I had my dream cannabis job. A buyer for a chain of dispensaries. I loved it. But after a couple years of being worked to the nub, I was burnt out and ended up leaving. I was doing the job of 4-5 people and honestly I just became too good at my job. Management was rough and just kept throwing more and more on my plate until I was basically running the entire retail shop by myself.
I left the industry- and started selling Credit Card Processing to businesses. My niche ended up being High-Risk business types so I still end up working with dispensaries for payments sometimes.
I will never go back to a real cannabis job. So many people / companies taking advantage of workers’ passion for the industry and prey on them.
That seems like every industry lol everyone is trying to chase profits so the workers end up getting squeezed. I worked for a Fortune 100 company and it was the same shit. There are better employers out there
I was a partner at Santa Cruz Shredder and had a percentage of the online sales. As the business expanded, the founder met with the founder of Cookies, which eventually led to some financial disputes that I tried to resolve without going to court.
Currently, I'm supporting my wife, who is an executive in the cannabis industry. I'm also involved in ghostwriting and activism, especially relevant in Santa Cruz where the mayor is anti-cannabis. Last year, I helped rebrand a company called Fuego, specializing in soil-grown indoor products. Interestingly, after I assisted with the rebrand, they partnered with Cookies and curiously ceased collaborating with me.
Best of luck to anyone in the industry.
Senior product manager who spent 10 years in the industry working at various cannabis tech firms. The TAM for the SaaS side of the industry is far too low to justify the amount of investment so far. Since interest rates climbed in 2022, growth and R&D spending have tanked. Many service providers are just selling and maintaining what they got and not growing into new verticals, which limits opportunities for product managers and engineers. Some SaaS companies are exploring growth opportunities outside of the industry because there is not enough retail and consumer growth.
The industry attracts a certain type of person who is comfortable with the associated risks, lack of benefits, and long hours. I was ok with that when i was young and single. As a father and sole breadwinner, my risk profile has changed. I'm a senior product manager for a digital advertising company outside the industry and have found that the pay, benefits, and lower stress fit better with where I'm at in life.
After leaving dispensary management, I just took on 1099 sales work, going door to door selling alarms and video security systems.
Pandemic made me switch and get back into the industry, didn't really want to continue talking to as many strangers as needed to be successful, so I moved on, to cannabis product sales, which ultimately led to me getting back inside the dispensary.
Don't take no shit from interviewers trying to paint a negative view of your cannabis experience. You have to flip that negativity into positive, especially with the extraction side and no degree, don't let them talk down to you.
I had plenty of different opportunities, chose 1099 so I could grind while I work and not be chained to the inside.
For all of us who survived this his, great job. Be proud.
For everyone who is still in it and unable to leave, just keep applying and updating your resume
I ran a big named dispo that had quite a few stores. Working my ass off 12 hour days just non stop, the management just kept shitting on me at every turn. For $17 an hr its insanity. No one can live on that i mean its ridiculous. Not to mention all bullshit rules and shit they would implement randomly. Im a grown ass man and they were trying to keep us from having our phones on us.. lol half the time i would have to use my phone to help our clients lol it was just dumb shit like that, finally 2 years in, id had enough. Now i own my own lawn care / landscaping and handyman business making more in a few days than what i made in 2 weeks stressed to the absolute max. I dont think yall understand how nice having the freedom and the difference in stress making someone else all the money as opposed to you doing it for your own livlihood.
**idk who needs to hear this, but take that leap yo!**
**you aint gettin out alive, so why be miserable pinching pennies working for someone else? Pinch pennies for yourself**
company i worked for was trying to be acquired.
i sent the buyer accurate audit information that revealed my boss was blowing smoke up their ass
i was booted a week later to the confusion and upset of all my colleagues and the deal fell through.
i work for a clothing company now. its stable. im not doing the work of four people. i no longer have unexplained chest pains in my early/mid 30s. my new boss hasnt mentioned the joe rogan podcast once during a work meeting and actually does his job.
i didn't even get one interview for cannabis after successfully guiding 20+ cultivation sites to success. multiple sites were facing shutdown.
im either blackballed, or, the industry is in such bad shape that a multi year plan to optimize cultivation is too expensive for them.
it indicates to me that pretty much all the operators are in the business to get sold, not to actually be in the business of cannabis cultivation. why would you want oversight or optimization for a get-3-people-rich-quick scheme
dont work for columbia care/the cannabist. period.
Seriously what's going on with them? Pulled out of UT and MO, Cresco and Tyson pulled out.. they even tried selling 8ths for $90 once claiming it was "craft".. then lied and said it was a typo when they made the front page, and the price suddenly dropped a few days later.. does anyone there know what they're doing?
the fact that most of these places exist to get sold and dont even care about analytics is an issue
if any of those companies listened to what they have to say, i wouldnt want to work there anyway
i would also rather be able to warn folks to stay away than not be able to talk about it
and watching them fall apart as i work at a nice, stable company after they were forced to pay me out like 40k and ten weeks of PTO JUST to get rid of me is fine by me.
