In my first job, I dreaded Sunday nights. Monday meant facing a manager I was scared of.

So, is your job even worth it? A job is worth it when the stress of earning the money is smaller than the stress that money takes off your life. When earning it hurts more, and the cause is the culture or the manager around you, the job is costing you more than it pays.

(My book, Quit 9to5, comes out in January 2027. Join the Quit 9to5 waitlist to hear when it's out.)

We work to make money, and we want money because it reduces stress.

Follow the chain. Money pays for survival: food, a roof, healthcare. It also pays for comfort, like feeling warm when it's cold outside. Without these, your body and your mind both feel stressed. So the real job of money is to take physical and mental stress out of your life.

That sounds like a good deal. But there's a second half to it.

Then the deal stops working.

To make money, you go through stress of a different kind: deadlines, pressure, people, travel. So every salary is a trade between two kinds of stress. One is the stress the money removes. The other is the stress you take on to earn it.

Most of us only look at the first one. We ask whether the salary is good. We rarely ask what it took to get it. If the stress of earning is bigger than the stress the money removes, you are worse off after payday than you would have been without the job.

If the trade can go this wrong, why did so many people before us accept it?

Because for many of them, the other side of the trade was their family's survival.

If a bad job was the only thing between your family and hunger, you bore it. Options were few. You stayed, because the alternative was much worse.

For many of us today, that is no longer the trade. Thanks to our families and ancestors, a lot of people already have a home and some basic wealth behind them. This isn't true for everyone. But if it's true for you, be honest about what you are trading. Very often, what you get for putting up with a toxic manager is a new iPhone.

And today there are millions of jobs and ways to earn, across the world. With that many options, why tolerate a toxic one?

The stress of a bad job is also only part of what it costs you.

A job also costs you time, the way you live and your weekends.

In my first job, I commuted about 3 hours a day to a factory on the outskirts of Bangalore, more than an hour each way. I lived alone and ate outside food. On weekends I spent money on outings, mostly to recover from the week.

So the cost was never only the money I spent. It was the stress of earning it, and then more money spent to get over that stress. (I wrote about where the rest of the salary goes in Where Does Your Salary Hike Disappear Every Year?)

Today I live at home with my family. My commute is negligible, and I eat home-cooked food.

Not every hard week means the job is wrong, though. Some stress is the kind you should keep.

Here's the test I use: ask whether the stress comes from the work or from the people around it.

Discomfort of growth is tied to a specific project or task. You've stepped into unknown territory, and it feels hard because you're learning. It shows up in a good culture and a bad one alike. That discomfort is never the problem.

Toxicity comes from the culture, the people and the manager. It doesn't depend on the kind of work. If you feel restless whatever project you're on, that is toxicity, and you should get out of it.

These were my signs in my first job:

When I felt all of this, I didn't call it toxicity. I blamed myself.

Try, but know what you're fixing.

I took the blame myself. I tried to do everything right and put in more effort. None of it helped, because my effort was never the issue. The issue was the environment, and no amount of extra work changes that.

So start by checking where the stress comes from. If it comes from one hard project, push through it, because that's growth. If the restlessness follows you from project to project, more effort won't fix it. That's when to stop trying and start planning your exit.

Build your way out before you walk out.

If you've stayed this long and wonder why, Why Do People Stay in Jobs They Hate? explains the trap. In my upcoming book, Quit 9to5, I go deeper into why we work and how to design a career on your own terms. Join the waitlist to get it first.

Thought exercise: Draw two columns. In the first, write the stress your job adds: the commute, the manager, the dread, the money you spend to recover. In the second, write the stress your salary takes away. Next to each item in the first column, mark whether it comes from one project or from the culture. If the first column is longer and most marks say "culture", you have your answer.

Is your job worth what it costs you?

I've put everything I know into first-principles frameworks in Quit 9to5, my book coming out in January 2027: how to build your runway and walk out of salaried work when you choose.

Join the Quit 9to5 waitlist so you don't miss the launch.