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Leave a Safe IT Job for Music Tour?
DecisionTime asks: "In this US economy, it took me a whole year to find my current IT job, where I've been for less than a year. It's fairly dull, but pays ok, and I believe it is relatively safe. Now, I've been given the chance to use my talents and tour full time with a band overseas. With the corresponding drop in expenses, my net income on this tour would remain about the same as now. However, music jobs are inherently risky, yet the touring could become long term. On the other hand, I could potentially be IT job searching again within four months with a dubious hole on my resume. I'm single and have no kids or major commitments, but I do not want to destroy my IT career either for the future. I can't get unbiased advice where I am, so perhaps Slashdot can lend me some wisdom?"
Seriously, nothing these days is certian job wise. Just do what makes you happy in the near term. Cheaper than therapy later.
The Ro Factor - Jeep/Linux Weblog
1. Can you get leave from your current job for the duration of your tour?
2. Can you do your IT job remotely (you didn't mention exactly what you do)?
Also, maybe you could go searching for IT work overseas? Not every economy is in the state the US is in, and overseas experience is always a plus. If you don't know if either proposition (music or IT) will work out, which one do you want more? Go with that.
Go and see the world while you can, because let me tell you once wife + kids + career job come along, you won't be able to pursue any of those opportunities even if they do come along, and you don't want to get to 40 with nothing but regrets to show for it.
I speak from bitter experience here man.
Get out and enjoy your talents while you can.
Go for the band. You will regret not doing it. IT jobs will be there in some form for a while. Have fun.
I probably have one of the most stable jobs in the music industry. I write music for TV. Music is fun, and you always meet interesting people. You might even meet musicians who need IT skills. Or, if you are brave, set yourself up with a DAW, Protools or Digital Performer and mix your skills.
You are involved in two industries that are very unstable. Go for what you want. Have fun. It is not a black mark on your resume, it is an "enhancing experience".
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
In all likelyhood, you won't get this chance again. I say go for it.
You're not very likely at all to 'destroy your career'. You may go broke, make little on the tour, and have problems getting a job when you get back. But that may happen anyway.
What's your worst case scenario? You get a job flipping burgers or move in with your parents or something. Big deal, everyone eats some shit once in a while. You're looking at a *paid vacation*. That's what you're getting.
Yeah, it may not work. But if it were me, I'd take it. Now, I have no responsibilities; no kids, no wife. I can *always* walk away anything until then, because I have nothing to lose. So you might be out a little money. If money's that important to you, I suggest you recognize that and deal appropriately.
You're an idiot if you keep working the day job.
You might never have another opportunity like this one come along. But that shouldn't make or break your choice.
The best piece of advice I can give is don't stress about it. My guess is that either choice would be fine. Choose the one that just feels the best, and go with it. Don't worry too much about the future, the future will happen.
Life is experiences, that is all you have. Rack one up and add to "lifes resume" instead of your "work resume".
Which would you rather tell a story about in 10 years, your 6 month tour overseas or the day they called you in at 3am without overtime to fix a nimda like worm?
Dude, if you don't go you deserve your crappy day job. I don't know how else to say it besides stop reading these posts right now, turn off your computer, pick up your shit, blow mom a kiss goodbye, get a 24 pack of condoms and run out the damn door.
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
I'm going to say a few things that most people I know might disagree with.
1) You only live once. This is so important I want you to read it again: You only live once. Regardless of your religious affiliation and life-after-death beliefs, nobody has any concrete proof that there is anything but limbo after we're gone. That said, there's no reason to allow yourself to make regrets in life, because there's no do-over.
2) Follow whatever dreams you have to the best of your abilities. I'm surprised daily that so many people don't even have dreams any more. The fact that you not only have one, but have the chance to make it a reality, is the confluence of a number of very rare events. This confluence should not be wasted.
3) With no wife or kids, you have no one to disappoint but yourself, and from the tone of your message it sounds to me as if you'd be very disappointed to miss this opportunity.
4) Even if you can't find an IT job when you get back, you could probably parlay your experience from the tour into, at least, gigs back home. It's a lot more work than an IT job, but you could be self-employed as a "bard" of sorts if you wanted, playing bars and festivals.
- Cloud
No amount of lucid, well thought out reasoning in favor of staying will ease the bitterness and regret you will feel ten years from now if you don't go. There will still be sterile, soul-sucking cubicles here when you get back, I promise.
Sorry to oversimplify a tough decision. All I can say is what-if's and if-only's can haunt like demons.
Bush is a cylon.
Buddy of mine was laid off a year and a piece ago. He had significant cash in the bank and the dole (FL style) paying out more than his mortgage.
He had always dreamed of hiking the Appalachian Trail. Come layoff, he freaked out. "Got to get a job got to get a job..."
Here's a guy with an annual salary in cash on hand.
Three months later he's working at a job paying quite a bit less. Why? They were offering to pay. That's it.
Moron. One of my best, smartest friends. Moron. Says it himself "Stupidest move ever."
Go travel. Run lean, and see what happened. I left college, took a gig halfway around the world for half of what my local offers were. Actually, I never figured that out until this week. 4 years ago I left the United States to seek fame, fortune and adventure. I spend two years making half of what I had been offered before I left. You know what? Best money I ever spent.
I was in a similar situation several years ago.
The band I was in was playing in pubs several nights a week, and I was the only one working a normal job. It was great fun, but getting home all fired up at 2am made it tough to get up for work the next day.
We did some recording, then the other guys in the band wanted to go play around the country. They lined up gigs in several places with very little effort, so I had to choose between work and music.
I chose work.