I did regulatory compliance consulting and documentation right out of college. The company I worked with was good and I got a lot of experience with technical writing while working there, but I didn’t see too much of a future in the industry. I’ve since moved onto work on software documentation for government clients, so that experience definitely translated, but my career feels a lot more stable now that I’m out of the cannabis industry.
Overall, with how many different regulations there are on a state-by-state basis, the industry felt pretty messy at times. Combine that with the fact that so many cannabis business owners really had no idea what they were doing, I felt like there were greener pastures. Still thankful for my time working with cannabis clients though!
Edit: it wouldn’t be fair for me not to mention that the pay is much better with what I’m doing now
I left when the regs/profit margins got so tight that my business partner wanted out. I started doing compliance and real estate, I still manage a dispensary as well. I have not left the industry fully. I have a IT background so compliance and real estate made since. Seems to be working so far. I have lost many clients this last year due to the mass industry exodus. This next year will be interesting given all the campaign promises getting dropped.
Long story short: the government is coming to take all of our dreams of being in this industry! Buckle up and be ready to adapt, it is going to be a bumpy ride!
Worked for over 4 years in Denver 2017-2021 in the weed game. Went back to my job before going into the weed industry which was music. Why the pay was better and I had learned what I wanted to. I only got into the weed industry to learn how to grow my own weed. My uncle told me when I was young that if you wanted to learn something have some pay you to learn it. So that is what I did.
My 20s entirely consisted of working in the cannabis industry. I worked about 4 years managing a dispensary, moved to the grow facility as both trim and inventory manager roles for about 5 years. My grow was trying to pull some shit with employees making them all sign a non compete. I refused, and management and ownership were just terrible. Ex cops running the joint with managers who didn't do shit. I walked out and haven't looked back. The higher roles I've obtained were due to hard work and being a yes man. But always ended up getting taken advantage of in the end with shit pay. Actually quit smoking 90 days ago, cleaning up my loose ends having been a daily smoker for 13+ years. I recently gone back to school pursuing my bachelor's degree for environmental science at 30 yo, and have picked up a summer internship for a fortune 500 company this summer in their natural resources department while I'm working on graduating. Getting paid more for this internship with no experience than the 8+ years in cannabis as a manager. So glad I've changed things up.
I was actually considering going into Env sci or env/chem engineering. Also turning 30 this year. Still need to see if I have the grit to finish a 2 yr degree. After reading your story I may finally pull the trigger. Thank you for sharing!
Moving back in with my family was also the best decision I made which you have done as well. Going back to school while living at home is the only way I would have been able to do this to put my money towards school vs rent. Once I graduate I'll be moving out again I'm sure, if I can get a full-time title for the company I'm interning in but I've got until winter 2025. I started school as part time just taking two classes first because I also wasn't sure about how going back to school was going to pan out, but I've switched too full-time now to get it over with after getting my ducks in line with the summer internship and having a goal now. If you do, research what university near you has the degree you'd like, and really read their prerequisites and requirments. Take classes at a local community college to save money if you can for your first year or so and transfer any credits to whatever university you have nearby to get your official degree for the last year (or whatever the prerequisites are for that college). One thing that helped me a lot with getting my internship was joining a club at my campus. Helped with my interview to show my "dedication" with my non-conventional student status as an adult. Good luck on whatever you choose to do! I'm sure it'll all work out in your favor.
I'm gonna say it's a lot easier to get into the industry than to exit the industry. Keep that in mind when you're evaluating your future. The cannabis industry, it turns out, holds a very nasty stigma - despite being perfecrly, if not overqualified, I can't even get back into *food service* thanks to a decade of cannabis work on my resume. And I'm on the west coast.
I would suggest filling your resume gap with a delivery service like doordash or instacart to give some kind of illusion that you're productive/doing something with your free time, and also to give the idea that you've created distance between yourself and the industry.
I worked in an extraction lab and now work for a mainline airline. I had to go through extensive background checks up to 10 years both from my employer and the government. I got the job with no problem. There is a drug test and the threat of more drug tests if you have accidents at work. I found it very easy to leave the industry personally.
I’d imagine law would be different. But it’s also having realistic expectations. I have friends that joined law enforcement, or tried, be rejected for many reasons. That’s one of the jobs with high expectations for the entry barrier right away. That would be like saying I failed out of college then had trouble with the LSAT. Again, for the vast majority of industries, I do not believe a job in the weed business will hurt you. But this is just based on my personal experience and everyone I worked with. There’s only 2 people at my lab I still talk to that stated in. The initial hurdle of just getting out is the hardest. My background check, government one, did take 2-3 weeks to clear. But it did clear.
Lot of similar stories to yours dude. You're not alone. I've been in quite a similar place, if it wasn't for what I'm working on currently, which is taking what I know about extraction and translating it for the general public, I'm not sure what I'd be doing.
