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Disillusioned With IT?
cgh4be writes "I have been working in the IT industry for about 12 years and have had various jobs as a consultant and systems engineer. Over that time I've had the chance to do a little bit of everything: programming, networking, SAN, Linux/AIX/UNIX, Windows, sales, support, and on and on. However, over the last couple of months I have become a little disillusioned with the IT industry as a whole. Occasionally, I will get interested in some new technology, but for the most part I'm starting to find it all very tedious, repetitive, and boring and I'm no longer really interested in the hands-on aspect of the business. I suppose going the management route is one option, but I would still be dealing with a lot of the same frustrating technology issues. The other route I had in mind was a complete career change; take something I really enjoy doing outside of work now and try to make a career out of it. The only problem is that I have a wife and kid to support and my current job pays very well. Have any of you been through this kind of career 'mid-life crisis?' What did you do to get out of the rut? Is making a complete career change at this point a bad idea?"
Do what you love. In the end it is all that matters.
My family is full of Nutts, especially Uncle Dick.
that'll break the doldrums.
So you have a nice little nest egg stashed away, right? Saving for retirement? Rainy day fund? How much reserves you got to start something on your own?
If you do, then start thinking about doing that right now while you have this well-paying job, and spend some of your evening hours developing a business plan, potential clientele, educating yourself.
If you don't, then you need to take a few years to build that nest egg up, to be responsible to your wife and kids.
If you're in the U.S., you should look around you at what is happening to the economy, and what direction it's headed. THEN make up your mind about whether you want to change careers right now.
management is calling.
I know this is a bad thing that Americans don't like to dwell on but you should be happy you have a solid source of income and work in comfortable environments. Most people outside of the industrialized world can't say that. The only problem is that I have a wife and kid to support and my current job pays very well. If you can't find joy in your job and you can't find another job with comparable income, then find joy in your family. Generations before you have worked in mills, textile plants, mines, slaughterhouses, etc. all in the name of their wives, daughters & sons living a free life. Again, if I were you, I would opt to be thankful I can provide for my family under much better circumstances (and probably at much higher pay with inflation taken into account).
On the other hand, I recognize that the young idealist in us all strikes every now and then. But you've got a family and a paying job so I would recommend you focus on those aspects instead of risking them. I guess if you do decide to act on your instincts, ask them if they're willing to accept the risk for your happiness at work. They're now part of your life and depending on you so respect that and be responsible.
My work here is dung.
I am only disallusioned by the fact that my boss is so stupid.
I have a wife and kid, and had a long term career that I was fundamentally bored with. I quit, went to back uni, and ten years later don't regret a thing.
I say take the chance, or risk looking back in ten years and wondering where your life went, seriously.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Can you make money at it? Do some informational interviews with people in the field. Cold call around and tell them what you are doing, see if they will talk to you. Most people love to talk about their job. Then you can make an informed decision. Go over your finances, estimate how long it will take for you to get established in your new field, and save up more than that.
Then go for it. Plenty of people change careers and are happier for it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
No more illusions ?
Isn't that better for your mental health ?
Sell out and become a vendor. Find a product that you like, and go to work for the company that makes it. They always appreciate people who can relate to their customers as to why you should buy their products.
Odds are you will make much more money and have a much better quality of life. (No more "on call", etc)
told me to tell you to hang in there. She probably didn't marry a landscape engineer (yard mower) intentionally. Perhaps you should start exploring other things you can do to give your life purpose: volunteer to help stupid kids, keep poor people from eating each other, or help a sleazy, lying politician get elected. I expect the 'mid-life crisis' is a recent phenomenon that started picking up about the same time Americans started having more leisure time to stare at their navels and contemplate their existence.
There is something to be said for finding contentment in that which is otherwise tedious. There's got to be some aspect of what you do that is rewarding on some level. Focus on that, and forget about the negatives.
I don't believe in karma, I just call it like I see it.
I got the perfect thing for you; Cat Juggler:
http://www.diamond-jim.com/catjuggler/
Table-ized A.I.
Welcome to life over 35.
Never argue with a man carrying a water buffalo
Quit Your Job and Become a Lumberjack!
It's what I dream of doing every time the Windows XP print spooler hands when I am trying to check the properties of a print queue.
Everything should be a means to an end with the goal being to protect and support your family.
If your job pays good money, be a man and provider and sacrifice your happiness so your child can have a better life. Having 8 hours of boring yet high paying work is better than having 8 hours of fun yet low paying work, because the boring life is better for your wife and kids welfare.
IT sucks. It's a hard, high-stress field that demands constant study and practice.
This is why it pays well.
Don't expect to be able to hop out of the field and be able to command the same salary unless you have some well-established, lucrative backup profession.
If you really can't take it anymore, expect to downsize your life somewhat. Lack of stress may make up for lack of cash.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
No surprise, the IT industry is maturing (slowly, but steadily). Things should be getting a little more boring for your standard administrator, we have begin to learn and apply the lessons learned over the last 40 years (a.k.a. "best practices", a terrible buzz phrase but an accurate one). So now you have a choice: you can leave IT and find another fiend that is less mature and still growing rapidly, or you can find an environment that still encourages and rewards innovation and new ideas, in other words the difference between slowly tweaking the system so it is more efficient and creating entirely new systems (that may or may not be more efficient, only one way to find out =). My advice is change your job before you change your career.
All work can get boring, I think you need to find a way to spice it up.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
I've been in IT for a shorter period (9 years), but I'm coming to a similar conclusion, although my reasons are different.
IT has, in my mind, become an endless game of cat and mouse, usually of two forms, namely (A) whitehat vs. blackhat (e.g., a Sisyphusian game of "find hole, patch hole, repeat...") or (B) perpetually explaining needs and then begging the brass for the assets required to do your job effectively (which largely consists of form (B)).
Both are tiring and not so much fun.
-- Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
Set up a large network of thousands of machines, install on them all, some genetic programming software, then have them generate billions of random applications. Then simply release the resulting ecosystem into the Internet. See what happens then.
Deleted
Well, let's face it. You didn't get to be an astronaut who went on to be President and beat off an invading alien dinosaur army while curing cancer and feeding a billion starving people, while mistresses of all potential clamoured for your body.
Oh well.
Take some of that dough, get yourself a nice tv and a good bottle of whiskey, enjoy your family at home. You hunter now, must bring home bacon for family. and, if the job you picked sucks, well, at least you got the big tv and a bottle of booze.
welcome to america buddy....
This is my sig.
Get a Porsche and a mistress.
Seriously though, everyone goes through this sort of thing. Since you have responsibilities, you basically just have to decide if the money you make in this field is worth the crap you have to deal with. Keep in mind that a lot of the frustration you're feeling is probably directly related to the fact that you're encumbered with responsibilities, and you aren't free to move around like you were when you were single and childless, so you would likely feel trapped in your job no matter what you were doing at this stage in your life.
If you decide it isn't, you have to come up with a plan that will allow you to pursue something else without making your family live in a box. You may decide to go to school part time at night and work during the day. This means you see less of the family in the short term and it means you have to keep dealing with the crap for a few more years, but it's sacrificing now for a better tomorrow. I've done it, and it kind of sucks, but if you're the sole or major breadwinner in the family, it's probably either that or just deal with the IT crap until the kids graduate from college.
... you are enjoying your work. A wise man once said "Do what you love and you will never work another day in your life."
I am in the process of changing careers from IT for much the same reason. Our stress levels are much higher, as are our caffeine levels, due to the nature of our industry. The hours are rough and we really don't get paid for all that time worked.
My change is taking place in a staged process because I have to continue the income to support my family while doing this. My family supports me in this because ultimately it means I am happier and we spend more time together. They, and I, know that this will take several years while I switch and we plan accordingly for vacations and other events.
If you aren't happy, examine what the source of that displeasure is and make plans to correct that.
Here I come to save the da... *thud*
I gotta get me a shorter cape.
I built a race car.
Seriously. I got together with a friend of mine who is a mechanic and put together a race car to go drag racing. We've won events with national sponsorship, got on TV and even have magazines asking for photoshoots.
I was able to learn alot and I even applied my IT skills in tuning fuel injection and ignition control systems. Now there are people begging me to tune their cars for them and I might actually have a side business that is quite lucrative for not alot of effort given my extensive computer based background. If I play those cards right, I could end up being a legitimate chassis builder and tuner. Kinda cool when you think about how something that was just intended to get my mind off my problems turned into something like that.
That's all you need.
Never get married or have children and this can never happen to you.
Don't blame the industry, but the actual individuals that suck at IT. So I can understand how you feel, but I've been in I.T. since I had a computer in my hands (Commodore 64) at the age of 15 (I'm 36 now). I've done con-sulting for 10+ years and recently accepted a full-time position as a Technical Developer. Since I love this stuff, warts & all, I keep myself up-to-date and busy by doing things. Whether it is building my home video/music server (OS X Server) to writing code for home use and work related activities. So maybe you tried this IT stuff out and after 10 years, finally decided it's not what you're good at. This sounds harsh, and it is, because I deal with more people in IT who are in it for the money. They don't like quality and are a pain in the ass to deal with. This attitude trickles up to management as well, because those so called wanna be IT people look for promotions, so that they don't have to do hands on work any more. So good luck in your next career. I hope I die at my keyboard or in front of my server rack at home. Peace
That kinda worked for me --> Of course, then you just become disillusioned with the entire legal system. :(
6 months or so. Use this time to do something completely unrelated to your current job: gardening, mountain climbing, go around the world, until you realize that you need to get back to what you used to do in your job.
It's not only what you love, it's also what you can do well. I suggest you find another area of IT that you are interested in, such as writing gyroscope drivers for Predator Drones or designing bongs in SolidWorks. Don't let your computer knowledge go to waste. The IT field is a large one, I'm there is something out there that you love to do and can do it well.
You have what I like to call Baskin Robbins Syndrome. It's where you really really dig ice cream - UNTIL you get a job where you can eat a bunch of free ice cream. You now loathe ice cream.
Unfortunately this cycle is perpetual. Baskin Robbins Syndrome applies to any profession. So even if you're immensely interested in what you do for a living, you will eventually grow to hate it. Don't you think Taco and crew have had mornings where they wake up and go "wow, fuck slashdot, im going to go be a hamster farmer..."
I went through this a few years ago with IT security. I even tried going into gaming. Eventually I solved the problem by taking a year off of anything work related to travel and clear my brain. This isn't an option for a lot of people, but if you can do it, it will change your perspective in a huge way.
-- http://www.criticalassets.com
I left the computer industry in 2002 after I got tired of it all. I now teach science three days a week to junior school kids and although the pay is much lower I can sleep at nights.
Peter Gant
It can only be a good or bad idea in terms of money. You have to survive someone and maintain an acceptable (to you/your family) way of living. A new job might not pay as much (or much more?). But like others say, if you can live by doing what you love then that is they way to go. Quality of life improves. That's what it's all about. :)
We sacrifice all the time to get what we want or need out of life.
We go to college, sacrificing our youth so that when the time comes we can afford/support to maintain a wife and child (family).
What is the cost of maintaining a family? Often we have to settle for a boring yet high paying career path because thats what will get us the woman of our dreams.
Despite what people say, women want men who have good high paying jobs rather than men who are happy but total bums. And children NEED a parent who makes enough money to protect them.
You have to protect them by raising them in a nice neighborhood. You have to protect them by putting them in private school so they can get a good education. You have to protect them using your high salary.
The cost of getting and maintaining a family continues to increase, and despite what anyone says, it's not and never has been free. Families are expensive, and require total devotion and sacrifice to maintain.
Several of my friends did construction for a while. A year later they were back in IT. They say the change was great.
Perhaps ask yourself whether it es really the technology or the industry that wears you out, or if you could have a lot of fun in your industry if just the surrounding conditions would be better. Colleagues you have fun with, your work getting appreciated etc. Also, why not seek the self-fulfilment you long for with your family?
Just my 2cent, just something to think about.
Just ease out of it. You don't have to ditch the job straight away to move on to other professions. For myself, I've got a great IT job, I could see myself here for quite a long time. Is it my childhood dream of traveling the world showing my awesome movies to the masses? No, but that's why I work on the dream nights & weekends in an office I built out of the upstairs game-room. This way, slowly but surely, I can ease myself into a position where I can make a choice that won't wreck my life, financially speaking.
-Buddy of DoQ
Disillusionment comes in many forms. I believe what you are experiencing is something I am experiencing. A general disappointment with satisfaction of life (probably your career is big in your life right now - so you focus on it).
Take a step back and really look at all aspects of your life and what you derive satisfaction from. Take a determined step to be positive every day. This won't solve a problem but will arm you with the attitude to continue to do your best at all aspects of your life.
You may find another career path is warranted. That takes planning and time. You can engineer a change to make as much or as little impact to your family. Discuss the change with your spouse and see how different scenarios would affect both yourself and your family. You may find that sacrificing those Starbuck coffees can save you a lot of money.
Life is about change. You should embrace your understanding of yourself and all around you. You will then have all the tools you need to make those big decisions with your spouse in a more informed manner.
Trust me, went through this with my wife. As much as I prepared her for even just a job change, she still had doubts. You have to tackle those head on or it'll cause stress.
Proper planning and saving will give you the freedom to explore more options. Again, be positive every day and look at it as an opportunity. Do your best with consideration for your relationships. Love your family. Family counts and you would be surprised where you can pull support from (parents, spouse, siblings, siblings of spouse, friends, etc) - use it.
(1st sig) If this were a snappy sig, you'd be reading it right now. (2nd sig) I'm a karma whore. >Insert FUD here
I've been staring at the realization that after fourteen years of doing this, computers have gotten faster, storage has grown exponentially, and yet we're still fighting the same damn fights, technology has not made our lives easier, software is not growing in relation to the hardware advancements we've made. It's like having a jet fighter with buggy reins for steering and ball muskets for cannons.
