Oh, I could bitch about this for hours. Minimum wage starting, but cross-train and we'll bump your pay by a dollar for every role you're certified in! Will we ever schedule your certification? Hell no! Contribute to our Continuous Improvement program to get bonuses! Do we ever actually process CI tickets to completion? lol no get fucked buddy, anyway you're staying late tonight because the VP just sold another 100 units we don't even have the parts for yet and we've scheduled delivery for Sunday.

Ahem. Anyway, I think we're coming at this from different perspectives and our experiences with the job market differ accordingly. You've got a network and an impressive CV, and my skills are harder (for me, at least) to express on paper and I'm more or less disposable. So whereas they try to sell stuff that may or may not be a good deal to you as "the opportunity of a lifetime" they use the same gilding to try to get me to huff paint for 12 hours a day. I'm not sure where I was going with this but thank you for listening.

edit: realizing now that this post amounts to me complaining about my lot in life but I wanna clarify that I respect most career professionals and I do recognize that you guys work hard too.