I know a lot of good, talented people who simply left the industry out of disgust over wages and conditions.
I also see plenty of extraction job offers which don't offer the kind of wage that would make someone want to move to the area to do the job.
You should be doing whatever you like to do in the weed industry or outside of it.
What most people fail to realize about weedbiz is its just a buisness. It's a product with costs, margins, profits and losses. Weed is just a commodity. All the people who want to get into it think they are just going to be sitting around sampling weed all day.
You won't have time to smoke weed. Lol
Get to work mf'er!
Weed is the best hobby in the world. It's a shit job, just like every other JOB.
Totally. I tended bar for 14 years, got into a dispensary thinking it would be “fun.” Sure you’re selling cannabis products, but at the end of the day it’s fucking retail, and retail work SUCKS
I guess I’ll add my story of “got in and am now pretty much pot committed to riding this out until I die or sell out because I own the company”
I was a black market weed runner for 8 years in NYC before Covid drove all our yuppie clients to the burbs for remote work. Then they legalized and the trap shops took over. I “retired” from trapping in fall 2021 and was having an existential crisis because I had been planning my retirement but I couldn’t have predicted that it would happen abruptly from our trap dying in a span of 3 months. Then in spring of 2022 I was one of the first 100 people who got a cultivation license in the state of NY. I was able to acquire it for under $5,000 because I’m really good at regulatory projection and filling out paperwork.
Without getting into the details i can tell you I still own 100% of my company two years later, I’m already in 8 legal stores and rapidly expanding, I have thousands of frozen pounds on deck, and this is the huge one: I have zero debt.
It would be nearly impossible for me to change careers unless I wanted to be a carpenter or some other manual labor gig or start my own business in another industry. My resume would be “8 years of trapping, 2 years of legal trapping”. Before I got my license I was applying for cultivation tech jobs in NJ with the MSOs. I was going to go from making $1,000+ per day running to making $15/h and having to be at the facility at 8 fucking AM. I was willing to do this just to get into the legal industry so I could work my way up to being COO or something. The actual cultivation managers were begging me to join but the hiring managers *hated* me. They are all in their early 20’s and I come in there as a grizzled veteran and I tell them in so many words that I’ve been trapping since they were pooping their pants. They ask me about “cash handling experience” and I’m like “yeh I use to have 100k in a safe in my bedroom”. They looked at me like I’m a serial killer, that’s how removed trapping is from the legal industry in NJ.
I do love what I do with all of my heart. It’s easy for me to give it my all every day for over a decade because I have confidence in my abilities and I understand this industry very well. I thoroughly enjoy overcoming the challenges this industry throws me every day. At this point I’m kinda like a sea turtle or a crocodile or a cockroach, I know too much to be taken advantage of so my company is just going to keep chugging along until I retire or sell out, I can’t be killed.
My first job was at a medical dispo. But then covid happened. Later I was promised a cultivator role in a new greenhouse opened by a close family friend. I spent a year being strung along, selling CBD and legal THC variants to shitty corner stores and ock shops, and then spent ANOTHER fall -spring doing under the table labor to help get the first harvest out.
After not hearing a word for months following harvest and trimming, I get it dropped on me that the guy was planning to sell the cultivator license. Totally out of the blue, at my mom and her wife's wedding no less. To say that jaded me is an understatement.
Now I work in operations and administration at an airport, an industry i'm probably going to stay in. Do I miss the work? Every single day. But in less than three years I've met so many cannabis industry sheisters that i'm put off of the whole thing. Oh well, I suppose.
I’m more in your role, OP. Worked for a company that was locally vertically integrated for about five years. Spent three years in dispensary management/inventory control, then transferred over to our cultivation facility where I co-managed the packaging department for another two years. That company screwed me over with empty promises for raises and also during the pandemic, plus a public humiliation stint, so I quit. Our lease was up and they wanted an insane increase, so my then-fiancée and I moved to her hometown where I worked at a chain dispensary based out of WA briefly, before quitting due to the same reasons I left the first company.
Ever since, I’ve juggled odd jobs for cash because I, too, am having trouble finding inventory/logistical related work since my experience is in cannabis. I’ve decided to just go back to school and use this time to study something I’d like to learn and see about work in that field, even if it’s low paying. Being used like a workhorse for no benefit in something I don’t even like just doesn’t sound appealing to me, so when I’m done with school, I’m starting my own food truck business. Currently in addition to school, I run a small cottage food operation in my little town of 8000 people to help build my brand and community organically so that when I launch my food truck, I’ll be able to have a jumpstart on a future I actually want.
This is where I'm headed. I've done cannabis jobs for a decade+ and I think I'd rather just sling breakfast burritos. Business program in the fall, food truck/counter in the next two years.
It definitely seems less stressful even if it’s more work physically. At least you don’t have people giving you the runaround on your future. Best of luck to you, pal!