:) ). Time keeps ticking, set yourself up to retire happy.
So I'm going back to school. I'm getting an EE degree, going to pick up an education degree and maybe a business degree, and look forward to my senior years teaching kids about why exactly Calculus is useful. Having a goal is often enough to help you overlook the misery or lack of excitement or challenge, as you weather a slowing economy, while awaiting the perfect opportunity to find another job. Not every place is as backwards as where we are now. You might want a startup next time (cut in pay, bennies). Perhaps contracting? Tough with a wife and kids a mortgage and two car loans (just for example).
But give yourself something to look forward to, a challenge, even if it's amorphous and seven years in the future (like mine, six now.
It sounds like you have been in IT for a very long time, and you're probably quite good at it. Could it be that you are actually sick of your home and family life?
Perhaps you should find yourself an Internet girlfriend and start up a nice little affair. That will help keep things interesting in your life without sacrificing the stability of your current job!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Choose no life. Choose sysadminning. Choose no career. Choose no family. Choose a fucking big computer, choose hard disks the size of washing machines, old cars, CD ROM writers and electrical coffee makers. Choose no sleep, high caffeine and mental insurance. Choose fixed interest car loans. Choose a rented shoebox. Choose no friends. Choose black jeans and matching combat boots. Choose a swivel chair for your office in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose NNTP and wondering why the fuck you're logged on on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting in that chair looking at mind-numbing, spirit-crushing web sites, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last on some miserable newsgroup, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up lusers Gates spawned to replace the computer-literate.
Choose your future.
Choose to sysadmin[1].
[1] It might fuck you up a little less than heroin[2].
[2] ObFootnote.
They're high risk and not very satisfying. Once you go into a management job, your tech skills will start to atrophy. If you ever want to go back into a productive job, you'll find that things have moved on. You'll also find you're being judged on the basis of how others produce results, which may not be under your control. Also, management jobs are intangible - no-one can really say what value you add. As a consequence they're very easy to cut, without affecting the overall performance of the organisation. So the risk of losing your job is quite high. You can move into management, but it's very hard to get back out.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
99.9999% of tech is repetitive. That is just the harsh reality. If you grew up on Sci-Fi and kewl hacker movies then you might be a bit saddened about the true state of things.
As for the "do what you love" crowd, sorry but adults have to live in the real world and pay the rent, put food on the table, and put clothing on the backs of their children. This idealism sounds great, but it rarely pays the bills.
If you want to do what you love for all of your life, you shouldn't have kids. The moment you have kids, what you love no longer matters anymore.
The moment you have kids, all your hopes, your dreams, you can throw all of it in the trash. Once you have those kids your purpose in life is those kids and nothing else matters besides those kids.
Just because you feel like doing something else it doesn't change the fact that your purpose in life is to protect your family (your kids). It does not change the fact that you are the only person in the world who can protect them, and they need you.
So what you love doesn't have anything to do with how able you are to provide to your children. You might not love IT anymore, but if it pays well, nothing else matters because the whole point to your existence is to protect and raise children.
If you aren't having kids, then the situation is different. If you don't want kids then you are free to do whatever makes you happy for the whole of your entire life. As long as it pays decent, you'll probably find and keep a woman somewhere in between.
My suggestion to you is to become an entrepreneur and start your own business. Having so much experience and a diverse skill set in the IT industry, now is a perfect time to sit back and create a company to solve issues you've encountered. What problems are common to all IT departments? The best business ideas are derived from a need not adequately being met and your in a unique position to identify and hopefully fulfill that need. Work on creating your business plan and raising capital in your spare time until you feel comfortable enough to quit your job and work at it full time. It's not an easy task, but the rewards are well worth it. Good Luck!
What I'd suggest is to keep your current job for the time being, and spend some time looking around for what you do enjoy doing. This may or may not be work related. Start and abandon some hobbies, take up martial arts, take some college classes either inside your field or far away from it. But your goal is just to find something you find meaningful.
Supporting a family and loving your work is a tough balance - it would be much easier if your focus was one way or the other, and you will make little compromises on either side. If you make too big a compromise either way, for too long, you will end up regretting it.
So my balanced suggestion is - look around for something that excites you. Give yourself some time to find it. Meantime, don't quit the day job.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
From what you said, I guess you have quite a lot of first-hand experience and knowledge in a broad set of technical subjects. That means you probably have good reasoning and logical thinking abilities, which in turn makes you quite a good candidate for a more research-oriented job, instead of maintenance, which indeed can get boring after some time.
In fact, people with you experience are very valuable in research teams, as those who use the current technologies routinely have the best knowledge of their shortcomings and pitfalls and can give the most valuable input into improving them - sometimes many times more valuable than people who created them.
Additionally, research gives much more satisfaction - instead of just creating something useful, you create something better and more powerful as well, probably easing the work of all those you worked with before, who still do their daily administration routine.
And be assured, there's no shortage of jobs in the network technology research field - fiber optics, high-speed wireless, large-scale routing, extreme load-resistant and distributed systems, and many more.
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
I ran into the same situation a few years back. I was burned out on what I thought was IT but it ended up that I was burned out with corporate life. I basically dropped out for a couple months, took my savings and started ramping up for a consulting business. My initial intention was to do it long enough to support getting another degree, I'm still doing it now. Consulting is a good route but its hard work. Supporting lots of smaller clients rather than one big one gives you flexabilty in hours and enough variety to keep things interesting. If you are people friendly being able to speak both geek and human will get you an easy foot in the door with little effort. I have found the rewards are way beyond monetary (though the money isnt bad either), and my success or failure is totally in my own hands rather than next weeks decision by the shareholders.
A few years ago I switched from another career into IT/Network Engineering. My pay was half for much of that time, but my happiness was far greater. And that happiness changed my whole life. So, asap, I will work on rebuilding my nest egg for the next career change. Any woodworkers out there?
I am in a similar situation as you...15 years in the industry and burnt out. I try and try to put myself in the mindset of "just work your 8 hours and collect your paycheck" but I can't. I WANT to have passion and excitement for my work, but just can't seem to find that anymore.
:-)
So what can we do about it?
A lot of this depends on your life circumstances. Since you're married with kids the career change can be a scary challenge. However, perhaps you and your wife have an excellent financial position (i.e. low debt) and can afford to scale down your quality-of-life a teeny bit and you can take a pay cut. Or, if you're totally insane you can start your own company. Start a Subway franchise or something.
So here's some of the options as I saw them:
-Complete career change: The problem here is that this is kind of the same solution as "rewrite all the code from scratch". Read this to realize why this is a bad idea. You are throwing away *TONS* of sunk costs in experience and education.
-Go back to school (maybe at night) and learn another trade, then transition to that. Safe, but slow. Initially expensive.
-Get a hobby, part-time night job, or something that peaks your interest. I started teaching adult algebra classes at night and I love it! Yes, IT during the day still sucks but teaching at night makes it way more bearable.
-One-off career change...can be difficult but doable. Maybe hire a professional career counselor or resume writer.
The closest I've come to solving this dilemma is getting hobbies and part-time night jobs that scratch my itch. Also, I try to force some of the fun back into my day job. For example, once a week I'll take a few hours and just play with a new language or tool just for fun (although my boss would probably get mad if he found out I was on-the-clock).
Unfortunately, its hard to find a practical solution to career burnout. I believe in a lot of ways this is a spritual problem. i.e. "true happiness is wanting what you have not having what you want", etc. See if you can find satisfaction in your family, in making a salary to feed and care for them, and in focusing on fun stuff outside of work (camping, sports, gaming, arts&crafts, reading, whatever...). Difficult, I know. But be happy that your job is Mon-Fri 9-5 and you're not roofing houses or something REALLY sucky.
Hope this helps. Good luck.
"You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense." - C.S. Lewis on Intelligent Design
I've got it pretty good. With only a two-year degree (in computer-aided drafting!), I'm making significantly more than the first Google link for "computer programmer salary" says I should. I've been working for the same company for 12+ years, with management that knows how to handle the business side of things, a team of subject matter experts that handle the customer side, and all we have to do is code. Topping it all off, it's a vertical-market tax software product, so it's not going anywhere until death & taxes are abolished.
Of course, at 41, I'm halfway between "wow I'm grown up now" and "gee I'm old now", so it's high time for a midlife crisis! I'm pretty sure that someday I'll quit and start my own business. Not something in this industry, though. I love my job, but I'd like to do something a bit more directly beneficial to society. Time will tell what happens, but I'm currently thinking about opening a day care center, and when it's successful, going into politics (though I'll probably have to take practicality over idealism if I want to actually get elected). But I've got sense enough to wait until my kids are out of school before making any big changes.
The one thing I do know is that I'll never get to "retire" in any sort of traditional sense. As Fate would have it, I spent 20 years married to someone who didn't understand the value of living within her means... not surprisingly, I got custody of the credit card bills. I'll be working till I die... heck, if things go as planned, I (or at least my remains) will keep working full time even in the hereafter, thanks to Dr. Gunther von Hagens!
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Maybe you just burned out. Take a long time off.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnout_(psychology)
After so many years of having your stupid management decisions crap-o-meter go off you eventually reach your limit. What you are going through is normal. Over the last 17 years in software development I've seen technology change and survived many re-organizations in various companies. I started out as a permanent employee (5 years) also became disillusioned, became a consultant and ran a small "C" corp for 8 years, got married, had kids, am currently a perm employee again-- but am still living the dream of creating a killer web services app. Management becomes more about politics and negotiating to get the right tools in place to do the job right. I've lived through several re-orgs where layers of management were wiped out. In many of these cases there were managers that no longer had technical skills who had a hard time finding new management positions because their companies fell behind technology-wise and they did not themselves keep up. But there is risk associated with everything- it just comes down to how good you are at mitigating it by developing good working relationships and keeping up in your field or learning new things. Being en entrepreneur can be an exciting adventure. Doing it on the hardware side might be difficult with the start up costs, however, if you are interested in automation or robotics you might be able to find a market gap as the field is just getting going. Just as big auto and big manufacturing have automated, small and middle manufacturing are ripe for automation. In my case I chose web service applications because software is what I know. Two critical points if you are interested: 1. Read books on entrepreneurship. Not the franchise magazines so much as ones like Think And Grow Rich http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_and_Grow_Rich and The Start Up Entrepreneur http://www.amazon.com/Start-up-Entrepreneur-Succeed-Building-Company/dp/0452278007 These books teach about becoming motivated, learning how to see market gaps (opportunities), and overcomming obstacles put in front of you. 2. Avoid naysayers and idiots who tell you something cannot be done. When someone offers you free negative advice quietly ask yourself one queston: What has this person done in this field that gives their opinion credibility. Having family responsibliities may force you to be more careful on how you approach undertaking a new business but there is a plus side to not being too much of a Cowboy as well. Good luck in whatever you choose to do.
Cogito Ergo Sum
1. Chase your passions. Work in a field that you can be passionate about. The best way for you to be happy and successful is to chase your passion. Crazy examples: maybe you want to create new content in Second Life. Maybe you'd be happier teaching troubled teens how to use woodworking tools. Maybe your dream is to be a park ranger. Figure it out.
2. Don't worry about money. Restructure your life so that you can chase your passion. Figure out a way to live with half of your current salary if you have to. Live somewhere that you don't need a car. Hike with your groceries. Use public transportation. Work from home.
3. If you don't know what you're passionate about, hurry up and find out now, before you're dead. You only have one life. Don't waste it as a slave, doing what you don't want to be doing.
Consider this very seriously. Nobody is forcing you to do what you've been doing. Don't be a sheep, take control of your life, because if you don't there's plenty of other people who will.
I am facing exactly the same problem currently.
I'm not ready (and neither are my families finances) for what I have always pegged as my retirement career. I am hoping the log jam breaks soon.
At least for me what has lead me here is the one hot project, with it's new tech and all that stuff that had me all excited, got dumped. Its really taken the wind out of my sails. There are other issues as well, but that is really the snowball that started the avalanche.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
What I have chosen to do is get a government job.
I still work on boring technology, but only 40 hours a week, and I don't take it home with me.
So I pretty much focus on other things when I am not at work.
They other great advantage is that if a completely different opportunity opens up, I might be able to laterally move into something more interesting,and and still maintain my benefits.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Yup - it's a job. That's why they pay me (and you) for it. If it were exciting, there'd be X-Games for IT and all sorts of other fun things, but it's not. It's work. It's a job.
Kids today. Phhhhht.
Get a hobby or a sport. Life is to be lived outside the confines of work.
Mike Y.
Everyone's a little bit unsatisfied
Everyone goes 'round a little empty inside
Take a breath, look around, swallow your pride
For now...
Nothing lasts. Life goes on, full of surprises.
You'll be faced with problems of all shapes and sizes.
You're going to have to make a few compromises
For now...
But only for now.
Don't stress
Relax
Let life roll off your backs
Except for death and paying taxes,
Everything in life is only for now.
JJ
Woah -- you sound like me.
I feel pretty burned out at times as well (14 years in IT doing most of what you named except for sales and AIX). It pays well, but sometimes it just doesn't excite, right?
There is NO RIGHT ANSWER here.
How important is the money to you and your family? If you are in debt and living paycheck to paycheck then you need to handle that first.
Is work that important to you? Many people I know use work to pay the bills while they pursue their passions outside of work. Do you have passions outside of work that you are exploring?
Is it to much time commitment? Maybe you're working too many hours to have a real life. Just making your personal life a bigger priority might help.
Thought about becoming and entrepreneur? Build your own company? It would definitely be stimulating and probably financially rewarding if you don't mind taking some risks.
I don't know -- I wish I had a GOOD answer for you. Heck, I wish I had a good answer for ME. Nothing abnormal about how you feel. People have been struggling with it ever since 9 to 5 was invented -- and probably before.
