Hi,

In my current job, I feel quite confident in my technical abilities. Although I do think I'm slower to understand complex new things, I've become quite good at self-teaching after hours.

My issue is that the current team I'm in seems to put a lot of emphasis on social interaction. When I started I knew this and I put in a lot of effort. Going for drinks every week with the colleagues, lunch , parties etc etc. It was working well, but it required my full attention and focus.

Although fun, this was obviously exhausting for me and I hate how it disrupted my health routine I've learned to build up over the years. The constant after work drinks and good life, puts me in a dangerous slippery slope. It's not hard for me to fall back into old habits.

So I realigned myself into my peak performance mode. Dieting, lunchtime workouts and avoiding alcohol. It's very intricate routine that works very well for me and I obsess about it. Any divergence from it and its back on slope.

The problem is that even though I mind my own business, it attracts negative attention. I feel like all the social credit I built up is slipping away and I can sense that I'm placing myself outside the inner circle again. I don't fit into there "London City Boy/private school drinking culture" bracket anymore. I find it really hard to adapt to the fact that you need to keep paying everybody attention and need to constantly fake yourself to be something your not. The whole herd mentality thing seems so petty. It has gotten to a stage where I find it so petty that I lose respect for a lot of my co-workers, making it even harder for me to fake it again.

To make matters worse , I've never really gotten along with the MD and ED in my team from the start. I just have a hard time dealing with authoritative figures in the corporate world. I either come over as a cocky junior or as trying to hard to please. Finding the balance in between is very difficult. So I ruined that from the very beginning. I can tell from their body language, I'm rubbing them in the wrong way. There's this chat channel at work , reserved for banter and informal conversation. Of course , my idea of banter and informality is quite different from the MD's and I routinely cross the line and commit faux pas on there. Making sweeping statements on politics , talking about women , I get sucked into the conversations easily and before I know it I typed something I would regret. Just yesterday , I got called into the office , because I triggered a discussion where I was rating beautiful movie-stars using a 0-10 scoring system. Didn't think anything of it , but apparently you can say a woman is beautiful , very beautiful or extremely beautiful , but you can't say 8 , 9 or 10. It's OK to encourage alcohol abuse day in day out by glorifying drinking culture, but please do not appreciate a female celebrity's appearance with numbers. Go figure. People do not make sense to me. I do appreciate the sensitivity regarding sexism at work with all the law suits , but for me it just didn't feel like crossing the line. Rating women colleagues or making sleazy remarks, that would be crossing the line for me. Anyway , I'm ranting.

I'm beginning to think that maybe the big corporate rat race is not for me. I always seem to antagonize somebody. Social relationships which I worked hard for seem to deteriorate in the blink of an eye. I think maybe being a contractor would be better. It's focussed on more cash in the short term and less on the promise of cash as you climb the corporate social ladder. Shorter periods at the same company , so by the time things are showing signs of getting messed up , I can move on to the next company. I've got a bit of a job hopping CV , partly because of my move to the UK from Belgium , so I will need to keep here for a year or two at least.

Has anybody got any advice? Some tips or experiences they can share of how to survive the corporate social ladder. Btw, I don't take any medication. I'm afraid they will take away my drive. I cherish my cognitive type for most part.

Quote