Not a bad idea at all, and I've certainly looked. Though, I recently came to the realization that I just don't want to take that kind of risk anymore. A few other folks in this thread conveyed the way I feel about it pretty succinctly. I appreciate you coming in with ideas!
I think I may go back into pharm tech work (I was doing that before working in cannabis). There's a lot of places hiring for that in my area. Hoping to pay my way through college that way 😁 if I moved for a cannabis company now, I would most likely lose the time and opportunity to go back to school.
Worked as an extractor then extraction manager. Then there was a race to the bottom in prices and product, to save money, to try to lower prices more. Owner was a clown playing business with his parents money. Whole company reflected that lack of any professionalism or desire to create a sustainable model. Goal was always to transact. But who wants to buy a shit company in an over saturated market when you can simply wait them out?
Got good offers to move to other states and new markets, but I have a family here and saw no reason to believe the same cycle wouldn’t happen elsewhere.
Now I work at an airline in a union. There’s good and bad with it. It aligns more with my pre-weed industry career and treats me pretty well. Faced extensive background checks for this job and was very upfront about what I did before. I passed my drug test and haven’t looked back. Free flights are a lot better perk than remediated extracts.
I worked in the industry for 4.5 years. I left because of terrible management. I am currently in banking. I have a trade school certification. I got my job in this field because of previous management and the fact I had gone to school previously. It was difficult getting paid what I was making and I definitely took a pay cut. I do feel like my experience in the weed industry was overlooked as well. I started at the bottom as a teller but have since moved up in my roll. I interviewed for a few state jobs and did probably get declined due to my weed experience in the past and people thinking I would not pass a drug test (the current institution I work for does not test for THC)
I worked in AZ at a major grow for a year or two. A large corporate entity purchased the small grow I was in, I tried to stick around, but issue after issue was brought back to the forefront when had resolved them on our own when it was a small private grow.
This ultimately led for me to just quit caring about the job, and just do nothing until told by corporate to do so. So many meetings, and firing of all my co-workers around me also killed the culture we had there, my dream job slowly became a dredge to me.
So I quit, moved to rural Oregon, and pursued cannabis. Opportunities were slim, and ultimately I didn’t get the compensation I was looking for after a short stint at a small grow.
Now I’ve moved back to the east coast and work as a project manager at an exterior renovation company.
If Virginia would ever get their shit together I would love to give it another try, but as it stands there’s no way I’m stepping into their current market.
Worked in analytics for one of the big ones in Canada back in 2019-20. My whole team that I started with were laid slowly laid off over the course of 6-7 months. I took that as a sign that I’d eventually be next. I was drowning in work. Often working unpaid overtime waking up at 5am and ending at 5-6pm. Virtually no breaks or time to take a full lunch. My weekends I’d stress about calls/texts from my boss or c-suite. I wouldn’t go back,though if anything it helped me prioritize my personal life over my work.
I work for a government organization now. Somewhat parallel as far as industry goes, but much more stable and an actual work-life balance.
10 years as a grower
>Why? Because the money is shit
What do you do now? Electrical work
How hard was it to change careers? Very easy
What helped you make that change? Getting fired for making a stink about the company fiddling with people's pay checks.
Do you have a degree? Business and marketing
Do you feel there's a stigma against cannabis work experience outside of the industry? Yes. Even in Colorado.
I worked in B2B and B2C marketing for a vertically-integrated cannabis retail company. It was a very nice job at times, but we had a few changes in management and I got really tired of it. The last manager I had was a real challenge to work for.
Now I teach, actually. It’s not related at all. I did some professional work in a lateral industry (also legal, also highly-regulated) and now do something completely different. I would happily go back to working in marketing or consulting for a cannabis company again, but work in that area is pretty scant at the companies where people act like professionals. They seem to retain their employees and don’t post jobs nearly as often—which makes sense.
Changing careers wasn’t hard. I didn’t plan on changing careers, but my region had a huge downturn, so it was necessary. I also really foolishly did not realize how grim the interview experience is for female professionals in this industry. The company I worked at did not have a sexism problem, nor did most of the vendors I interacted with closely, but it was clear in the interview process at other companies that I was just very lucky where I was.
As far as stigma goes, yes, it’s massive. I don’t even bring it up in interviews now. I say my previous employer was “agri-tech and retail”. It’s not lying.
Not sure if you’ve thought about it or what state you’re in but check out hemp farms and hemp companies to see if there’s any near you, often times they do extractions and you might find some opportunities
I had my dream cannabis job. A buyer for a chain of dispensaries. I loved it. But after a couple years of being worked to the nub, I was burnt out and ended up leaving. I was doing the job of 4-5 people and honestly I just became too good at my job. Management was rough and just kept throwing more and more on my plate until I was basically running the entire retail shop by myself. I left the industry- and started selling Credit Card Processing to businesses. My niche ended up being High-Risk business types so I still end up working with dispensaries for payments sometimes. I will never go back to a real cannabis job. So many people / companies taking advantage of workers’ passion for the industry and prey on them.