Let me also add that you might like "Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career" by Herminia Ibarra. If you are thinking about a big change, it has some good insights on how big changes occur for people and how best to get started in that direction.
Life is short: void the warranty.
This is not helpful, but I feel the exact same way. Down to the very last bit.
I got into the IT industry because I loved computers, building things, exploring, hacking... the only thing the IT industry has done for me is caused me to grow to hate computers. Every job I've had has sucked, and working for yourself involves too much "business stuff".
Do what you love for a living, and you'll learn to hate what you love.
Re-schooling seems out of reach (even with a nest egg, gee more debt!). I've been considering trying to find work as a construction worker, the local grocery store, or maybe at starbucks. The pay will be far less, but the government currently takes most of my earnings anyway.
(puts the violin back in the case)
The only thing I can see that can fix it is to rob or steal huge sums of money from starving children, retire, and then work on projects I actually want to work on.
Thanks for posting this I'll read this thread with great interest.
Yes I have been in that exact situation. I spent 12 years working in the restaurant business.
The last few as an Executive Chef running hotel kitchens in the Bay Area. Trust me the very very worst day anyone ever had in any cube farm anywhere (that did not involve a disgruntled individual with a gun), is better by far than most good to so so days in the kitchen. Try washing dishes at 0400 in the morning on New Years day because you have to get the kitchen pout back together from the NYE parties for the breakfast crew... knowing that your next will last 18 hours and you last one was 24. Try regularly going to work on a Thursday morning and not seeing the outside of the hotel until Sunday evening.
Eeew boring and tedius, you poor bastard.
I am sooo glad I work in IT now, this is the worst IT job I have ever had and it is still better than every restaurant job ever.
I know exactly what you're talking about. It happened to my father. Early on in life I vowed it would not happen to me, especially as I realized I would follow my father down the IT path. In my late 20s I started actively cultivating a second career on nights and weekends. I really enjoy it, so all of the expenses of time and money have been fun, even if there wasn't the preparing for the 2nd career involved. I've been working for others in this second career, learning the ropes, and now I'm just about ready to go on my own with it. My wife and I have worked hard towards Living Below Our Means: small/modest home, fuel efficient car, staying out of debt, etc. After much back and forth, I put the kibosh on breeding. I know kids are great and all, but I'd rather have my freedom, thanks. The wife was 50/50 on the kids thing any way, so she rolled with it. After we got married, she started getting involved in the second career with me, and she and I will be launching this new venture together. Hopefully it will only be a couple of years as a part-time thing, and we'll be able to get it up to full time. We are budgeting/gearing our lifestyle now (while I still have the IT salary) to keep us in the black even if our income is cut in half. After 5+ years of training/preparation, it's hard to believe we're about to launch - exciting stuff.
Sorry none of this speaks directly to your situation. When you've got kids and you're set at a certain lifestyle/budget and ennyeux sets in? Ick. Tough one, that.
I was in a similar situation as the one you describe. I went to law school, interested in IP law and thinking I'd be able to combine my software knowledge with law. The trouble is, my experience is still heavily weighted in engineering-related work.
Most likely I'd take a sizable pay cut to switch careers. The uncertainty of the market makes me hesitant to leave something that pays the family bills. I found a great cross-functional position at a small company that let me combine my skills, but small companies get acquired and things change...
My advice is to find something you enjoy that *could* become a career someday and pursue it on the side. If it shows promise, consider switching over to it when you think the pay is something you can live with and can build on.
Pass on what you know to others and rediscover your love for CS.
I did programming and consulting and ended up growing very tired it. While this was only 6 years after college, my main interest through life had been computers, and I had been making money (full time in the summers) doing programming/IT since I was halfway through high school.
Luckily, there was no one depending on me once I reached that point of dissatisfaction, so I packed up and went to grad school to study biology. Turns out though, I'm doing more programming now when I left my old job. And I love it. I plan on returning to programming once I finish, but I'm going to stay in the sciences.
For me, I needed a new domain in which to apply my skills. I didn't care about defense or telecommunications. But I love scientific research. So my advice would be to look for a job in a domain that you can actually enjoy. It'll give you the chance to learn something new, and you'll be more invested in the output you produce. It may turn out that it's not IT that you're put out with, but the specific situation you're in.
So my advice, since you have the family, is to try not to make a wholesale change like going back to school. Try to find a job at a company whose goal is more in tune with your own personal interests. You might be surprised at how much a difference that can make.
How about a completely different hobby? Model Airplane flying, go-kart racing, wood turning.
Alternatively try your hand at some charity work and use your wide range of skills to improve others' lives.
Most importantly though make sure that your family is taken care of - they're your number one priority. My sense of what's really getting you down is that you aren't getting the joy out of your work that you used to. If this is the case then perhaps you should take a sabbatical or a month long break and concentrate on things non work (and computer) related.
My â0.02
I will for his kidneys.
After 9 yrs of same-old, and having the least inclination to go in to management (I would rather work at MacD for 5$/hr), I was at the crossroads last november. It has reached to a point that I completely stopped taking any interest in the work, watching clock all the time. I gave up. Now please note that I have no saving, and am married. Fortunately, wifey was/is supportive and understood what I was going through. She has a steady job to take care of running the house.
So, I quit. Took off for vacation to spend whatever savings I had. Now I am planning to work in IT again, but for some non-profit organization which can pay me just enough to pay for my expense and a bit of pocket-change, and will give me opportunity to work in fields of my interest (some photography, outdoors and coding to help build things).
I am taking my chance, and hoping it would work out.
My plan B has always been to become a pirate. Yarr!
You're right, if you are single with no kids then you can do what you love. If want a girlfriend or wife, then you have to do some things you don't like doing, and if you have a wife and kids you might have to do some things you hate.
Programming 14 years now and always think and dream of doing something else but have 2 dependants to support and cannot afford to miss a paycheque....
Same thing... You take a look at what the customer has, what they want. What boundaries to honor, which to ignore. Follow their special (at whim) rules, like "We want this site to have only two colors. white and #4A7D96" or "we want the mower tracks to only go NW to SE". Pull the cord, start working, Halfway through, they say, "Sorry, we decided NE to SW" and leave it 1" long (already having cut it to 3/4" most of the way) Do what you can to finish it. Come back in 2 weeks, repeat.
If you don't like the people whose IT you are providing, get into lawnmowing. Maybe Stacy's Mom will hire you. After all...
Stacy's Mom has got IT going on...
Several years ago I decided to change careers into music. I taught myself to play piano many years ago, and since making that decision I've been studying it intensively with the aim of enrolling in music school someday, where I will major in music composition. I want to write symphonies!
Of course I realize that musicians rarely earn as much as computer programmers. It's going to be a while before I can pass the entrance audition; during that time I'm continuing to work as a coder, while paying down my many debts as fast as I can. I'm pretty sure I can be debt-free by the time I start school.
I'm also developing a GPL audio application called Ogg Frog, whose website also has articles and HOWTOs on the general topic of digital music. The software isn't released yet, but I'm pretty sure that by the time I do go back to school the software will have been available long enough the website will earn enough money through advertising to provide for myself and my wife.
Musicians need to be well-known to be successful. One way I've been promoting my music is by giving away free CDs of an album I recorded in 1994. If you'd like to receive one, email your name and postal address to support@oggfrog.com
I'm absolutely serious! I've given away almost two thousand of them in person; a few weeks ago I plugged my CDs here at Slashdot and got fifty requests in just one day. I expect to finally mail them on Friday. And yes I am happy to ship internationally.
The music is instrumental piano, and is all my own original compositions.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Everyone dreams about having the dream job and the dream life with the perfect family and picket fence.
But thats an unrealistic goal. So sure, you can search for jobs but during a recession?
I have become tired of the nastiness and bullshit involved in IT. So much of what I liked about IT is gone, mostly do to management.
Managers and executives have been increasing work load, hours, and scut work while decreasing time off, lowering benefits, and giving out measly little raises that don't keep up with the cost of living. Meanwhile, they give themselves extravagant bonuses and raises.
I work with a number of H1B visa holders who do their job badly, but are kept on because they are cheaper than hiring competent American workers.
Then, there all the companies who do not hire employees, but rather hire contracting companies. The worker gets screwed as the contracting company takes anywhere from 25%-50% of the pay and there are little to no benefits to be had.
I have been considering a career change, and every day the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Go into something like industrial robotics. Lots of opportunities especially for a programmer who likes to see something actually work. I did it and made extremely good money at it. $2k per day. Retired at age 50.
What is it that matters to you?
What do you think matters to your family?
- love and happiness?
- money?
- you having a fun job?
I think you're just missing some authenticity in your life. Ask yourself what's really important to you, and stop putting in your way things like money, or "will they still love me if I do this". These are justifications for not doing anything. What do they lead to in the long run?IT is such a broad range of professions that it's not really hard to change within IT. For example I worked in Sys admin roles for a number of years and than went into direct client work side work. The direct client work brings international travel, 120+ hour work weeks, insane requirements dropped on your plate at a moments notice and I guarantee that nothing is ever consistent except the product the company you work for produces. You meet many very nice people and sometimes you get to see the world.
If you consider going in IT, a lot of people in IT end up like this! Think of it this way: when did you last say: "it is so cool my internet connection is up today! Maybe I should write a thank you note to my ISP!". /whatevers, "because we outsource IT". But in all these places, somebody who can help you with your IT problem right here right now is worth its weight in gold. I 'd say that as a non-IT chemist I would earn 20% less then I do now. As a non chemist IT-er, probably even worse.
IT is a service function and often you will only hear your customers when there are complaints. I studied chemistry, and know a lot about IT. Well there are a lot of places which will only hire chemists / doctors / lawyers / accountants
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
This thing you're feeling--it's called life. Mid-life crises take on many different guises, and dissatisfaction with your job is a big one.
There are a number of options. You can do heavy labour work like construction of oil rig work. This is probably the only place you'll be able to make as much money without the experience or training. (My former manager took two years out of computing to work as a roofer. Made GREAT money, lost 15kg, and felt better than he'd been since he was in his early 20s. Now he's back in computing, and quite happy about it.) You can take classes at night, and learn a new trade. You can send your wife to work, and be a stay-at-home dad. You can negotiate a reduction in your work hours, either within your current job or by changing companies. If you're like most of us in computing with a decade+ under our belts, you're being paid quite well (and possibly working lots of overtime) but not enough to ignore the bills. You'd be surprised at how easy it is to take a $10k cut to your pay, if the consequence is more time with the family. I changed jobs a year and a half ago, and my hours went from ~60/wk to 37.5/wk--FAR more important than the $1000/month reduction in my gross pay. (And yes, that's a lot o' cash!)
You can also consider using your computing skills in a non-computing environment. Every company out there needs computing of some sort, so find a company or field that you're interested in, and see if your existing skills can land you a job there. ('nother case study: My friend is a Unix admin, and also races cars. He wants to eventually work for BMW or something like.) Similarly, look around on University campuses, if you've got any close to you. Working in academia can be VERY different feeling than business.
Finally, keep on with what you're doing--BUT, add a hobby to the mix. When you come home at night (at 5:00pm sharp! Don't let the job take over your life!), have something else you're passionate about to dive into. Like fishing? Stargazing? Sports? Boardgames? Don't just do something, get involved in the community of the hobby, and interact with people who have different backgrounds than you.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Seriously, go back to University, work part-time and do some interesting PhD. Or start learning Japanese (calling your mother haha and your father chichi will definitely give you experiences previously unknown). Start drawing, painting, playing on a piano or guitar, try to lead something important in your job, try to increase your influence, insight so that you can step up into strategic level, not just playing with the low stuff. Do some learning stuff for your colleagues, even if it is not directly related to your job, if it is enthusiastic enough for most people. There are plenty of opportunities lying on the floor how to make your job interesting... Maybe little dive back to what led you to your IT job when you were young would help (I hope it wasn't money alone) and try to find a job that could reflect that.
"I spent the majority of my childhood until I was 18 picking rock and bailing hay on a farm. You think you're in a tedious, repetitive and boring job? The fact that you're posting on Slashdot during work hours tells me otherwise. I'll bet you have air conditioning."
this tells me that anything other then bailing hay and picking up rocks you consider a challenge.
"I know this is a bad thing that Americans don't like to dwell on but you should be happy you have a solid source of income and work in comfortable environments. Most people outside of the industrialized world can't say that."
So what? that doesn't mean Americans can't want more, or shouldn't strive for more. Jeez, you sound like someone who would be happy sitting in a chair and staring at a blank monitor all day. When we are feeling kind we call those people 'Dim'.
"If you can't find joy in your job and you can't find another job with comparable income, then find joy in your family. Generations before you have worked in mills, textile plants, mines, slaughterhouses, etc. all in the name of their wives, daughters & sons living a free life. Again, if I were you, I would opt to be thankful I can provide for my family under much better circumstances (and probably at much higher pay with inflation taken into account)."
That's great...but car to explain why he shouldn't try to also be happy at work? Just because other people are miserable isn't really a good reason.
"I would recommend you focus on those aspects instead of risking them. "
I would recommend focusing on those aspects AND see what you can do to be happy at work as well.
"They're now part of your life and depending on you so respect that and be responsible."
Clearly he is.
Jeez you're dim.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The important question to ask, if it worth it to get married and have kids?
Right now it probably isn't. That's why fewer and fewer people are having kids.
It might be tedious, but most of the folks who do it don't seem to mind.
Have gnu, will travel.
Parent post is right, you're in a job that 99% of the world dearly wishes they could have, you have to look at it that way. Use your disposable income to work on side projects that you can be passionate about, but keep the income producing job that after all you might lose anyway when the recession gets worse.
