
‘When does this stop’?
The young professional, employed in customer service and customer success, described feeling “dead tired” despite being early in their career. In the post, the user explained how every quarter revolves around meeting Key Result Areas (KRAs) such as gathering reviews, only for management to introduce new targets once the cycle ends. Even after achieving goals, the process resets immediately, leaving them questioning the purpose of repeating the same grind endlessly.
“Every quarter, I have to meet my KRAs, like get reviews and upper management would bring more ideas on how to bring them in, and it goes on. End of the quarter, people have achieved it, and the next day, its back to square one,” the post reads.
“When does this ever stop? Whats the point of chasing this over and over again, and it keeps resetting?” it read.
The young employee called out what they called “grind culture,” saying the constant pressure to perform merely to survive on a bare-minimum salary feels unsustainable. The worker feeling too exhausted to even learn new skills, noting that no matter where one goes, the same cycle of grinding seems unavoidable.
‘Too lazy to learn new skills’
“Is that what I need to do, just for survival? Because this is so insane! I can’t keep doing this “grind culture“. Grind just to survive on bare minimum salary. At this point Im too lazy even to learn some skills, because wherever you go, its this grinding. Is there no job, where you just do the work, and complete the tasks, rather than chasing this?,” it added.
The young worker expressed concern about career progression in the Reddit post, pointing out that climbing the corporate ladder would only replace individual KRAs with team-based targets, which they felt would be even more draining.
Ending on a note of despair, the user questioned whether this routine is all there is to life, writing that they cannot imagine continuing this way—working an entire year in a developing country just to save enough for a short vacation abroad.
“If I climb the ladder up, then instead of individual contribution as KRAs, it would be your team contribution- which is even more tiring. What do I do? This cannot be my life. I cannot keep living in a third world country, doing this for an entire year, only to save up enough for a 1 week international trip/vacation,” the Reddit post read.