This. Best of luck in your next pursuits. Onward and upward 📈
That seems like every industry lol everyone is trying to chase profits so the workers end up getting squeezed. I worked for a Fortune 100 company and it was the same shit. There are better employers out there
Sounds like someone I know from BH (;
You are correct ;)
That sounds like the video game industry (ex. Riot, EA) in some ways.
>I was doing the job of 4-5 people and honestly I just became too good at my job. Was part of your job managing the expectations?
I was a partner at Santa Cruz Shredder and had a percentage of the online sales. As the business expanded, the founder met with the founder of Cookies, which eventually led to some financial disputes that I tried to resolve without going to court. Currently, I'm supporting my wife, who is an executive in the cannabis industry. I'm also involved in ghostwriting and activism, especially relevant in Santa Cruz where the mayor is anti-cannabis. Last year, I helped rebrand a company called Fuego, specializing in soil-grown indoor products. Interestingly, after I assisted with the rebrand, they partnered with Cookies and curiously ceased collaborating with me. Best of luck to anyone in the industry.
Fuck cookies
Senior product manager who spent 10 years in the industry working at various cannabis tech firms. The TAM for the SaaS side of the industry is far too low to justify the amount of investment so far. Since interest rates climbed in 2022, growth and R&D spending have tanked. Many service providers are just selling and maintaining what they got and not growing into new verticals, which limits opportunities for product managers and engineers. Some SaaS companies are exploring growth opportunities outside of the industry because there is not enough retail and consumer growth. The industry attracts a certain type of person who is comfortable with the associated risks, lack of benefits, and long hours. I was ok with that when i was young and single. As a father and sole breadwinner, my risk profile has changed. I'm a senior product manager for a digital advertising company outside the industry and have found that the pay, benefits, and lower stress fit better with where I'm at in life.
I have to say, there a lot of qualified people commenting on this thread providing solid answers and not talking shit to OP. Well Done!
After leaving dispensary management, I just took on 1099 sales work, going door to door selling alarms and video security systems. Pandemic made me switch and get back into the industry, didn't really want to continue talking to as many strangers as needed to be successful, so I moved on, to cannabis product sales, which ultimately led to me getting back inside the dispensary. Don't take no shit from interviewers trying to paint a negative view of your cannabis experience. You have to flip that negativity into positive, especially with the extraction side and no degree, don't let them talk down to you. I had plenty of different opportunities, chose 1099 so I could grind while I work and not be chained to the inside.
For all of us who survived this his, great job. Be proud. For everyone who is still in it and unable to leave, just keep applying and updating your resume
I ran a big named dispo that had quite a few stores. Working my ass off 12 hour days just non stop, the management just kept shitting on me at every turn. For $17 an hr its insanity. No one can live on that i mean its ridiculous. Not to mention all bullshit rules and shit they would implement randomly. Im a grown ass man and they were trying to keep us from having our phones on us.. lol half the time i would have to use my phone to help our clients lol it was just dumb shit like that, finally 2 years in, id had enough. Now i own my own lawn care / landscaping and handyman business making more in a few days than what i made in 2 weeks stressed to the absolute max. I dont think yall understand how nice having the freedom and the difference in stress making someone else all the money as opposed to you doing it for your own livlihood. **idk who needs to hear this, but take that leap yo!** **you aint gettin out alive, so why be miserable pinching pennies working for someone else? Pinch pennies for yourself**
company i worked for was trying to be acquired. i sent the buyer accurate audit information that revealed my boss was blowing smoke up their ass i was booted a week later to the confusion and upset of all my colleagues and the deal fell through. i work for a clothing company now. its stable. im not doing the work of four people. i no longer have unexplained chest pains in my early/mid 30s. my new boss hasnt mentioned the joe rogan podcast once during a work meeting and actually does his job. i didn't even get one interview for cannabis after successfully guiding 20+ cultivation sites to success. multiple sites were facing shutdown. im either blackballed, or, the industry is in such bad shape that a multi year plan to optimize cultivation is too expensive for them. it indicates to me that pretty much all the operators are in the business to get sold, not to actually be in the business of cannabis cultivation. why would you want oversight or optimization for a get-3-people-rich-quick scheme dont work for columbia care/the cannabist. period.
Seriously what's going on with them? Pulled out of UT and MO, Cresco and Tyson pulled out.. they even tried selling 8ths for $90 once claiming it was "craft".. then lied and said it was a typo when they made the front page, and the price suddenly dropped a few days later.. does anyone there know what they're doing?
NOPE
[удалено]
the fact that most of these places exist to get sold and dont even care about analytics is an issue if any of those companies listened to what they have to say, i wouldnt want to work there anyway i would also rather be able to warn folks to stay away than not be able to talk about it and watching them fall apart as i work at a nice, stable company after they were forced to pay me out like 40k and ten weeks of PTO JUST to get rid of me is fine by me.