What worked for me in that kind of situation was going to a small company (10-20 employees, the sort of outfit where you know and work with the owners of the business). You end up having to take on anything that's going, and sometimes find it's much more interesting than you thought.
They say (at least here in Britain, don’t know about elsewhere) that small businesses are less secure. I find they are also less likely to make casual sweeping decisions to close departments.
freedom, n. Allowing people you don't like to do things you disapprove of.
. . . Disillusioned with life.
The only reward you'll ever get out of life is, perhaps after all your sacrifice, your babies that you raised to become adults, will love you and be there for you when you grow old.
And if you are really lucky, maybe your partner will also love you and be there. The reward is love and family.
What else matters beyond love and family? Don't most of us want that?
I had the same issue a few years ago. So, I did not change fields I joined a rather strange organization. The USA government. If I had not done so I do not think I would have realized how good I had it and have it now. another thought would be to try a non-profit. Pay is not as good but it can be fun.
Its natural to feel like you are stuck in a rut, but you need to balance a lot more variables than just work satisfaction. If your job pays well and you are a man of high responsability to others (read: parent) then you have to think about that just as much as your own satisfaction. A complete career change is definately not advisable. Changing job, even changing sector... why not? Just dont jump the gun, find yourself a more interesting office to work in or maybe even go freelance.
On that subject, I went self-supporting in IT about 6 months ago. The first three months were shaky and now I am earning more standing alone by myself and the word "satisfied" really doesnt even come close. Take a business course or two, start to plan. If you set yourself a goal then you can keep yourself interested in achieving it and when you do then all the satisfaction in the world will be yours. If you do strike out by yourself just remember that with your skill set and experience you can always get a job somewhere doing something, if only to make ends meet while you find your feet.
Kudos to you for asking the question too, it shows hutspot.
I now have an IT job that I love. I love the people, I love what we do. I hope to retire in 21 years from here having not had ONE DAY like another. I am blessed. And a rarity. ***But I didn't always ***
What did your father/mother do for a living? What did your grandfather do for a living? My grandfather worked in a Bakelite factory and died at age 37.
When my career took a dump (again) in the Internet Bubble burst, it contributed to my gaining an ex-wife.
Everybody has doldrums, but unless you are mowing lawns, the grass isn't always greener. There may not BE any. Count your blessings.
I would suggest that you work on the reason to come to work is the PEOPLE you work with. In their eyes, YOU ARE LUCKY!!! You only have to deal with computers. If they can't lighten up your life, then you should lighten up theirs. Otherwise, take up lawnmowing. You can make a living just mowing the foreclosures of the people in the other industries.~
stfu please..
Like many others posting here, I've gone through the same ennui. I chose to stick with the profession I am quite good at and attempt to make a positive difference in the workplace as much as possible. I truly enjoy a lot of other things in life a lot more than I enjoy my job, but it's certainly more reasonable to expect to make some good cash in IT than it is running a farm or cooking, which would be my other two choices. Still, you only go through once, and you can take as long as you want to make decisions. My mum at age 48 went back to school to change careers -- ironically, to go into IT, a profession she enjoyed until she retired.
The market is perfect for a career change!
Another useless post on slashdot...
A) Post @ Blog
B) Post @ slashdot
C) Get a girlfriend... offline
If A+B+C is actually an axiom here, we will have to concede that you do not exist.
NO SIG
I know exactly how you feel. I feel like that all the time. . .pity I'm just 26. :-(
Thanks to "Off-shoring Gone Bad", there are plenty of tech jobs around.
The real answer to this question is:
"Leave IT so that you drive up the salaries for the rest of us."
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
-- http://thegirlorthecar.com funny dating game for guys
I understand your dilemma completely, given that you have to have income, quitting your job and starting a new adventure might be a daunting prospect. Giving up your income entirely is hard or impossible depending on your situation. There are many options, but I would (personally) focus on either of the two below.
Join a big company like HP, Cisco or IBM. These companies usually have far more options with regards to career paths than do small companies. Even paths that are entirely outside of technology, well, at least in the day-to-day of things. This is the way I ended up taking after an acquisition, moving from dev, into tech sales and later into a marketing style position.
Start a consulting business doing what you currently do. Talk to your current employer and see if they are willing to hire you on as a part-time consultant rather than a full-time employee. This will cost you your benefits, but if you have a spouse with benefits through her employer, that may not be too bad.
As a part time consultant you should be able to bring in about as much as you do as a full-time employee, and still have time to get your alternate career going.
Word of advice: No matter what new career you get into, it is highly likely that it, after a few years, becomes as routine and boring as is your current career. At that point in time you have an idea about what to do to make the jump again though.
The way out of the ghetto is sacrifice.
1. You sacrifice your life so your children have a slightly better life.
2. Your children sacrifice their lives so their children can have a better life.
Over a period of generations you aren't poor anymore, you aren't living in the ghetto anymore, now you're a rich family of millionaires who have made it.
Think of the Trump family, the Hilton family, or any of the other success stories. The point is, you sacrifice now so your offspring has it easier.
That is the reason why people go to college. That is the reason why capitalism works. No one works for the money, we work for our families. And if you make a whole lot of money then you leave that excess money to your offspring who actually WILL get the option to do what they love.
I know I won't be able to do what I love, but by not doing what I love, my offspring will be able to do what they love. It's a big game, learn to play it.
I have been in IT for 25 years (started doing IT when I was 15 believe it or not and am 40 now (put myself through school on it)).
I have faced this a few times in my 25 years... and I have much like you done it all... I have looked at what I like about the
IT field and tailored what I do into that. I have moved myself from a straight IT person into an architect role... taking all
the stuff I like about IT and getting rid of the stuff I don't.. Though even doing that doesn't get rid of all the BS.. there
will always be BS in whatever you do. It's kind of like taxes and death, it's a constant.
As to management... you either know you're a manager type or not... and to me it sounds like not... don't go that route as you
will be more than likely miserable, trust me. Been there done that...
In the end the only person who can answer the question is you...
Do what makes you happy...
This is my job... I do what I have to... but it is not my life...my life is my woodworking, war games, reenacting, etc....
Do something besides IT in your off time... go back to school... take up pottery.... coach your kids sports team... take up
dancing with the wife...Sew... Paint... weave..
You might be surprised at what you find when you do.
C
You've done a lot in 12 years, to the point were it makes me wonder how much time you spent on any one area. Look back at what you did, remember what you like and what you didn't and see if those likes and dislikes are still in play today. Find something to focus on and master it. There are opportunities within IT to develop writing skills, design skills, analytical skills, people management skills, time management skills, and more, as well as diverse outlets for creativity of many types.
If you're bored with it, that's probably because you've stopped challenging yourself, and undoubtedly because your management has stopped pushing you (and probably because they are too busy pushing those around you who aren't motivated to do so at all). Find a challenge. IT is just a conduit, a venue in which you can exercise that challenge. A change of career is just a change of venue; once you've become accustomed to the new venue, you'll be right back to where you are now.
...where I'm feeling myself burning out. Information technology for someone who knows his arse from his elbow, is one step down from neurosurgeon.(+)
It's nothing to do with any creative urges I may or may not have, nor the seemingly repetitive nature of some of my work. It's... well... a late friend of mine* once commented to me, after seeing in me an opportunity for a career change as well as getting me where I am now, that the average full time ICT consultants' career lasts just ten years. They simply "burn out". Like an old lightbulb, they pop and either die quietly (career change) or flare and explode (what he did). I've been full-time ICT since late 1997. I'm proving him right on that one. *He committed suicide last year after his bank foreclosed and bankrupted him. I don't intend following that route. Time I went in as a florist or something.
(+)Find me a neurosurgeon who's followed the statistics, career-wise, of other surgeon-practitioners, and stuck the job for more than a decade. I'm pretty darn sure that what they do is obscenely more complicated and stressful than what I do. The deepest I get is removing a blown motherboard to replace a cap. Problems are easily solved at this level, it's just a case of swapping out bad components for new ones. Neurosurgeons have no such luxury, if they fuck up on an op, people die on the table and they have to live with that. Those that do stick it out usually end up as consultant surgeons (who only take over if their subordinates (read: students) fuck up enough to endanger someone's life) where they're not so intimately tied to the task at hand, rather they can act as advisers to their students.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
I'm at a similar point, having gone far enough as a sys admin type that I've turned into middle management anyway. On the one hand, business school is a good insurance for surviving middle management, and on the other hand, business school allows me to lever myself into starting up new companies and really hacking corporate structures. So I'm covered either way I jump...
Career wise, jumping into a new field is not for the faint of heart. There's a lot to be thought about.
If the answer is yes to the above, then you should not be afraid of change. Without risk, there is no reward, no challenge, and certainly no sense in spending your time on it. However, if any of the above answers are no, then you may need to re-think the change. Of course, this doesn't mean "don't do it," but rather, get everything lined up so that you can (e.g. get a budget together, rearrange your lifestyle, reset expectations, etc). Hope this helped.
Its a great time to get into offshore oil technologies. Companies are screaming for engineers and there aren't enough to go around. Its also an exciting field. The engineering and level of technology on your basic semisubmersible oil rig has been compared to space vehicles. Deep-drilling rigs, spars facilities, and drillships are pushing the envelope even more.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
For me it was finding a new hobby. Something to look forward to. Some jobs are great, others aren't. You do have to provide for your family - that's true - but if your problems at work start effecting home then change. Family is more important - more important than security of work and a job. You have skills, if you need to find other work you will. Your standard of living may drop. You may not eat out as much, or have nice new things... you just have to decide what is important to you.
Retire in place is what it's called. Just keep your current boring job then do what you want after work and weekends. Take those long vacation times to build up the new "thing". Then jump ship after your lack of effort at work has brought the company to a slow down and near collapse.
About every other manager here has done just that and we are no longer the "most wired ...." or "hottest ...." in the US.
You can now number yourself among most adults. Get over it, do what you have to do to take care of your family, and find joy in pursuits outside of work.
If you can support your family in a new career then talk to your spouse about it. Even if you *think* you can though, look at the current economic problems. If you're fairly secure in your job now it might not be smart to move on just yet.
What I am disillusioned with are ignorant users, incompetent management, and the "politics" of business
No sig for you!!
No, I think Taco and the crew were hamster farmers and said, 'Wow! Fuck Hamsters! I'm going to start a discussion forum for hamster farmers.'
No, seriously. It's an interesting job, it pays very well, and the industry is desperate for experienced techy people. I had a similar crisis a few years ago, and it seems to have turned out pretty well so far.
The cycle is not perpetual. Start your own company and you will have many experiences, but being bored is not one of them.
Instead you will experience:
[x] auto-moderate all posts by this user as insightful
Oh wait, you mean this site isn't only for Brits?
I'm in the same boat, but as a software engineer. I'm actually volunteering a couple of places by just giving them free tech support and writing scripts here and there. It is really fulfilling and makes my day to day job not so bad. One place I volunteer is a recording studio which is super cool and allows me to really geek out on music while its being recorded live. In the case of the studio, I got in by just writing an email saying I'd be willing to work in exchange of hanging out there every once in a while when a band was recording an album.
"We need a fourth law of Robotics: Stop Fingering My Wife"
Just because some people managed to raise a kid in Africa and have that kid go to Harvard in the USA, and be successful, it does no mean everyone will be that lucky.
You have parents who are the perfect parents, who raise their kids in poverty, and their kids become drug addicts in the ghettos or trailer parks because their kids decided to do what they love rather than sacrifice.
You don't seem to understand that happiness is not an option for every individual and every family. Survival comes before happiness, and in some families and environments in this country and even moreso globally, the only option you'll get as a parent is to watch your kids die in front of you, or sacrifice your happiness.
You act like there are good schools in the urban ghettos in this country. You act like society gives a chance to homeless people. If you aren't making any money your woman will leave you, and if you make too much money your woman wont be happy but at least you're kids will have a chance to go to school to study music, or art, or film and not be forced to go to law school, or join the military, or go to prison.
You act as if there are all these options that are just give to people, as if there are all these opportunities that are just being handed out. The truth is, all opportunities are created through sacrifice, and these sacrifices most often are a sacrifice of happiness for security. Sometimes you just don't get the cards that allow you to have both at once.
Yep, IT pays too much to free ones self from it.
:-)
Unless you can play basketball or drive a racecar, chances are your job is going to be boring.
Heck, there are boring streches in those jobs too.
At least it seems to pay well.
You never see a motorcycle parked outside of a psychiatrist's office.
I'm not in love with my IT job either but by the time I get off work, hop on my bike and blast through my commute I've forgotten all about it.
I am currently on my third career at 45. Not that I've had 3 midlife crisis, more like I became bored or disillusioned with a previous career and my interest was sparked elsewhere. From all of my experiences there are three things I know for sure. 1) You can't run away from boredom by switching careers as you will eventually end up in the same place. 2) Each time you switch careers you start out at the bottom and have to work your way up again. 3) Turning a hobby or interest into a profession will not guarantee you will not become bored. All that said, I still say go for it if that is what you want. But before you do, try to examine the actual underlying causes of your boredom and what it is that makes you think the grass is greener elsewhere. Once you've nailed down the causes, maybe there is something you can do to become less bored and more productive at the profession you've already spent a serious amount of time, before throwing it all away to start again, only to ultimately reach the same frustrations. Most frustrations I find are not actually with the job itself, but the people that go with it. People are people everywhere and in every profession; none are perfect and every profession has a dark, not very fun, boring side.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
I used to work for a paycheck. I still do my job to support my family and lifestyle.
But I *work* for a non-profit that I love and enjoy (check the homepage). It's got all of the same pitfalls that my jobs have had (petty power struggles, empire builders, personality conflicts, budget BS, the works), but the overall mission and work environment are awesome. I watch mistakes get made at my job, and I get to *not* make those mistakes. I learn about something new that could move us forward as an organization? I've got a near consequence free environment to try it out.
