Why I Work to Make Work Suck Less
We spend a healthy 90,000 hours of our lives working. That's over a third of our waking adult lives spent on something that too many of us are led to actively dread.
The Sunday Scaries, the constant meetings that could've been emails and emails that should've been meetings, the managers who mistake micromanagement for leadership—it's all painfully normalized, even though it's already a cliché in itself.
But I mean it when I say: work doesn't have to suck quite so much.
The Moment I Knew Something Had to Change
In all honesty, "the moment" was each time I saw any pop culture reference to the slog that is Corporate America. So, about the age of 4.
Office Space, your eternal relevance is a damn shame.
But for the sake of narrative, picture a Pete of yore: less facial hair, more head of hair—freshly graduated and certified as a K-12 Spanish teacher in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
I was aiming to move to New York City, where I'd teach during the day and fail at comedy at night. Alas, life (see: the arbitrarily unique certification process for NY vs PA) had other ideas, and I soon found myself in San Francisco, working as a support engineer at a logistics API company and tucking my PA teaching certification in a folder under my bed.
"Sweet dreams, sweet prince" were the last words I uttered to that well-decorated PA Department of Education card stock.
Over the years, a rush of change: I was promoted to lead the team; moved to Utah; built the team to sixteen; replaced myself with three team leads; transferred to a Solutions Engineer position back in SF; moved to Affirm as a Sr. Technical Account Manager; wound up leading, growing, developing the team for years.
Over that long, hard pivot—from high school Spanish teacher to "Manager, Technical Account Management"—I found a bittersweet insight: work environments aren't accidentally good or bad. They're deliberately created.
A lot of them suck, and we can make them suck less.
The Problem Isn't Work—It's How We Work
Here's what became clear to me: technical skills are overrated in hiring and management. What matters far more is presence of mind—the ability to learn, adapt, and navigate human interactions with authenticity.
I mean, look at me: I majored in Spanish—and ended up leading a high-performing technical team at a public company. Clearly, it couldn't have been the content from school that made that happen—I only got to use medieval Spanish literature references in the job so many times.
When I was a hiring manager across different companies and industries, I made the same hiring decisions regardless of context. The people who excelled weren't those who knew every technical detail on day one. They were the ones who could:
- Try something new
- Learn from the experience
- Get better the next time
- Apply that improvement to different contexts
No job exists where you don't have to learn on the job. None. So why do we hire as if technical skills are the ultimate predictor of success?
Making Work Suck Less Isn't Just Idealism—It's Practical
There's a pervasive myth that making work more human-centered means sacrificing productivity or results. It's a myth that says trainings for managers to lead with compassion, to consider the whole person when working with their team, are only niceties to be thrown out when the shit hits the fan.
My experience has shown the exact opposite.
Only through competent, considerate management and policies do teams feel safe, act more deliberately and intentionally, and create more resilient organizations.
The typical approach to management is backward. We hire for technical skills, then wonder why our teams struggle with communication. We promote the best individual contributors into management, then act surprised when they flounder as leaders. We tell people to "be themselves" while subtly punishing authenticity.
Real leaders—competent leaders—can practice radical candor. But it only succeeds when paired with radical compassion. With understanding, opportunity, and encouragement.
A Different Path Forward
The through-line—in my work, in my writing, in what I share—is to change how we experience work by focusing on three core principles:
- Human connection comes first. The most critical elements of any job lie outside the formal job description—in the communication, the consideration for others' needs, and the ability to build trust.
- Learning is the ultimate value. The key to success isn't what you already know—it's how effectively you can learn new things and apply them.
- Authenticity doesn't have to be career suicide. You can bring your whole self to work without compromising professionalism or effectiveness.
This isn't about feel-good management theory. It's about practical, tangible approaches to creating workplaces where people actually want to show up—and where they can do their best work as a result.
People that feel connected to their team, to their manager, to their peers—they stick around and they work harder, because they want to help each other. Without that humanity, that authenticity, that relationship, folks want to get a paycheck and go home.
And to be absolutely clear to folks working at and navigating the workplace: boundaries are necessary in both versions of the workplace (present state and desired state). But in the desired state, boundaries are a point of connection, rather than a point of friction.
The Ripple Effect
When one team transforms its culture, it doesn't just improve life for those team members. It creates a ripple effect that extends to:
- The families who get to interact with less-stressed partners and parents
- The customers who benefit from more engaged service
- The broader organization that sees what's possible when work doesn't suck
I've seen this happen time and again, from logistics warehouses to fintech boardrooms. And now, as a coach and advisor, I get to help others create this transformation in their own teams and careers.
Let's-a-go
I don't believe work should be a source of misery. I don't believe Sunday nights should be filled with dread. And I don't believe we have to accept toxic workplace cultures as inevitable.
If you're a leader looking to build teams where people thrive rather than merely survive... if you're feeling stuck in a career that drains rather than energizes you... if you're wondering whether there's a better way to approach the 90,000 hours ahead of you...
Let's make work suck less—together.
PS: Why the Luigi costume? I wore it as a bit while picking up trash around the neighborhood with a friend. Hey, if that's not authentic Pete, I don't know what is.
Peter Durlacher is a career coach, team-building expert, and author of "The Manager You Wish You Had." After building and leading teams across logistics and fintech, he now helps individuals and organizations transform their relationship with work. Learn more at peterdurlacher.com.