to stay or leave? need advice
I am 24 with zero overhead/live at home, and for full context i work 8-5, $18 an hour, and the commute is 1 hour and 15 minutes there and back while eating up 20% of what i make (gas + food regardless of meal prep or eating cheap gas station food) and the math doesnt check out imo with opportunity cost/cost to work.
I have 2 total YOE between SaaS support, a security internship, and two stints at different MSPs, and CySA+, Net+, AWS SAA, an associates + halfway completed bachelors and an extensive homelab where i self host a lot of things/run my own SIEM, and some SQL/Bash skills.
my current employer is a dead end MSP where i work on printers, the org has had to hire consultants to fix their IT services side while firing every previous manager in the process and reshaping the department, and were losing customers like crazy/no sign of hiring anytime soon until a profit is turned consistently, my skills are stagnating and there is zero exit in sight.
my role requires full onsite presence, i tried to upskill + work but it came at the cost of my sanity + relationships romantically and family, i have 6-9 months of expenses saved and am ready to jump ship with running a job search + upskill campaign while targeting support engineer/SaaS support/security analyst if i am lucky, is this a smart idea? feel free to rip me a new one or say i am right
Posted May 13, 2026, 6:28 PM UTC