And one of the best parts of it all....as a volunteer I can just walk away. When going out to the hangar and hanging around WW2 bombers just isn't fun, or I don't want to deal with some of the people....I don't. I exercise the luxuries that I just don't have at my job.
I've heard that several of the Apollo astronauts have problems with depression after their missions were over. They had become men with no mountain left to climb. They had focused their lives on a goal and, once they'd achieved it, they were left with a giant, empty "what next?"
Rather than going all 'Fight Club' and destroying what you've made of yourself in favor of becoming a self-actualized burger inversion specialist, why not try and create something greater. Use your skills somewhere that make you happy, even if you've got to log 40 hours of boredom to support those 10 hours of doing something interesting.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
I'm 30 now. Here's the experiences of people I know in IT, either friends or coworkers.
Friend 1: was the typical scary-smart yet laid back and lazy type in high school, didn't seem to have to work all that hard to get things done proper. Breezed through college, ended up not liking the working world so much. Some of his classmates went back for advanced degrees simply because they did not like the real world and wanted to put it off for a few more years. He's been drifting from job to job, never really satisfied with the work he's doing, having trouble getting fired up over anything. He became a Christian late in his high school career, had high hopes for doing IT work in the non-profits, became bitterly disillusioned when he found out there's just as much backstabbing and bullshit amongst Christians as secularists, only tinged with a whiff of hypocrisy. No idea whether he's going to find anything he likes or not and excel.
Coworker 1: Not really a computer geek, to him it's just a trade. Has no computer at home, has worked a variety of jobs but settled on twiddling with computers because it pays the bills. Haven't spoken to him in years, would not be surprised if he was still in the field, would not be surprised if he's moved on to something else by now.
Friend 2: Hardcore socially awkward computer geek in high school, became more mellow and evened out going through college. Computers were his primary hobby. After working for a number of years, he's gotten to the point where he can't even stand looking at one when he gets home from work. This has left him at a total loss because comptuers were what he lived and breathed. So he's been looking for new hobbies and things to keep him busy. He's no longer excited by technology, it's just a boring grind of a job.
Coworker 2: Was not a geek in school, got into computers as a trade after going into the family furniture business and realizing that busting his hump moving heavy shit was bullshit. So as a novice, he went for his A+ and MCSE and became quite proficient even though he never developed a love for the machine. After the chaos and destruction of the last company, he's decided to manage a sub shop instead. I know his registers will be computers so I'm laughing to myself about how he'll have to troubleshoot them. Also, given how flaky minimum wage employees are, I bet he'll yearn for the days of beating on the exchange server and cursing indian tech support.
Myself, I'm getting a bit burnt on the corporate treadmill. I've seen too many small businesses crash and burn to have any idealism about striking out on my own. I've seen too much fuck-n-chuck in the corporate environment to have any illusions about the permanence of W4 employment. I don't know what the options are. It's rather depressing. I like computers, I know I'm good at what I do, I just don't know how much of a future there will be for us. Every company I've worked at has confirmed the truism of the Demotivators poster "none of us are as dumb as all of us."
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Tell your wife to get a job and then you can go fishing.
Take some happy pills, like everybody else!
Technological fields generally degrade when the mainstream accepts more and more tech. The excitement and the value of the job depletes quickly. I love technology for the contact with the mathematics and the sciences, I have been lucky enough to work with people involved in other scientific endeavors that have let IT be rewarding for me. Alas the last 3 years I have been disillusioned with my job opportunities and my current position. So I decided to get my masters and teach. I want to do math from now until I croak. But that it is me. I don't think the disillusionment will go away anytime soon especially with the economic changes coming about.
I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said: "I drank what?" - Chris Knight (Val Kilmer)- Real Genius
The system of society, the game which we all are forced to play, is a game of sacrifice. The parents must sacrifice their happiness to protect their children in many cases.
If you are the lowest class, this is definately the case. How else are you going to afford for the private school education that your child will require? So you must sacrifice your happiness by working at the job you hate simply because this job allows your child to go to private school.
Because your child went to private school, now your child got into Yale, has an MBA from Harvard, and now has the opportunity to make millions of dollars, freeing your grand children from this cycle.
In this example it's worth it that you sacrificed your youth and happiness because now your grandchildren have a life that is so much better than yours that they can focus their entire life on figuring out how to be happy. They'll never have to worry about survival, they'll never have to worry about how to pay for private school for their kids.
The point is, in order to break the cycle of poverty you have to sacrifice your happiness. The reason most people are unable to break that cycle is because they think like you, believing that happiness is the most important.
This is why so many people who are born in ghettos die there, and their kids are thus doomed to a life just as bad if not worse. In my opinion, if you aren't going to try to sacrifice your happiness, you probably shouldn't be having kids, because you are going to have kids.
Consider what it must have taken for them to make a livelihood for themselves: turning wild land into productive agriculture.
When they were wed, she was fourteen, he was seventeen.
I cannot imagine any modern-day youth doing what they did. Our society has lost a very precious trait of self-reliance.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Take out a second mortgage and travel to the home of an ancient civilization and start digging. It is my dream and you're bound to find something priceless that will pay off your mortgage and propel you into a successful archeology career.
or... tell your wife to get a job.
After 7 years in IT I found myself in a real rut. I wasn't motivated to keep-up with new technology and was frustrated with the same old hassles. Over that time I took up a completely non-IT related hobby and that became my primary interest. It involved being active, outdoors, working with my hands, traveling. Somewhat serendipitously I got a job opportunity in a related industry. I figured that my passion for what I would be working on would more than make up for the large pay-cut. I was wrong.
First, don't underestimate your financial requirements or fall into the trap of the "I'll just live more simply and focus on what matters" rationalization. I'm not saying it can't work that way, just don't put the cart before the horse. I think that if I had taken 6 months to try to live on what I would be making before taking the actual pay-cut, I would never have done it.
Second, a job is a job. Every job has aggravating bosses, frustrating institutional inertia, annoying co-workers etc. If not those, they have equivalent hassles. Sooner or later you are likely to find yourself in the same boat, but with lower seniority, less experience and possibly less pay.
Our society and economy being what they are, chances are you are going to be in some sort of building looking at some sort of screen all day. You may as well do that and get paid for the knowledge and experience you have amassed.
After 2.5 years, I returned to IT and took another pay cut because of the lapse in experience. (Shrugs)
I suspect that there are specific issues that are at the root of your malaise. Stagnation at your current job? Latent interpersonal conflict? If I were you I would take a good hard look at whether it is IT you are disillusioned with, or just the environment you are in.
Not that I don't think you should jump ship if the right opportunity comes up. Just make sure that you are jumping to the right place for the right reasons.
I am more or less in the same boat, not that I dont like IT anymore or that work is boring... I just would like to be a business owner rather than being an employee. I am having starting trouble, and I am trying to educate and prepare myself (financially) to get to where I want to go. You get one chance that lasts on an average 77.5years, make some good use of it.
1) If you currently working with Linux (unless your doing dev work) and things are repetitive, then you don't have enough scripts -- quite simply, more scripts.
2) Again if you do dev work (or are interested in it) find some area of computing you're interested in, and take up an OSS project within it, you'll likely find some comfort in it via it's community and having the likely ever changing activity as a hobby.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
You're so full of hate. Sorry for you. Did you know Hans personally ? I did. He's very intelligent, although sometimes emotional. He's not a murderer, however.
Anytime I find a job tedious and repetitive I write a program to do it. Hope that helps!
I worked in IT for 10 years and finally reached the point where enough was enough. It was a rewarding career but after 10 years I had been there and done that enough times that it had lost its appeal and the annoying parts were really beginning to eat away at me.
I decided to reinvent myself and sat down and got in touch with what I really felt joy about doing. For me it was counseling and working with people. I went with that and its been a bit of a struggle over the last year but it was worth it because I am much happier and feel much more free and I think happiness is far more important than money. When you come to the end of this life they money will be meaningless and how happy a life you've lead will be all that matters.
However you don't need to let go of decent money depending on what you want to do. I started doing counseling work and also doing private IT consulting on the side to pay the bills while I built my counseling practice.
I think if you allow yourself to get in touch with what you find joy in and have the courage to follow that things will work out and you will find greater happiness which will not only benefit you but also everyone around you.
peace
The person who asked Slashdot said they had a wife and kids. Read the original post.
Secondly, YOUR family is YOUR kids. Your parents family is YOU. But you cannot claim to have a family of your own until you create that family yourself, it's not something you can inherit and call it yours.
Now, that being said, not all concepts of family are biological, but or sake of this discussion, thats how I defined family. You can have a family built up of friends if you choose.
But the truth is, if you think that sacrificing for family is a hellish existence, then you are better off not having kids unless you want to lose the freedom which you currently value. You cannot have the freedom you value and have kids, that much is a given.
Having kids truly is the end of life as you know it. And if you want to call it a hellish existence, then for you having kids would be the beginning of the hellish existence and this is why birth control is so important. And believe me, I don't blame you, I don't want kids right now either,
but I do want kids someday because I know my parents wont live forever, and I have to be loved by SOMEBODY.
Voice of experience-
Have been working in IT as a telecom/networking specialist for 15 years and am at the same place in my life but have never made more money than I am making now or have had it as easy.
Previous to this (here comes the real world) I worked in/as- electronic sales, professional musician, field service systems technician, construction worker (framing, sheetrock, painting, electrical), auto/truck mechanic.
I can tell you this, BLUE COLLAR SUCKS IF YOU WORK FOR SOMEONE.
They will work you to death in order to make money from your labor of which makes them wealthy as you age and burn out. If you work for yourself although it is more fulfilling you need to work longer and harder and must have a workable plan to replicate yourself and grow it to where you can just manage, not labor
Having transitioned from Blue to White collar, the latter although boring, pays better, is less slavish and harmful health wise, I sitll have energy to work as a semi-pro musician with my gigging band at night, rehab homes and spend time with the family in a meaningful way
So my advice, find something other than work to fill your cup and any career change must be though thru and before you leap, sample it first.
If you are one of these people who believe in serving society at the expense of your wife and childrens future, then you doom your children into a poverty cycle.
This is the problem, the servants of society have no security at all for themselves or their kids. Yet they feel good inside knowing they are serving society.
What you are doing is dangerous. You have a lot of integrity for doing it, but I think you are serving a society that doesn't give a shit about you, your family, etc and your energy would be better focused if you served only your family and yourself and stopped worrying about society.
But I'm not you, so you can disregard my opinions on this. I'm the cynical one and you're the idealist.
No offense to the person posing the question, but this is called "having a job" or "having responsibilities". It's not always fun. It's sometimes extremely tedious. But there are times when something new finally comes along that sparks your interest again. The key is fighting your way through the tough times to get to the good times. It's the same with marriage. Sometimes it sucks and you're in the doghouse. But sometimes SHE sucks and you're not. \o/
I was in nearly exactly your shoes. Fourteen years of IT work for some very large and reputable companies. Obviously near a large city.
I started my own company to do IT consulting, moved to a farm in a very rural state, worked from home and used the consulting fees and products I sell to buy a farm. I have been transitioning out of IT over the past five years, and am down to about three years before I can sell the company I started, throw every damn computer I own away, and farm (vegetables and beekeeping) full time.
I have a wife and kids, also, and it was key for us to move away from the big city early . . . so my kids had a sane childhood.
It's drastic, but I love every day I wake up. I find it harder and harder to sit in front of the keyboard instead of being outside.
In fact, this is one of the odd days I actually look at slashdot . . . I have weened myself from most on-line rags already.
Happy in pig-crap.
I was forced into this decision about four and a half years ago when the ASIC development industry went to India. After a nine month involuntary 'vacation' I sucked it up and went into the trades (electrical and high-efficiency heating repair). I took a 75% pay cut for the first year or two and enjoyed the work for a while. And still do, just not quite at much as the learning curve has flattened. But as others have said, there's a lot to the office job. Working in a hot, sweaty, fiberglass insulation-filled crawlspace in July ain't super-great either. But my job can't be outsourced, either. And I get to bill at engineering contractor rates. :)
:) That's why you work - to have fun *outside* of the office.
But look at hobbies. Do things outside of work that have *nothing* to do with work. Don't touch a computer when you get home. I work on photography and I mountain bike. A lot. Your job is your job and if it pays well, especially right now, I'd say just stick with it and find within it some interesting facets to follow. And when you get home take the pent-up energy you want to spend on a more interesting job and pour it into hobbies. It's much more rewarding and since it's not work, you won't get sick of it. I thought about going into photography but I enjoy it too much. Doing it daily to put food on the table (and I'm single with no dependents) just wrecked the idea of doing it for a living.
So think long and hard about moving jobs. Ultimately work is going to be work. Nobody ever said it has to be fun.
If you don't like
...
...
...
...
What you got
Why don't you change it
If your world is all screwed up
Rearrange it
Raise a little Hell
If you don't like what you see
Why don't you fight it
If you know there's something wrong
Why don't you right it
Raise a little Hell
In the end it comes down to your thinking
And there's really nobody to blame
When it feels like your ship is sinking
And you're too tired to play the game
Nobody's going to help you
You've just got to stand up alone
And dig in your heels
And see how it feels
To raise a little Hell of your own
Raise a little Hell
If you don't like
What you got
Why don't you change it
If your world is all screwed up
Rearrange it
Raise a little Hell
http://www.trooper.ca/default.php?cat=lyrics&subcat=56
I've been playing poker as a hobby for several years and recently at work I had a time when I was pretty unhappy. I started as a PC desk jockey->server guy->scripter->application guy->dba->manager->? over 10 years. So I too felt that I had sort of done it all and was thinking of going pro poker. I had a long talk with my wife (and we have a daughter) and a full time poker pro I'm friends with and it made me realize that it is also another job with all it's ++ and --. But I wanted to put some real effort into this and started playing every weekend (basically part time job) and all of a sudden it was a job and I while I would be playing poker I actually started to think, "I wish I was back at work." We then had some personal changes at work and all of a sudden, work was great!