My career was at the point where it was starting to get interesting, and I knew that I'd get some interesting job offers shortly.
The music had, to me at least, always been a fun thing and I'd basically played for beer money while the rest of the guys split the bulk of the loot between them. That wasn't exactly a fortune, but they needed the cash more than I did. I'm pretty sure none of us actually thought we'd get a music career out of it, but suddenly it appeared like it might be a goer.
In hindsight, I don't really regret it. Although the other guys were a bit upset when I pulled out, I'd always made it clear that I had a "second life" outside of music so it was OK. I found another group that was more "work friendly" with very little effort and played with them instead, while my original band went out without me.
In the final washup, they decided that a life in music wasn't really what they wanted. They had a bit of fun, but got stiffed by club owners more than once and found that all of them sharing their lives 24x7 wasn't really that great. Steady girlfriends got put on hold; strangely no GF wanted to tag along with 4 other guys and no other women! There were a few sexual encounters, but none that probably wouldn't have been on offer if they'd stayed at home.
If you think this band is really gonna make it big, or if you really really enjoy playing with them, by all means go for it.
If music is basically just a fun thing with a few mates, then why not just enjoy it for what it is and leave things as they are? If you're an OK muso, you'll always find another group of guys to play with.
I've done a lot of stuff and ultimately failed at nearly everything I've tried. And yet I only seem to regret the chances I didn't take.
It's kind of funny, but I'm in exactly the same position right now.
Except, I'm offered the opportunity to start a comedy show on tv.
I'm a (hardcore) c++ programmer and I actually like what I'm doing.
I also run a dark comedy web site (with a partner) which has suddenly become 'The next big thing' in my country (radio stations started playing our scenes, invitations to talk shows; my phone never stops ringing).
Two tv stations offerred us a contract and we must choose one of them by the end of this week. It's really tempting, but I know how show-business is, you can burn really quickly if you're not careful or good enough to handle the stress.
On the programming side, I'm the dev lead on a project which we've been working on for 2.5 years (full time) and will launch the public beta in two months.
This only makes things harder for me - I don't want to abandon the project at this stage, but the show-biz opportunity is very tempting.
I guess I'll try (really hard) to work on both jobs, at least until the final release of our project. By that time, If i'm not dead or in a mental institution, I will hopefully be able to decide what to chose.
Eventually, I think it's best to listen to your heart and go with that.
Even if you fail, it's not the end of the world - you can always start drinking.
Nobody ever said at the end of their life that they wished they had spent more time in the office.
Truisms, gotta love em.
Obviously you're the one who's going to make the decision: how averse to risk (because there is risk of unemployment) are you, and how much do you want to go on tour? As long as you're considering both sides of the question, you'll come to a good answer.
Where I can offer some (probably) useful thoughts, is regarding the "dubious hole in [your] resume" that you mentioned. Short version of my thoughts: what hole?
Longer version: if you're looking for an IT job again in four or six months, just put the tour on your resume. Unless you end up on the road for years, then your tech experience isn't going to seem outdated, expecially if your spot on the tour is on the tech end. When somebody asks about it during a job interview, you say "I'd always wanted to do this, and the opportunity presented itself; I decided to make the leap and see whether I liked it, while I was still young, single, and didn't have too many commitments. I enjoyed it but, I found that my real interest is in [whatever IT gig you do]."
I've got a couple of even more suspicious gaps in my resume. They appeared when I went from living in the upper half of a converted church in a cool neighborhood of a relatively expensive west coast city, to living the the bottom half of a small house in a student neighborhood in a small city in western New York. (My wife was going to school in the small city in New York.) Basically, I found that the money we had budgeted to live went a lot further that we had anticipated, so it was six months before I actually had to get a job. After working for a year or two I had more money saved up, and when one contract ended I just didn't look for another for four or five months.
I've been at the same company for a while now, so haven't interviewed much, but when I was interviewing and people asked, I just gave them the background and told them a little about what I did during those "gaps" -- I did some stuff that was a lot more interesting than the average 9-5 job during those periods, and I think that helped during interviews at least as much as it may have hurt me.
* * *
It is a dada story -- it has no moral.
I won't go into the many reasons why you should do it because several other have already. However I disagree that it's a dubious hole in your resume. I work in IT and everyone here knew I was in a band. We toured twice taking a week each time, and my boss knew where I was going and what I was doing. They thought it was cool. Also when you come back, put it on your resume. You can leverage it to mean that you work well with a team, you are extremely creative, and you enjoy travel. You can also mention that you prefer work that you enjoy and that's why you followed your dream. Any manager would then say "..and you want to work here?!" They'll be flattered you want to work for their company after living the life of a "rock star".
Go find a single philosopher who said anything remotely similar. Cash is not what counts. I'm not going to pretend that I know what does count, but it certainly is not cash.
I used to work for IBM in a job I liked, except that I had to travel. The hours were not that great either. I didn't love the job at all, but it wasn't bad at all. The traveling on the other hand was just too much for myself and my new wife and family (consists of 2 dogs and 2 cats). My brother gave me some advise. He said: "Nobody on their death bed has said, 'I wish I would have worked just one more day.'" And I listened to this advise and quit my job for a shittier, lower paying IT job so I could stop traveling and spend more time with my new family.
Although you are right about just about everthing in your post, cash is not what counts...Please mod parent down.
In 1987 I was offerred the opportunity to play bass for a nationally recognized folk performer. I had just started at my first software job a week before, but would have to go on tour a month later if I took the offer.
I said no.
I regret the decision to this day, despite being pretty successful in software.
Don't be an idiot - grab your dream job when you can. It's a lot better to be able to fail and say you tried than regret that...etc.
Peter