offtrail

confessions of a reformed linkedin stalker: offtrailterritory.substack.com/p/the-silent-p…

@CliftonSellers How to adapt to a new job situation very quickly. If you can do that, you can build trust quickly. And... it actually helps you move up quicker promotion-wise. wrote about it here actually: offtrailterritory.substack.com/p/right-hand-r…

What’s the ONE skill you’ve built that pays you more than your degree ever did?

@Bitcoin_Teej Here's a break down with more detail + my own experiences in Supply Chain: offtrailterritory.substack.com/p/business-fun…

Supply chain is a major department in pretty much every mid to large-sized company. You can go into several different types, too (Buyer or Procurement [the ppl buying stuff], Sourcing [the people finding / switching suppliers], Planning [the people deciding how many supplies they need based on what mfg. needs], Strategy [the ppl who did the above and know how to set the objectives and adjust the organization]). Also, sometimes companies tie logistics/distribution into this org too, especially if they're tracking incoming shipments. Huge departments, huge opportunity. Co-sign this all day.

Nobody talks about supply chain as a career path and it is a mistake. Supply chain analyst. Average salary $90,000 to $110,000. Senior roles at $130,000+. Remote friendly. Needed in every industry. Healthcare, manufacturing, tech, retail, government. The Google Supply Chain certificate on Coursera is under $300. Most people chasing tech overlook the fact that every company on earth has a supply chain that needs managing.

@zenziebar @Bitcoin_Teej Industrial engineering is very much slept on because it doesn't sound as glamorous. What it really is is a hybrid degree between business and engineering, and it's focused on making factories more efficient typically.

@Bitcoin_Teej I graduated industrial engineering and honestly the money is like none other. I didn’t take the route bc I work in a very niche field rn and that money is also spectacular

@Haven_F1 @Bitcoin_Teej Quality engineering can be a variety of things... there are quality engineers in mfg. and supply chain typically. They could work in other places, too.

@Bitcoin_Teej How about Quality Engineering? Any thoughts? Thank you!

Job titles are confusing... different titles at different companies, different titles for the same job, etc... here's how to decipher what's going on: offtrailterritory.substack.com/p/why-job-titl…

@CliftonSellers @NathanHirsch99 100%. You have to have a mixture of leadership skills + adjacent experiences to actually succeed.

@NathanHirsch99 Most people get promoted into management without ever learning it.

10 Clear Signs You Aren't Manager Material Save your team and career. Your team’s silence is a warning. Leadership isn’t inherited; it’s learned. Leadership isn’t a promotion; it’s a skill. True leaders build, not break. Here are the red flags you can’t unsee:

@positiverplyguy @dave_watches @BowTiedBull It depends I think on the job. If you’re in a high stress job it’s hard to dial it down without being noticed, but in a typical gig I think it can work

Wouldn’t it make sense just to take your foot off the gas so that your health can recover, and go half speed for a while and wait and see if they terminate rather than just quit? It might take them a while to do it. You might also be offered severance depending on your position/tenure if you’re terminated vs resigning. I get it goes against many of our natures but financially it does seem the smarter play.

Bowtied Bull (@BowTiedBull) correctly states don’t quit your W2 until you make 2x your net income for over 12 months from your side hustle. I quit anyway. I couldn’t keep putting my health last and deal with the unbelievably low standards from other execs. It took me a year, but in 2026, I’ve broken every sales record I ever held and have 3-4x’d my net income. If you’re stuck, please start your own business. It’s your only way out.

@metahacker_ @RolfHaltza Whenever we generalize a lesson, we must always leave room for the maverick

@RolfHaltza I used to dunk on traditional employees but then my friend, out of laziness and/or complacency, never ever switched jobs. And now 15 years later, she is third in line to be the country head for a $50B business

The main difference between job stackers and traditional employees with a single job is that we do not try to "make it work". If the job is incompatible, we quit. If it sucks, we move on. We do not let job-related stress or anxiety take hold. The job either fits or it doesn't.

@PEoperator @ItsSeb03 Probably the most important concept in ops.

@ItsSeb03 The Goal has to be first on the list

Looking for guidance from my manufacturing OGs - what book (s) shaped your manufacturing business? What’s something you wish you had read earlier?

just button mash life, brah.