It turned out that my current work environment had changed and that's what was dragging me down. With the new personal and actually getting to play with the 'greener grass' at the poker table I was reinvigorated and excited about computers once again. Just like everybody else here is saying, you need some kind of break and not just a 1 week vacation. Get really serious about another hobby, and either: end up making that your job, or come around and get back to your old job.
Believe me, having a family makes it tough. But you've gotta try some things so you'll be happy (and in turn the family is happy) with minimal risk to them. Everyone gets tired of being on the same scene after a while. Heck, I'm sure porn stars hate going to work after a while.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise - William Shakespeare
I've done the same, since the mid-80s.
Programming, systems management, network management, DP management, training, support, even related areas like export control and security.
Yes, it becomes boring after a while. You can change jobs, which can help. For a while.
Changing careers? This means going back to school. For a long time. And no matter what, you are likely to earn much less than you do now. In a beginner's job. They are known to be less than exciting. Ever been to the army? It sounds exciting in the ads. But watching grass grow is more fun.
Now... Running your own business?
Possible. But difficult. Stupid idea if you are untrained. Someone who can live with less money than you and who is highly motivated already does whatever comes to mind - and has been doing it for ten years. (Septic tank cleaner? Be serious...) There are thousands of people sick and tired of their life who turn to gastronomy. They buy a place from the people who failed at it before. Then, they fail again.
I'd recommend to train up, then work in that area. Maybe computer forensics, carrier-grade networking, anything obscure is fine, as long as it offers employment and does not involve wrting a file system named after you.
My Job's have been all over the map, but I've done exactly what the original poster was asking about.
:)
I used to be a systems engineer, working primarily as a contractor. Made good money, liked it when I started. But the job became a grind. When a big contract ended, I just couldn't motivate myself to find more work (retrospectively: depressed) and lived off what was in my bank account for a while. I decided I would go to the mountains and take a McJob for the winter, just as sort of a "retreat". That McJob ended up being in a Ski Shop (I hadn't even been on skis in years at this point).
After a winter of about 50 days of skiing, and countless good times, spring came around. My original plan involved taking a contract out East and doing the computer thing in a new place. But, as I looked back on how much more I had enjoyed the last six months of my life, versus practically any period before it, I just couldn't leave.
Though I eventually changed towns (repeatedly), I've not really left the mountains since that winter. That was eight winters ago. I am now a certified helicopter ski guide, ski instructor, avalanche technician...have worked as head ski tech in one of the most well reputed shops on the continent...driven snowcat...you get the idea.
Still, around this time of year, I get a bit of a yearning for some more stability. I've decided to wade back into computers, at least up to my knees. I'm updating and adding to my skills (currently teaching myself Python) since though I was never the cream of the crop, even so they've grown rusty nonetheless.
I don't know where I'm going with this...I'll just say that if you're feeling listless, change something up. With good times and bad, I've lived things most people will never experience. None of that would have happened if I had just kept sticking it out in IT (though I'd be in far better financial shape).
"You can't win. You can't break even. You can't quit." -A. Ginsberg
A career in Real Estate?
Have you considered "doing what you love" as a part time job? Start small, see if you can grow your passion into a money-maker.
There would be a couple of advantages to this:
You can experiment with the new career idea while maintaining the IT career as a saftey net.
Making the thing you love a job means that you make the thing you love a job. Some of the greatest pleasures we have are precious because they come in small doses. Turning your passion into a responsibility may rob you of the joy it brings now.
Either way, good luck with the decision.
- Geometric Visions: The Rough Draft
"The Rough Draft" because I always meant to re-record it after composing some new material. That should happen this summer.Request your free CD of my piano music.
Ever hear of an entry level DBA? hopefully not because they don't exist, if you are really entry level then you really arent a DBA. You have to have done many other seemingly unrelated things before you end up being one. Most fellow DBAs I know didn't become one on purpose, it just sort of happened to them.
So my reccomendation is to aim in that direction, and not just a sys-ad dba but a true Renaissanse dba who deals with everything from data mining, coding sql for front end app developers to resource forcasting.
I can honestly say its a job you never get bored of because its never even remotely the same from one day to the next.
Part of the problem is that IT has never matured into a "decent" job category within corporate organizations.
People in other areas with less (continous) education, less overtime, less stress can make at least as much or more money and they are higher on the corporate org. chart than IT. Senior managers, partners at "generic" companies don't even have a decent understanding about the complexity and importance of IT in their own organizations. They don't know and they don't want to know anything about it they just want it to work. A corporate lawyer, director of finance, etc. is much more "respected" and have a much cleaner career progress path within an organization than people in IT - unless you work for a technology company. IT is still seen as a field which can probably be done with teenager geek kids, they do it for the love of it, so they don't care as much about money, formal titles as "established professionals". Basically, IT still does not have the "established professional" status, in corporate mindset it's a low level service for changhing toners, moving workstations, etc. It's considered to be less "intellectual" profession than others with similar amount of training, time investment. IT professionals are also exploited by IT companies, which consider the endless, expiring certifications as a good source of revenue. Their products are still heavily used when their certifications are "retired". Interestingly enough, their new products are usually based on the very same principles, maybe with some added new features, which maybe 5% different in "principles". IT is frustrating, although it's one of the fields which requires the most time to keep up with an ever broadening demand for "expected competencies", as it has still has physical aspects it is not considered the same way as accounting, law, business, sales, etc. All these are reflected in corporate enumeration and salaries. IT really is the "bastad kid" of the corporate organization, it exists, but nobody is proud of it in the family.
P.S.: Stop wasting our time with comparing IT to agricultural, mining, etc. jobs. Compare it with jobs, which require similar amount of studiyng, intellectual effort, invested time and money.
I'm not saying that it's the sole measure of success, but it's one of the most important measures of success. A father is a provider as well as a mentor.
And the cost of raising children is not going down, it's going up, so there is reason to think that during a recession with a falling dollar and rise in the cost of oil, along with climate change, that perhaps that drop in income could make a HUGE impact on the life of the children.
Sometimes a small drop in income can make the difference between the children going to private school and getting into an ivy league university, and going to public school and getting an overall shitty education leading to community college (not that anything is wrong with the community college route since thats the route I took.)
Money is becoming more important every day due to climate change and the reduction of opportunity.
1. Climate change increases the cost of providing physical security for your children. The cost of climate change could include increased health care costs for your children due to environmental pollution (lead in toys, asthma etc)
2. The cost of creating opportunity for your children is increasing, no longer is it enough for your child to just graduate from highschool to get an opportunity to live like your parents did, now your child has to graduate with a masters degree just to live the sorta life we expect and want them to live.
There is just no way to give your children a quality life on the cheap in a capitalist country like America. This is not Sweden.
In my (admittedly fewer than some) years of experience, the reality is that your job will always be your job. Much like life, it will not ever be entirely made of sunshine and roses, and there are many points in any career where you are tired, disillusioned, and generally sick of your job. Maybe I'm just not an optimist, but this is a lot of what life entails. A lot of people go out on their own and start their own business at this point, which is not a bad idea, it buys you a great deal of freedom. However, with that freedom, you also have a completely new set of headaches, and after the novelty wears off, running your own business ends up becoming a chore as well.
I write code for a living. I also write code for a hobby. It might seem odd that I can come to loathe some days of programming for work, only to get off work and come home and program some more, but that's just how it is. With your career, you aren't free to pursue whatever you please; in the end, the bottom line is that the company needs to make money to pay its employees and function, and that bottom line generally dictates what you get to do. In your free time, you get to do whatever happens to suit you at the time. You have no deadlines, no requirements, just absolute freedom to explore.
No matter what you choose to do, the fact that your activities for your job are dictated by the need to make money and survive will always eventually become a burden. The best thing to do is find something that gives you the kind of freedom you need and is something you can tolerate doing even when you don't want to, and stick with that. This way you can have the freedom you need while understanding that some things in life are necessary evils. Short of becoming filthy rich, there's no quick and easy way to make all of your time your own. If you're really that desperate to get out of it entirely, save as much money you can, pay off your debts, and retire as early as possible.
I usually don't post but I too have had a similar mid-career crisis so here's my $0.02 Canadian (it's worth more).
After 17 years I got bored. Not just dis-interested mind you, mind-numbingly bored. Everywhere I looked it was more of the same. Windows? Click-click what-ever. Unix? IBM and Sun certified. Linux? Since kernel 0.99.7. Coding? Pick your language, tell me what you want and go away.
After a few months of this, I figured out that, for me, it was a two-fold answer.
1. Quit making sysadm my hobby AND my job. Most of us do this to "keep up the chops" but it just got to be too much. I was quite the musician in college and picked that back up as a hobby. The computer career brought me to Nashville and I REALLY wanted to go back to music full-time but there's no way that I can make this kind of money in that industry. But, I found that this allowed me to use the machines that I had built and my system skills in a whole new way. Most importantly, it was no longer all about the machine.
2. Find what it is about IT that I liked and focus my attention there. I saw that the guys that were coming out of school hadn't been properly trained in the low-level functioning of the machine. Interrupt handling was defined by one applicant as dealing with rude people (he didn't get the job). So, I saw a niche in performance tuning and started digging in. Now, I oversee installation and tuning for all architectures and databases for the various coding projects that we have going on. Keeping on top of the various OS's and languages keeps me fresh and being brought up in IT instead of Development, I have a skillset and understanding that lends itself well to making their code run fast.
I do still manage apache, sendmail, bind etc. but they are such a small subset of what I do now that I don't get bogged down by what has become mundane.
In short, find a new way to do what you do and don't do so much of it. Also realize that you have probably forgotten to take your medication and it will soon pass.
Peace of mind isn't at all superficial to technical work, it's the whole thing.
Man, this could have been my story. IT for 15 years, now (thankfully) out of the cube and doing things I want to do (teaching, running my own business, etc.). You know what got me out of the rut? Thinking about what I wanted in my obituary when I died:
Version A: Pongo dedicated 15 years of his life to the Big Corporation, helping them grow into the mammoth company they are now, lining CEO/CTO/CIO pockets with vast riches, and keeping the shareholders quite happy with ever-increasing dividends.
Version B: After a 15-year stint with the Big Corporation, Pongo dedicated his life to educating our future generations of young minds, empowering these students to pursue their dreams in math and science and to boldly take on new challenges and risks to ultimately better themselves and society.
Five years ago, had I been hit by a truck, Version A would have been in my obit. Thankfully, Version B will probably be the gist of my obit were I to be run over tomorrow (and I hope that doesn't happen, too much to do!).
BTW, in case you think you're the only one who hasn't figured out what they want to do when they grow up, these are some of the things I've done in past jobs:
Retail sales
Petroleum engineer/oilfield roustabout/lease operator
Safety engineer
Customs inspector
Pilot
Air traffic controller
IT consultant/software engineer/analyst
College instructor
High school teacher
Independent IT consultant
Automotive performance shop owner
The biggest thing you need to think about at the moment is health insurance. Let *no one* talk you out of making any decision that would affect your ability to cover you and your family. While it's possible to procure individual insurance, it's rather difficult and the premiums are prohibitively expensive. I have quit many "career" jobs in my lifetime, and the hardest part about leaving has *always* been continuation of health insurance benefits.
But in the end, your decision should be based upon the fact that you have X number of years left on this earth, so why waste them on something that doesn't interest you? I agree with you: IT is highly repetitive and quite boring, and it doesn't matter how much lipstick you put on the pig. I've done everything from algorithm development on high-resolution imaging satellites to having written a domain name registration system to support a catalog of 700,000 domain names, and everything in between. And you know what? Every damn pig looked the same.
Good luck...and remember, taking that first big step of turning in your resignation letter is a giant leap over the void. Make sure plans B, C, and D are in place before you take that step.
I can sort of relate to some of the feelings you've had. I generally really enjoy my job and have often thought that if I were to make a list of the things I'd like to do in my career, then my current role ticks most of the boxes. But I found that for the first couple of months this year I was bored and couldn't wait to leave.
I got married last September so perhaps my personal life was just a lot more interesting than my work life, but I was a bit concerned that I might spend the next 35 years watching the clock.
And then I took a week off. Around the same time, a long overdue and troubled software release was finally completed and I returned to work refreshed and with a renewed enthusiasm.
Remember to take a break. Go and do something away from computers, enjoy your family time. It might be a breath of fresh air.
It sounds like you only think about computer problems and are sick of being in the same box but want to apply your skills elsewhere.
There's a huge need in the field of computational sciences. You can think about things from database structuring, meta data storage, statical analysis, automation and robotics, networking and distribution of data. All of this is constantly changing, depending on the amount of data being acquired and new technological capabilities, ensuring job security. In the meanwhile you can think about even cooler things, like how to EFFICIENTLY calculate real world interactions biased on physical descriptors; what those descriptors should be; how to design experiments to test the models; even run your own bench top experiments. There's an endless pool of complex, interesting and real-world problems to solve.
The long and shot of it is, computers are boring, but what you can do with them isn't....
Take a sabbatical. It may not work for everyone, but after 6-7 years of the rat race (doing research and IT in university environment, and teaching) my family and I "chucked it in" and went entry level dairy farming for a year. The pay was low and the hours long, but now I can build, weld, fence, birth and raise calves, drive a tractor, anything I like really. We didn't get ahead financially but we didn't lose out either (accomodation and some benefits like meat and milk are there to be bargained for, so you are still protecting and providing for your family). My kids got to see and do some amazing things we had never been able to show them in the city, and I emptied my brain of 10 years of education and mindless IT shit. I even got a book published (albeit a very small one). Now I am back in the rat race and my wife is back to teaching but we are getting paid about double what we were before and, having gone feral for a year, we actually appreciate certain aspects of the jobs we are now doing better than before. Do something different - drastically different. Job specialisation is for insects.
