You know what really grinds my gears?!

[Senor_Taylor]

Consolidate your loans. Makes life easy.

When you first kick off your career expect to work some shit hours in shit jobs with shit commutes that make you wonder how this is going to benefit you in the long term, use it to start building your network and connections. I havent regularly worked more than 40-45 hours a week, or had longer than a 4 mile commute in a very long time, but I'm also very active at enforcing my work/life balance and more hours than that tips it in the wrong direction in a pretty severe way for me. I have too much other shit I want to do when I leave the office. Its impacted my career growth in some ways but I will take that trade every time. Make sure you are killing it and adding value back to your employer the hours that you are there and it works out just fine and no one will complain that you are knocking off at 4:30 most days. No one gives a shit that you're hanging around the water cooler at 7pm when you came in at 10am, took a 2 hours lunch and didnt do fuckall the rest of the day (working late is working hard, fucking consulting?!?!! wrong).

Yeah, I'm right there with you on this. I avoided consulting (and made my job hunt harder) just to avoid this. I like my job, my commute isn't bad (~20 miles in 35 minutes) and right now I have nothing else to do but work hard and save money. It doesn't really bother me to get home so late because I don't really want to do much else except make dinner and relax (a luxury I never had in college). Some times I leave before the other new guys because I also get in an hour before they do and do a ton of work in that hour. I've already been discussing with my team lead and manager that I'm ready for bigger tasks and they have already been assigning me big projects. I'm not trying to brag or anything, but I definitely see the benefit of working hard early. Because of all of this, I don't really worry if they walk by and see me in here for a second or if I disappear for an hour. They know I'm getting my work done.