Six-figure salary in London and that sweet feeling of “stability”? Congratulations: you’re officially undergoing embalming in a corporate coffin with climate control. You’re not building a future — you’re just freezing in the pose of a successful manager while time slowly drains your life.
📦 What Western “Stability” Actually Buys
Western safety is an “all-inclusive” package: predictable career elevator, mortgage, two weeks in Marbella, cozy Zoom screen. But strip away the marketing fluff, and you’re left with naked dependency on your boss’s mood. One reorg, one ambitious VP from nowhere — and your “stability” evaporates faster than foam on morning latte.
The problem is this life creates no options. You have a resonant LinkedIn title, but you own neither your time, nor clients, nor your own drive.
🕯️ The Madame Tussauds Effect
From three meters — perfection
A wax figure is flawless from three meters: perfect suit, polite smile.
Up close — plastic
But close up, it’s dead plastic. That’s Western corporate life: shiny resume with rotting initiative. You learn not to create assets, but “not to rock the boat.” And the longer you stand motionless, the scarier it is to step — it feels like you’ll melt under reality’s rays.
⚡ Moscow Doesn’t Believe Tears, It Believes in Momentum
In Moscow, the word “stability” evokes boredom or suspicion. Here they believe in movement. People make insane pivots at 35, 45, 55 — without pompous TED speeches, just because “gotta run to stay in place.”
It sounds harsh, but the result impresses: people develop leverage instinct. Either you become valuable at the level of meanings and deals, or the market grinds you to dust. No one promises to care for you until retirement — and that’s what makes you truly alive. But before diving into this whirlpool, it’s worth running a honest audit of your current situation to understand where you really stand.
👔 Deal with the Devil in a White Shirt
On paper, the West wins: cleaner sidewalks, polite emails. In reality, half your salary rents an illusion of calm. Moscow gives less “psychological padding,” but more leverage. Here the gap between safety cushion and reality is where growth happens — for experience with balls.
⚖️ The Price of Your Calm
Let’s count honestly:
15 years of prime energy sold wholesale.
Skills tuned for office intrigue, not real market.
Fear of change turned chronic.
Real safety isn’t a monthly check. It’s when you can walk from any employer without personal collapse, because your assets are in skills and connections, not someone else’s Jira.