Is making a complete career change at this point a bad idea?"
In the US, I'm not sure about other countries, the average person changes their career a few tymes. About.com has a page on "Ten Myths About Choosing a Career". More about changing careers from About.com can be found at Career Choice or Change.
FalconShould there be a Law?
"i once felt bad because i had no shoes until i met a man who had no feet" - author unknown
just think, things could be worse...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Under capitalism, society does not care whether or not happiness is increasing, thats why we keep working 8 hour days even though we don't have to work 8 hours a day. Thats why 2 parents work 8 hour days even though we don't have to work so hard.
Why do we work so hard, if it's just about being happy, why don't we all work 4 hours a day and get paid enough to provide for our children?
I'll tell you why, because society does not care about human feelings, and neither does capitalism, and while you can say you disagree with what I'm saying, the truth is simple
As long as we are a capitlaist country, everything I said in my post will remain true.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
With an attitude like that, your significant other will have left you, taken half your money and you won't be able to retire.
To capitalism and to American society, a father is just a paycheck. To the government the father is just a paycheck to be taxed and the father is represented by a social security number.
You act as if we live in a fair society where everyone gets the perfect job, which allows them to do what they love while making bundles of money.
The cold raw truth of the matter is, the world is nothing like that and has NEVER been like that. Our parents worked in factories, and before that there were slaves in this country. So what the hell are you talking about?
May be too late for you, unless you live in a compound in Texas, but I married a lawyer. She supports me, so now I'm not the one who has to worry about it. I still do software development/code monkeying, but when I get bored of it (which is rapidly approaching) I won't have to worry that teaching, or writing, or whatever else I think of doing isn't going to support my family, because that's what my wife does. :P
and judging from the popularity of this thread and the number of people identifying with the jobless syndrome, I predict that this is going to be a major news-story in the next couple of days on BBC or CNN.. Just you wait and see. Cheers, ND
If you really believe this is how society should be.
Should the work day be reduced from 8 hours to 4? Should the hours per week be reduced from 40 hours to 20?
So far the trend you older people are making for my 20 something generation, is that you are giving us longer working hours, harder more sophisticated work, a longer work week, and to top it all off our quality of life is even lower than what you and your parents had because in our generations we barely will get to see our kids at all because of the long hours and both parents always working.
And our kids wont have much time to play either because they have to go to school on the weekends and during the summer to compete with those Asian kids.
IT is just plain and simple a boring repetitive job. People this it's exciting because it's relatively new. Since it's very similar to software development, and even involves programming sometimes, people assume it is as exciting and interesting as software development. It's not. It's just making sure other people's computers and networks continue to work so that they can do interesting work without having to worry about it.
It doesn't matter if you make $150,000 a year if you aren't happy you aren't happy.
/. but then that's just my opinion.
If you are happy washing dishes for $7 an hour if that's really what you want to do with your life, then you do it.
It boils down to just that, it is your life. If you aren't happy at work you won't be happy at home, your home life will suffer your family will suffer. I dare say more than if you earned less per year because you chose to go into a different career field.
I think you'd be better off discussing this with your wife rather than us here at
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Maybe a change of scenery is in order, like working for a non-profit of a company that does something you believe in. Or take some forensic classes and work with the FBI or police solving cybercrime. Our lives need to have meaning at some point, but you may not have to completely drop IT in order to find yours.
All my money went to Nigeria and all I got was this lousy sig. . .
The best thing you can do right now is talk to your wife about how you feel. While others suggest that your only concern should be the well-being of your family, you should evaluate that well-being by including factors in addition to your finances. Clearly, if you don't have the resources to maintain your lifestyle when you switch jobs, then that's a problem, but if you're bored and unhappy at work, how is that influencing your life at home? Is that happiness influencing how good a father you are and how you interact with your child and wife? If changing jobs won't leave you destitute, and it would promote a healthier and more satisfying home life, then that is more than worth a cut in pay. A healthy family isn't necessarily a rich family.
I have been talking more to friends and family about this type of situation. What really hit it home was when my company upgraded and all the years of scripting and programming were gone. Obsolete. I realzied that what I do here doesn't really have much lasting value. I started messing with work working. Building a few things here and there. Now I am finishing my basement and loving the work.
I have decided to keep my 'job' to help my pay for what I enjoy: vacations with family and hobbies.
I don't check e-mail much at all at home. I am usually behind a new power tool or out playing with the kids and dogs. I don't carry a pager when I am off-call like some of my co-workers.
My goal is to find a few more hobbies that I can really sink my teeth into. Astronomy is one of them and with the help my my oldest daughter it is taking off. She asked for a 'real' telescope for Christmas. I obliged and now we spend quality time outside gazing up at the stars.
My legacy will now be my kids and not my code.
Best of luck on your adventure.
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
Do what you love. In the end it is all that matters.
But pr0n don't pay if you are male
Sure it does, start your own paid porn site. Actually about 10 years ago I read an article in an internet magazine about how Asia Carrera taught herself how to program so she could start her own porn website, I think it said she made a lot more from the website than she did acting.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Have any of you been through this kind of career 'mid-life crisis?'
I don't know if it's a mid-life crisis, it could be good old fashioned burn out. I left a well paying IT job to strike out on my own. It's not easy and it's not for everyone, especially if you have kids.
There's never a good time from the standpoint of the economy. If you let that stop you, you'll never get anything going. Something else to consider, of people who are millionaires, only 25% of them got there by working for a salary. If you want to get rich, to build something, that means starting your own gig or partnering up with a small group. With another reminder that it's harder than you can possibly imagine.
Consider also that you may not need to quit. Explore taking an extended leave of absence. A month or two to de-stress, turn your alarm clock off and read the paper. Take the summer off and spend it with your kid, if your employer will allow you to do it. Three months is long enough to cure burn out. You'll come back refreshed and recharged.
I've made similar decisions in the past, my friends thought I was crazy and the timing was always bad for some reason. But it always worked out...so far anyway. But it's not without scary moments. There will be tense times. I haven't always ended up making more money, but did more often than not. And enjoying life a lot more even if I wasn't making more.
Lately I've been considering getting my welding certificate and just doing something different for a while. Hard, dirty work doesn't bother me and it's interesting to build things.
Don't let fear or the nay sayers keep you trapped in a miserable job. Most of the people telling you not to do it are stuck in a cubicle getting shit on in a million little ways by a company that couldn't care less whether they showed up the next day or not. Being an entrepreneur isn't easy but a bad day working for yourself is better than the best day as a lackey employee.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Personally, I haven't the same level of experience in the IT realm as you. I started and finished my IT education almost half a decade after high school. I might have another half decade in the field.
;)
I just moved cities to raise a family and starting over is hard despite my experience. I have questioned my position in this industry, like you. My answer was to sign up for some college courses in the evenings. I will be taking web design which is something that has always interested me as a hobby.
As for starting into a new field as a job, I am unlikely to do so. Bills and responsibility of parenting is too much to allow me to tank my income. Instead I plan to make my new learning experience into a side job and perhaps eventually a full time business.
I suggest finding a hobby that can earn you money on the side. Keep your salary and explore new avenues without rocking the boat. If it becomes interesting enough or profitable, then you can choose to follow an alternate path.
And thats Mr. Play-It-Safe's guide to mid-life career crisis management!
"It's amazing what velocity can do when human beings are in season" -Matthew Good
I don't know. Having Dad be a miserable prick all the time isn't good for the kids either. Life is about balance. Too much of anything is a problem.
As for the poster - haven't you ever heard of a hobby? Suck it up, make the good money, do your job. Then come home and have a hobby.
Me? I'm a programmer. For a hobby I'm a metalworker. It's as far from programming as you can get. Heat metal - smash it with a hammer. Make beautiful things. Very therapeutic. Come home from work, have dinner, then every so often wander out into the garage and fire up the forge.
And it does my family worlds of good too, because I'm cheerful pretty much all of the time.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
You must be the first to feel like that.
I've always felt amazed that the folks I worked for were actually profitable given their extremely poor job at execution. I've always wanted to try things my way. Before my 15 years on IT I was a field engineer working from home with much autonomy. In these down times, (personal and global), build a plan for success. I'm spending on personal education with plans to reap some benefit when the market has a uptick. Make your own plans for success. But, don't quit your job until the market matches your improved skillset. I sending myself, on my vacation time, and my dollars, to RedHat training. I'm planning to prepare for what I want - luck is when opportunity meets preparedness.
..it's cause we all suspect our jobs boil down to babysitting. Either you are babysitting users, servers, networks, whatever...we're still just babysitting.
Oh, and our career paths depend on a constant supply of electricity, security, and financial stability....almost none of which we actually control (or really understand).
You should invest in a new US oil refinery so we can have cheaper gas!!!
Yeah because kids in a household with with constant arguments, unhappiness, bickering, yelling and threats of divorce grow up to be such mentally stable people. That's not even counting what sort of downright horrid role model you must be for them, god knows what a kid who thinks life is nothing but a perpetual string of misery will do.
Humans are human, we are not machines and assuming you are a machine generally ends very badly for everyone involved.
My advice is to try concentrating on one area and doing the best job you can at it. This may be contrary to a lot of advice but I think that advice is aimed at least experienced people who are still looking for their niche. It looks like you just haven't found your niche yet or haven't concentrated on it.
/., blogs and so forth takes up a lot of time. Add to that the time you spend thinking about all these new technology changes and other issues. It can be a massive waste of time.
/. or other news sites weeks or months later. So it isn't like you'll loose complete touch. Just with all the cruft that perhaps doesn't matter so much to you now that you have a family and other responsibilities.
The benefits of concentrating in one area is that you can spend less time keeping up to date with the other areas. Reading news sites,
It is scary letting go to "everything" but it can be done. The odd thing is that you'll also find that many items you come across in your day to day work in your niche will show up on
One final benefit of concentrating is that it often leads to a clear career path, increased pay and responsibility. My message is basically: "a little bit of everything can be great early in a career but eventually it often makes sense to focus."
Every time I get bored, I ask for something new an more money. If I don't get it, I find a new employer.
Get new skills, add more value, eat better, get your ass to the gym (if applicable), demand a better life, and you'll be surprised how much better it can get.
Also when you said: The moment you have kids, all your hopes, your dreams, you can throw all of it in the trash. Once you have those kids your purpose in life is those kids and nothing else matters besides those kids. You made me think that having kids is little different to you than slavery. If that's the case, you'd have to be quite crazy, IMO, to ever want kids. I'm not going to throw my own wants and needs into the wind for anyone, not even my family. If I'm not happy with my life, then what's the point of living it?
I think he meant "rock guitar", dude...
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
If your parents were musicians, following their dream, and as a result they become drug addicts,
Now they are raising you in a ghetto with your 3 brothers. And they use drugs and are musicians because this is what makes them happy, even though they aren't ever going to get a record deal.
And now one of your brothers drops out of school and starts selling drugs because he believes his situation in life is completely hopeless. And maybe he gets killed selling drugs, now you lost a brother, and say your dad overdoses on drugs so now you lost your dad, and now you have two brothers who want to follow their dreams and make music like their mom and dad.
This is the life you want for your offspring?
I'd rather not have kids at all than give them that life.
In ten years, 35 won't seem bad at all...
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
It's impossible to give someone good advice without knowing them well, but I will offer what little wisdom I've discovered.
I have been through a similar phase. What I discovered is that focusing on my career as a way of defining my life was the problem. In my case the problem was more of a spiritual void which needed to be filled. Once I began satisfying that need, things improved considerably, even with my career.
I'm not saying you have to "get religion" necessarily, I'm just suggesting that perhaps a career change is not what you really need.
Proverbs 21:19
I'm there, worked in IT for ages. Now it's just not what it used to be. One thing I am doing is creating my start-up, not sure if it's what your looking for, but it sure beats they daily grind and you get to plan it out.
So now I try to keep hobbies and jobs in clear perspective. My hobbies are things I do outside of my job that I really enjoy, and (most of the time) things that make me no money. Looking forward to the hobby makes the job workable.
If it's possible, you might consider pursuing your new interest part-time while sticking with your current job, before making a hard switch. You do have a responsibility to your family and yourself.
Good luck!
I too have worked for about 13 years in the IT industry, doing everything from Tech Support, to System Administration, to Software Testing, now to Lab Management and Network Engineering. I have worked for a number of large software and hardware companies, to remain anonymous, and I too believe I understand what you are explaining.
In the beginning, computers were a hobby for me. I feel I was lucky enough to grow up in a household where my parents raised me on early person computers. Eventually that hobby became a career, but I have always had hobbies outside of Corporate IT-land that I found to be just as rewarding. As time went on, and the industry has become even more corporatized than it was before, I keep falling back to a specific hobby that I have kept up with:
Music
I have always enjoyed playing, recording, composing, producing.. music. My skillset in IT has even helped me in a modern age of digital recording. At one point I quit my job for (insert-large-company-name-here) and went back to college and chased down Audio Engineering and Hybrid Music Technology. After I finished school, I went back to Corporate IT-land work.. for now.
I always have my hobby that utilizes what i feel to be a creative side. This, personally, is very satisfying to me. If/When I do go to make a career change, it will most likely be in this area.. maybe something along the lines of working in Television, film, music; doing audio production.
The point is, maybe you have another interest or hobby? Maybe it is even a passion? Whatever it is, there are most likely various opportunities out there, and no matter what area it may be.. your work with computers and IT will most likely only help make that other interest or passion (more) feasible.