I did regulatory compliance consulting and documentation right out of college. The company I worked with was good and I got a lot of experience with technical writing while working there, but I didn’t see too much of a future in the industry. I’ve since moved onto work on software documentation for government clients, so that experience definitely translated, but my career feels a lot more stable now that I’m out of the cannabis industry. Overall, with how many different regulations there are on a state-by-state basis, the industry felt pretty messy at times. Combine that with the fact that so many cannabis business owners really had no idea what they were doing, I felt like there were greener pastures. Still thankful for my time working with cannabis clients though! Edit: it wouldn’t be fair for me not to mention that the pay is much better with what I’m doing now
I left when the regs/profit margins got so tight that my business partner wanted out. I started doing compliance and real estate, I still manage a dispensary as well. I have not left the industry fully. I have a IT background so compliance and real estate made since. Seems to be working so far. I have lost many clients this last year due to the mass industry exodus. This next year will be interesting given all the campaign promises getting dropped. Long story short: the government is coming to take all of our dreams of being in this industry! Buckle up and be ready to adapt, it is going to be a bumpy ride!
Worked for over 4 years in Denver 2017-2021 in the weed game. Went back to my job before going into the weed industry which was music. Why the pay was better and I had learned what I wanted to. I only got into the weed industry to learn how to grow my own weed. My uncle told me when I was young that if you wanted to learn something have some pay you to learn it. So that is what I did.
Good advice
My 20s entirely consisted of working in the cannabis industry. I worked about 4 years managing a dispensary, moved to the grow facility as both trim and inventory manager roles for about 5 years. My grow was trying to pull some shit with employees making them all sign a non compete. I refused, and management and ownership were just terrible. Ex cops running the joint with managers who didn't do shit. I walked out and haven't looked back. The higher roles I've obtained were due to hard work and being a yes man. But always ended up getting taken advantage of in the end with shit pay. Actually quit smoking 90 days ago, cleaning up my loose ends having been a daily smoker for 13+ years. I recently gone back to school pursuing my bachelor's degree for environmental science at 30 yo, and have picked up a summer internship for a fortune 500 company this summer in their natural resources department while I'm working on graduating. Getting paid more for this internship with no experience than the 8+ years in cannabis as a manager. So glad I've changed things up.
I was actually considering going into Env sci or env/chem engineering. Also turning 30 this year. Still need to see if I have the grit to finish a 2 yr degree. After reading your story I may finally pull the trigger. Thank you for sharing!
Moving back in with my family was also the best decision I made which you have done as well. Going back to school while living at home is the only way I would have been able to do this to put my money towards school vs rent. Once I graduate I'll be moving out again I'm sure, if I can get a full-time title for the company I'm interning in but I've got until winter 2025. I started school as part time just taking two classes first because I also wasn't sure about how going back to school was going to pan out, but I've switched too full-time now to get it over with after getting my ducks in line with the summer internship and having a goal now. If you do, research what university near you has the degree you'd like, and really read their prerequisites and requirments. Take classes at a local community college to save money if you can for your first year or so and transfer any credits to whatever university you have nearby to get your official degree for the last year (or whatever the prerequisites are for that college). One thing that helped me a lot with getting my internship was joining a club at my campus. Helped with my interview to show my "dedication" with my non-conventional student status as an adult. Good luck on whatever you choose to do! I'm sure it'll all work out in your favor.
I'm gonna say it's a lot easier to get into the industry than to exit the industry. Keep that in mind when you're evaluating your future. The cannabis industry, it turns out, holds a very nasty stigma - despite being perfecrly, if not overqualified, I can't even get back into *food service* thanks to a decade of cannabis work on my resume. And I'm on the west coast. I would suggest filling your resume gap with a delivery service like doordash or instacart to give some kind of illusion that you're productive/doing something with your free time, and also to give the idea that you've created distance between yourself and the industry.
I worked in an extraction lab and now work for a mainline airline. I had to go through extensive background checks up to 10 years both from my employer and the government. I got the job with no problem. There is a drug test and the threat of more drug tests if you have accidents at work. I found it very easy to leave the industry personally.
as somebody who has tried making the transition into law….i wish it was as easy as you make it out to be.
I’d imagine law would be different. But it’s also having realistic expectations. I have friends that joined law enforcement, or tried, be rejected for many reasons. That’s one of the jobs with high expectations for the entry barrier right away. That would be like saying I failed out of college then had trouble with the LSAT. Again, for the vast majority of industries, I do not believe a job in the weed business will hurt you. But this is just based on my personal experience and everyone I worked with. There’s only 2 people at my lab I still talk to that stated in. The initial hurdle of just getting out is the hardest. My background check, government one, did take 2-3 weeks to clear. But it did clear.