@randomrecruiter You guys need to find good external recruiters like OP who can be your advocate. Especially if you're mid-career. They can cut through this nonsense. Sometimes the filters are helpful, but I'm sure there are qualified people that never get seen.

A bank we work with uses an AI tool to screen every resume that comes in. Here's how it works. We send them a candidate. Their internal recruiter runs the resume through the tool. If it scores an 8/10 or higher, the candidate gets an interview. Anything below that, auto rejected. We sent them a candidate a few weeks ago for a Python Developer role. She just ended a project for us at a competing bank with excellent references. The skills they actually needed for the role? Python, FastAPI, SQL. She had all three, used daily in her last job. The tool scored her a 7.5. Rejected. We pushed back and asked why. Turns out the job description had everything and the kitchen sink listed. Fifteen skills, half of them "nice to haves" that had nothing to do with the actual work. The AI weighted all of them equally and her score got dragged down by gaps that didn't matter. We pushed back on the internal recruiter citing she had the main skills + excellent references. We got her the interview and she got the offer. This is where internal recruiting teams are headed. AI tools layered on top of ATS systems, scoring candidates before a human ever reads the resume. In theory it saves time. In practice, it rejects qualified people because nobody bothered to write a clean job description. The tool isn't the problem, the inputs are. If your JD is a wish list instead of a job description, your AI is going to reject the exact people you're trying to hire. We're early in this. The tech will get better. But right now, a lot of great candidates are getting filtered out for reasons that have nothing to do with whether they can do the job.

@blueprintsmb22 Better than being unemployed for years with mouths to feed

Guys the silent journeyman W2 is a perfectly fine path. Friend is a senior analyst on a big book at big pod. PM was just fired, but the firm kept him around as his sub book / carve was doing well and they placed him with another team internally. This PM (shocker) is known to be tough (read a complete dck), but my friend feels safer staying at the firm he is at as he is grateful they found him a new seat so quickly. He has offers from other big platforms but is likely to stay. Early 40s w a kid around the same age as my 8 year old daughter. He doesn’t have the appetite or balance sheet to buy a business and that’s fine. He’s most comfortable staying as he’s in the “better the devil you know” camp. This is a very common journeyman outcome among many I know in finance and tech W2s. A lot of people like to shvt on these paths, but these jobs are impossible to get and at the end of the day he’s a smart guy providing for his family and he’s at peace with his path. That’s a win. The silent grind is a totally acceptance path (and oftentimes the best for many) and can be under-appreciated on this app. I know many on fintwit are on this path and sometimes get discouraged by the outlier datapoints out there they read on Bloomberg and on this app. You are doing more than fine I promise you.

One reason you gotta go thru the recruiting buzzsaw (you see what i did there) now is because companies have to arbritrarily add qualifications to have some basis on which to reject qualified candidates. The harder the test, the more distributed the test scores. Then you can hire that one guy who set the curve.

@Bitcoin_Teej I know a number of nurses who switched out into healthcare IT. They’re doing much better as are their feet.

The healthcare IT lane is one of the most underdiscussed high income paths in 2026. You are not a doctor. You are not a nurse. You are the person who implements and manages the software that runs hospitals and clinics. Epic Systems alone powers 38% of US hospitals. Epic certified professionals make $85,000 to $130,000. Training programs exist. The certification is free through Epic's own platform. Every hospital system in America needs these people right now.

@LinkedInLunat1c Why is everyone trying to turn average jobs into investment banking? Pay like it and then you can ask for this sort of insane commitment

If you don't want to work at your job 24/7 then just find a new job

@blueprintsmb22 Playing up the rifts between artificially defined generations is an easy way to drive readers/viewers/eyeballs. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone compare (instead of contrast) the generations. Maybe we ought to.

Hilarious. I guess every generation wondering if we can ever live as well as the older generations is a rite of passage x.com/RyanDetrick/st…

Applying for jobs in 2010: "Attach resume." Applying for jobs in 2025: "Manually retype your entire resume into 47 boxes."

The ATS in even the 2000s required you to retype everything. My hack was to keep a spreadsheet version of my resume and copy/paste as much as possible. But things have been getting worse for a very long time. This is how it happened and how people can break through: offtrailterritory.substack.com/p/the-hiring-a…