Dark Side of the Career: Reflections from an Online Discussion Platform

Abstract

Career counseling research has neglected how workplace experiences affect employees’ careers. Therefore, this study aimed to understand the employees’ feelings and thoughts regarding their working life. Accordingly, this study adopted a qualitative approach and investigated 1928 posts by using Thematic Analysis from an online discussion platform. The research data were the entries of the platform under the title of "working life" from 2000 to 2022. These entries were analyzed by using MAXQDA software. Results showed three clusters: The naïve cluster comprised expectations and skills from the beginning of working life. In naïve cluster, users expressed how different their expectations in working life from reality. The black box cluster included workplace deviance and poor working conditions. In this cluster, users especially expressed problems about interpersonal relationships in the working environment. Finally, the cost cluster comprised physical, emotional, behavioral, and spiritual outputs of working life. In these outputs, users revealed their burnout, insecurity, and unhappiness. The findings were discussed from the psychology of working theory perspective, and related literature.