At my last job, I fulfilled my contractual obligations as well as I could. That’s all I did. I did it as best as I could without wringing myself dry, I didn’t pull the social butterfly act to ingratiate myself with my colleagues for social leverage, I just minded my own business and tried being polite and friendly when someone wanted to interact with me.

I became an essential piece of the process without my wanting to do so, and then everyone started expecting me to work after hours and take on responsibilities which were not even related to my job (I was QA, had to pull PM duties more than I’d care to remember, and that was just a fragment of everything they expected I would do). Same pay, of course. I still don’t understand how the hell they didn’t see my resignation coming…

Edit: and, no, I didn’t even want a management position, as I’d had one before and it was heartbreaking - I told them both of these things, outright and repeatedly. I just wanted to test apps…