My aunt in Phoenix worked a job for 12 years that sounds awful, and she made $71k doing it
My aunt works as a database administrator for a small hospital system just outside Phoenix. When she first got the role, my mom told her it was a dead-end job for people who like spreadsheets. Two sides here. Side one: sounds boring, you sit in a dark room, you run backups, you fix the same files over and over. Side two: she makes $71,000 a year, works from home three days a week, and her actual work most days is maybe two hours of real effort. She got the advice from a guy at a community college who told her to skip the fancy coding bootcamp and just get the certification, and that turned out to be right. I argued with her for a full year that she should pivot to something more exciting, and then I watched her take a Tuesday afternoon nap. So which side are you on: is a quiet job a trap, or is it the whole point?
Two hours of real work a day for 71 grand sounds great until you're 45 and realize you've learned nothing new in a decade. That job is one software change away from being gone, and when it happens she'll be competing against 25 year olds who actually know the modern tools. Boring is fine, but boring plus replaceable is a trap, not a win. A Tuesday nap feels nice right up until the layoff email shows up and the only skill on your resume is running backups. Excitement isn't the point either, staying useful is the point, and coasting for 12 years usually means you stopped being useful around year 3, lol.