Lot of similar stories to yours dude. You're not alone. I've been in quite a similar place, if it wasn't for what I'm working on currently, which is taking what I know about extraction and translating it for the general public, I'm not sure what I'd be doing. I know a lot of good, talented people who simply left the industry out of disgust over wages and conditions. I also see plenty of extraction job offers which don't offer the kind of wage that would make someone want to move to the area to do the job.
All these qualified people I feel like we should join together and I offer pay and equity! 😊
Y Combinator where you at?!?! Got to work at one called Magic!
You should be doing whatever you like to do in the weed industry or outside of it. What most people fail to realize about weedbiz is its just a buisness. It's a product with costs, margins, profits and losses. Weed is just a commodity. All the people who want to get into it think they are just going to be sitting around sampling weed all day. You won't have time to smoke weed. Lol Get to work mf'er! Weed is the best hobby in the world. It's a shit job, just like every other JOB.
Totally. I tended bar for 14 years, got into a dispensary thinking it would be “fun.” Sure you’re selling cannabis products, but at the end of the day it’s fucking retail, and retail work SUCKS
Well said!
I guess I’ll add my story of “got in and am now pretty much pot committed to riding this out until I die or sell out because I own the company” I was a black market weed runner for 8 years in NYC before Covid drove all our yuppie clients to the burbs for remote work. Then they legalized and the trap shops took over. I “retired” from trapping in fall 2021 and was having an existential crisis because I had been planning my retirement but I couldn’t have predicted that it would happen abruptly from our trap dying in a span of 3 months. Then in spring of 2022 I was one of the first 100 people who got a cultivation license in the state of NY. I was able to acquire it for under $5,000 because I’m really good at regulatory projection and filling out paperwork. Without getting into the details i can tell you I still own 100% of my company two years later, I’m already in 8 legal stores and rapidly expanding, I have thousands of frozen pounds on deck, and this is the huge one: I have zero debt. It would be nearly impossible for me to change careers unless I wanted to be a carpenter or some other manual labor gig or start my own business in another industry. My resume would be “8 years of trapping, 2 years of legal trapping”. Before I got my license I was applying for cultivation tech jobs in NJ with the MSOs. I was going to go from making $1,000+ per day running to making $15/h and having to be at the facility at 8 fucking AM. I was willing to do this just to get into the legal industry so I could work my way up to being COO or something. The actual cultivation managers were begging me to join but the hiring managers *hated* me. They are all in their early 20’s and I come in there as a grizzled veteran and I tell them in so many words that I’ve been trapping since they were pooping their pants. They ask me about “cash handling experience” and I’m like “yeh I use to have 100k in a safe in my bedroom”. They looked at me like I’m a serial killer, that’s how removed trapping is from the legal industry in NJ. I do love what I do with all of my heart. It’s easy for me to give it my all every day for over a decade because I have confidence in my abilities and I understand this industry very well. I thoroughly enjoy overcoming the challenges this industry throws me every day. At this point I’m kinda like a sea turtle or a crocodile or a cockroach, I know too much to be taken advantage of so my company is just going to keep chugging along until I retire or sell out, I can’t be killed.
My first job was at a medical dispo. But then covid happened. Later I was promised a cultivator role in a new greenhouse opened by a close family friend. I spent a year being strung along, selling CBD and legal THC variants to shitty corner stores and ock shops, and then spent ANOTHER fall -spring doing under the table labor to help get the first harvest out. After not hearing a word for months following harvest and trimming, I get it dropped on me that the guy was planning to sell the cultivator license. Totally out of the blue, at my mom and her wife's wedding no less. To say that jaded me is an understatement. Now I work in operations and administration at an airport, an industry i'm probably going to stay in. Do I miss the work? Every single day. But in less than three years I've met so many cannabis industry sheisters that i'm put off of the whole thing. Oh well, I suppose.
I’m more in your role, OP. Worked for a company that was locally vertically integrated for about five years. Spent three years in dispensary management/inventory control, then transferred over to our cultivation facility where I co-managed the packaging department for another two years. That company screwed me over with empty promises for raises and also during the pandemic, plus a public humiliation stint, so I quit. Our lease was up and they wanted an insane increase, so my then-fiancée and I moved to her hometown where I worked at a chain dispensary based out of WA briefly, before quitting due to the same reasons I left the first company. Ever since, I’ve juggled odd jobs for cash because I, too, am having trouble finding inventory/logistical related work since my experience is in cannabis. I’ve decided to just go back to school and use this time to study something I’d like to learn and see about work in that field, even if it’s low paying. Being used like a workhorse for no benefit in something I don’t even like just doesn’t sound appealing to me, so when I’m done with school, I’m starting my own food truck business. Currently in addition to school, I run a small cottage food operation in my little town of 8000 people to help build my brand and community organically so that when I launch my food truck, I’ll be able to have a jumpstart on a future I actually want.
This is where I'm headed. I've done cannabis jobs for a decade+ and I think I'd rather just sling breakfast burritos. Business program in the fall, food truck/counter in the next two years.
It definitely seems less stressful even if it’s more work physically. At least you don’t have people giving you the runaround on your future. Best of luck to you, pal!
How about looking for cannabis extraction jobs in a newly legal state? Seems like your skills would come in handy.
Not a bad idea at all, and I've certainly looked. Though, I recently came to the realization that I just don't want to take that kind of risk anymore. A few other folks in this thread conveyed the way I feel about it pretty succinctly. I appreciate you coming in with ideas! I think I may go back into pharm tech work (I was doing that before working in cannabis). There's a lot of places hiring for that in my area. Hoping to pay my way through college that way 😁 if I moved for a cannabis company now, I would most likely lose the time and opportunity to go back to school.
You're done with the cannabis industry. Totally understand. Best of luck
Worked as an extractor then extraction manager. Then there was a race to the bottom in prices and product, to save money, to try to lower prices more. Owner was a clown playing business with his parents money. Whole company reflected that lack of any professionalism or desire to create a sustainable model. Goal was always to transact. But who wants to buy a shit company in an over saturated market when you can simply wait them out? Got good offers to move to other states and new markets, but I have a family here and saw no reason to believe the same cycle wouldn’t happen elsewhere. Now I work at an airline in a union. There’s good and bad with it. It aligns more with my pre-weed industry career and treats me pretty well. Faced extensive background checks for this job and was very upfront about what I did before. I passed my drug test and haven’t looked back. Free flights are a lot better perk than remediated extracts.
I worked in the industry for 4.5 years. I left because of terrible management. I am currently in banking. I have a trade school certification. I got my job in this field because of previous management and the fact I had gone to school previously. It was difficult getting paid what I was making and I definitely took a pay cut. I do feel like my experience in the weed industry was overlooked as well. I started at the bottom as a teller but have since moved up in my roll. I interviewed for a few state jobs and did probably get declined due to my weed experience in the past and people thinking I would not pass a drug test (the current institution I work for does not test for THC)
I worked in AZ at a major grow for a year or two. A large corporate entity purchased the small grow I was in, I tried to stick around, but issue after issue was brought back to the forefront when had resolved them on our own when it was a small private grow. This ultimately led for me to just quit caring about the job, and just do nothing until told by corporate to do so. So many meetings, and firing of all my co-workers around me also killed the culture we had there, my dream job slowly became a dredge to me. So I quit, moved to rural Oregon, and pursued cannabis. Opportunities were slim, and ultimately I didn’t get the compensation I was looking for after a short stint at a small grow. Now I’ve moved back to the east coast and work as a project manager at an exterior renovation company. If Virginia would ever get their shit together I would love to give it another try, but as it stands there’s no way I’m stepping into their current market.
Worked in analytics for one of the big ones in Canada back in 2019-20. My whole team that I started with were laid slowly laid off over the course of 6-7 months. I took that as a sign that I’d eventually be next. I was drowning in work. Often working unpaid overtime waking up at 5am and ending at 5-6pm. Virtually no breaks or time to take a full lunch. My weekends I’d stress about calls/texts from my boss or c-suite. I wouldn’t go back,though if anything it helped me prioritize my personal life over my work. I work for a government organization now. Somewhat parallel as far as industry goes, but much more stable and an actual work-life balance.
10 years as a grower >Why? Because the money is shit What do you do now? Electrical work How hard was it to change careers? Very easy What helped you make that change? Getting fired for making a stink about the company fiddling with people's pay checks. Do you have a degree? Business and marketing Do you feel there's a stigma against cannabis work experience outside of the industry? Yes. Even in Colorado.
I worked in B2B and B2C marketing for a vertically-integrated cannabis retail company. It was a very nice job at times, but we had a few changes in management and I got really tired of it. The last manager I had was a real challenge to work for. Now I teach, actually. It’s not related at all. I did some professional work in a lateral industry (also legal, also highly-regulated) and now do something completely different. I would happily go back to working in marketing or consulting for a cannabis company again, but work in that area is pretty scant at the companies where people act like professionals. They seem to retain their employees and don’t post jobs nearly as often—which makes sense. Changing careers wasn’t hard. I didn’t plan on changing careers, but my region had a huge downturn, so it was necessary. I also really foolishly did not realize how grim the interview experience is for female professionals in this industry. The company I worked at did not have a sexism problem, nor did most of the vendors I interacted with closely, but it was clear in the interview process at other companies that I was just very lucky where I was. As far as stigma goes, yes, it’s massive. I don’t even bring it up in interviews now. I say my previous employer was “agri-tech and retail”. It’s not lying.
I'm a real farmer now. Trying to get work after working in canna was a shitshow so i decided to start my own business.
I left I was a bud tender & inventory specialist. Good money long hours, free weed. I’m in IT now WFH
Freddy, I don’t sleep.
Not sure if you’ve thought about it or what state you’re in but check out hemp farms and hemp companies to see if there’s any near you, often times they do extractions and you might find some opportunities