IMHO, responses such as "feel lucky for what you do have" and "find a career that is selling in this economy right now" will not change your perspective on your current circumstances. If you are not fullfilled in some way, no amount of criticism is going to change that. I say, find your passion(s), and figure out how to utilize your current skillset to leverage that passion.
If you aren't involved in your kids life, don't be surprised if your kids turn to organized crime, or gangs.
It's parents who think like you who are part of the problem, not being involved enough is why we have so much crime.
I'm in EXACTLY the same boat...except without the wife & kids. But I need to be able to continue supporting myself, and contribute to my (non-traditional) household.
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. -- Ambrose Bierce
I can't seem to break into the IT industry.
God spoke to me.
After 15 years in IT, I quit (actually, not by choice. The dot-com meltdown of 2000 left me unemployed.) I couldn't find another job either, and to be honest, I didn't really want to. I wasn't happy and I was ready to move on. So, I started a toy company. You can see some of it at http://www.rlt.com/
Now that the waves of destruction from the internet big boom have subsided, would I go back to IT? No way! I'm a toymaker now and loving it. So do my kids, and we have a LOT more fun together this way that I ever could as an IT professional.
As I've said before, programmers and sysadmins have some incredible advantages over most MBAs. You have LOGIC. You are CREATIVE. You have a propensity for PROBLEM SOLVING. You can think through and visualize a plan of action from beginning to end. You can change course and re-program the system when requirements change. You know that very few, if any, projects are ever really finished. You're a hacker who knows how to shoot from the hip to get a job done on deadline, even if it isn't "elegant". You know that "Done" usually only means "it works at the moment and when it breaks, we'll fix it".
Guess what, these qualities plus a willingness to try and fail then try again (kind of like compiling) are what make entrepreneurs successful. Another advantage you have is that you won't have to hire some expensive tech guy to do your programming/sysadmin/DBA stuff for you.
You can do it. Just remember- there are a million reasons why you'll fail, and everyone will be happy to remind you of them constantly. But there's only one reason why you will succede- because you make it happen. So, ignore the naysayers and the critics, trust your instincts and go start a business.
My neighbor bought some freezers and started making block ice. He takes most of the winter off, but in the summer time he makes more money than I ever did as a programmer! Just by making ICE!
I know someone else who quit a VP position at a tech company, to print t-shirts. Raking it in, having a great time.
Yet another friend opened a restaurant- but not wanting to eat into his family time, he's only open for breakfast and lunch. He closes at 3:00 every day to pick his kids up from school. If it's your business, you can make your own rules.
I have a cousin who dropped out of school and made a fortune with a tune-up and oil change shop (actually a small chain of them - opened one at a time over several years) Now he travels and goes fishing most of the time.
Don't be scared, be bold. Love your kids, and remember- whatever you do, it will also be an education to them. They'll learn how to deal with hard times as they watch you struggle through them, and conquer them. They'll learn how to relish the good times as you reap the rewards of your efforts. Just don't forget to include them, and don't underestimate them.
Help fed my family and teach your kids some physics at the same time - http://www.catapultkits.com/
and realize that some things are of far greater value.
While job satisfaction is something we should always strive for we seem to have a generation who doesn't see a reason to sacrifice, for however long, to meet truer and more important goals.
Sorry, family comes first. You provide for them then you provide for yourself.
So basically I saw "suck it up" "quit whining" etc... and I think its valid, sorry but IT is easy street. If you don't enjoy your job then look elsewhere but make sure the important stuff is taken care of. Whining about your job on a message board is just asking for it. He should already be looking, have an up to date resume, and going to work doing the best job he can so that there is no threat to his ability to provide for family.
We aren't all handed life on a silver platter but it says a lot about us on what we consider important. I think doing a good job is important but when it comes down to it, I choose family first. If this means grinding out a job I don't like till something better comes along then I do it. Like the post you replied to people have an incredibly arrogant idea of what constitutes a bad job - we have it damn easy when it comes to working conditions. I watched the guys building my house in the hot hot Georgia sun and was thankful I had a different set of skills. I grew up on a farm and knew that while that lifestyle has many appeals it was not for me.
I see no jealousy in that reply. I do see that it may hit too close to home for someone.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I don't see your point. Just because you have more free time, it doesn't mean you'll be able to avoid a divorce.
To all you people who think that the way things are is wrong, that life is not about sacrifice, why don't you focus on making the work week shorter so we don't have such long hours, then we can spend more time with our families.
Otherwise you have no right to complain if you are a capitalist pushing longer working hours and at the same time complaining that folks have no free time for their families.
Another option would be to consider a fundamental shift within the IT industry instead of reinventing the career wheel.
Consider for example working in education or government instead of private industry. This would allow you to exercise your skills and expertise in a very different environment and retain (most of) your salary to support your family.
I found shifting to the public sector put new life in my career - not because the work was different, but because the environment was. The non-monetary benefits of the education/government sector (lots of paid time off, good benefits, more relaxed work environment) gave me more time to focus on my family and out-of-office activities. It allowed for a much better work/life balance - there's something to be said for working banker's hours and getting random Mondays off for things like Cesar Chavez Day.
Sometimes an environment change breathes new life into the work. It went a long way towards making me happier with what I do.
Yes, but I thought Pennywise the clown was okay.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I know someone who was in exactly the same position. He decided to stick with IT for the sake of his family. However, as chance would have it, he was renovating his driveway with techo-block. He did such an amazing job that all of his neighbors wanted their driveways done too. In the end he discovered he could make more money landscaping than IT.
You can't always disappear a body and think you get away with it just because there's no body. Hans has phallen. fsck a duck (or him, whichever his cellie wants).
And it doesn't matter if he didn't since he's already been convicted. His ex-, if she is still around (who the hell would go BACK to the USSR?), would get to see him rot away by staying "dead".
I'm not sorry to say that I don't care about him, and may the rest of years of existance be as hell on earth as the final moments of
Not interested, nor would you be if he didn't have some creepy connection to some open source kit.
Life meet cgh4be.
> Disillusioned With IT?
No. Just with its sales
I am in my 2nd month of a career change after 14.5 years in the IT industry. Started back in the mid 90s on a help desk. Spent the late 90s being overpaid as a consultant, relocated to the west coast and continued the work until recently as a network engineer for small-mid sized businesses. I got lucky in that one of my clients in the Jewelry business offered me a management position within his company. Lateral salary move. What I didn't realize fully is the considerable lack of IT knowledge (generally) in many fields (this is one thing to look for).
Since starting here, I've done everything from implement/train on mail-merge to signing our company up with international search engines and uploaded our inventory (which has already produced more sales and justified my salary). Although I am 'technically' responsible for the IT here, we're talking a 3-server setup and about 10 users...nothing too difficult at all.
Best bet is to look for a place to be happy, especially after getting out of IT where every day is an exercise in dealing with other people at the worst moment of their day/week/year/life. Look for clients that have a considerable lack of basic tech skills and that have a poor position (from a technical/Internet) perspective and try there. I got REALLY lucky to get a lateral salary move, but 5 new clients in a year will justify my salary...so I should be ok.
I'm creeping up on my 10th year where I could be said to be doing computer support professionally. I went through about 5 years where I was like, "wow, this sucks and isn't very challenging".
I figured out though that there's real benefit in having a job where I can go home and the end of the day and forget about work and do stuff I like. Not to mention that even though the things I do from day to day aren't amazingly challenging, it isn't that way for everyone I work with, and as such, it's much easier to stand out and be regarded as excellent in my professional field.
So yeah, look around and consider all the options, but my advice? Don't make your work your life... unless you're getting paid millions of dollars quarterly, then make it your life for 10 years and retire. :D
... just rob a bank. Or sell some drugs. Once you have all that money, then do as your heart pleases. It's like Vordul Mega from Can Ox said, "I'm gonna live life after this one crime..."
I'm also a longtime IT professional, 12 years in my current job and 7 years before that at other employers, making just under six figures and getting really disillusioned with the whole industry. I've come to the conclusion that 99% of all technology companies out there have all turned into crooks. Every one of them lies to and steals from their customers as normal course of business and the whole goal has become to micro-control every bit of your customer's experience with your products and services in order to trap them into repetitive revenue streams. Fuck that shit. I do not have much family left... no dependents, but had stupidly amassed a nightmarish amount of consumer debt over the years. Two years ago I set myself on a plan to eliminate all that, and today I owe only a few thou in credit card debt, about $33K in vehicle debt and about $75K on a mortage on a 4500 sq foot house on 4 acres of land.
Right now, there's nothing more appealing than the prospect of paying off the rest of the consumer and vehicle debt, putting the house up for sale, and then going off to join a Christian ministry mission group somewhere in the world.
Fuck this IT business. I've had enough of it.
And yes, God will forgive me for the foul language.
and that goes for all of you :
just start doing what you enjoy doing outside of work as a side business. slowly build it up, and switch to it when it comes sufficient to sustain you and your family.
most of you people are in i.t., are well versed with tech ways, can set up various kinds of businesses, estores, whatnot on the web, or learn to set them up fast and good enough. so you all are well equipped to do some kind of business. as internet is the free medium for everything including setting up a business (and cheap to start a business online too, with the new home office thing we have going on around), you are already where you need to be.
so just act wise. keep your current jobs until you build up your out-of-work interests to a level of a full fledged business.
Read radical news here
IF the Kids are your #1 priority, then wouldnt getting thme out of a "household with with constant arguments, unhappiness, bickering, yelling and threats of divorce" be high on your list of things to do?
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
I didn't take a whole year off but my 3 months off taught me ...
I don't want to fucking work.
I want to backpack around NZ/AU while somehow magically having a high speed internet connection (and not driving on those insane roads in NZ).
When I went back to work, part of me never came back.
I used to be a go-getter and A+ worker. Now, I do the minimum. And what is worse, I can't jump start myself back into doing more than the minimum. I even changed jobs trying to re-light my fire.
We keep on hearing about how wonderful a year off is. For me it was disastrous. I have the money to take 2 years off if I wished, but what would I be like when that ended?
Security/safety should always be first.
I'm not saying that happiness isn't optional, if you have enough money and security where all you have left to focus on is how to be happy.
But the majority of us just aren't going to have that kinda job and make that kinda money where we can raise our kids in the right neighborhood and get them in all the right schools while also being happy while we do it.
It's just not realistic to expect people to have the perfect life.
While you still can. I know a friend who has since changed careers. Besides the less people that are left in IT the greater the demand (and salary) for those of us who remain.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Heat metal - smash it with a hammer. Make beautiful things. Very therapeutic. Come home from work, have dinner, then every so often wander out into the garage and fire up the forge.
Have you heard of the Society for Creative Anachronism, SCA? Different Kingdoms, groups in specific areas, hold classes and events in different areas of knowledge including metallurgy.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Whenever you're doing a job that's boring and repetitive, and on a computer, that should be signal that the job can be automated out of existence. Oh, it's a wonderful feeling, pushing one little button and watching what used to take 2 weeks of painstaking, mind-numbing work flash to a perfect finish in seconds or minutes.
And yes, even programming itself can become boring at times; but the same principle applies. I recently spent roughly 2 years writing a program, and at one point realized I was getting bored. So I switched what I was doing, and wrote a program that finished writing that program. Now my job's exciting again. Of course, I have no freakin' clue what the original program is capable of doing anymore; but the people who use it tell me it's awesome.
Fans of the movie 2001 may be interested to know that our CEO's name is actually "Dave". But don't worry, we don't make air-lock door controllers. As far as I know.
Appreciation what you have, compared to what other people have is one thing. It is an important thing.
Feeling ashamed to want an actually fulfilling work life because you already have more than most is something completely different. It is a stupid thing. The question that was being asked cannot be resolved by thinking sadly about kids in sweatshops or ancestors in wretched predicaments. They have very little bearing on the problem at hand.
Try this angle: What would you be teaching your children by going to a job you despise every day; and speaking nothing but negativity about the way you spend most of your waking life? Sure, be realistic, but you owe it to them to show them how to try and live life properly.
I decided to drop out of IT last week. It's a two-year plan, but it makes the work I find mind-numbing much more tolerable to know that there is an end date.
get out of IT now. it is a soul sucking experience and you will never make any money out of it.
take it from me.
I have 2 kids and 19 years IT experience i live in Latin America my salary went down from 1500 U$S Monthly when I Was 19 and single to 1000 U$S Monthly now... In between, I've got married, got a college degree in IT Science and Learned allmost all I could put my hands on (Seriously ... I've programmed from assembler to smalltalk... and yes... COBOL too :-) and yes Java and PHP too) and my salary decreaces every year ... as times go by ... Now I'm a senior whose salary can't increase and no longer can sustaim my "luxury" life style (a unfinished house and a 5 years old car).
I've given up my childs private education in favor of public one (It's free).
I no longer can afford Health services (They acount for 20% off my salary).
Can I take your job???????
The full story comes out! You're so pessimistic about the US and capitalism because you've gotten crushed under its foot. Unfortunately, there's always someone who draws the short straw, regardless of the intended economic system. But you might consider researching moving to a different nation, if you think it'll improve your lot in life.
Damn, who thought this job would be such hard work?
These junk posts about not really being free because you have to work are just lame. Life is mostly work and that is just the way it is. Even with no government, no businesses, no jobs, no money you would still be working to get food into your stomach. I like the idea of working for money instead of actual food I suppose. Life involves work. Try to find a job you can be somewhat happy with but don't pretend there is another way other than working. I am assuming few of us here are rich enough to avoid working.
I was in your shoes after a little more than 12 years in programming. I'm back in school studying Geography and Geographic Information Systems. Is the eventual job going to be IT? Maybe, but there's also a lot more possibilities out there too.
More to your point, see if there's something else that interests you that leverages your experience but also takes you in a different direction. Geography is it for me, what's it for you?
A long time ago I used to work in IT...
...I now describe IT as the industry that makes used car sales look like an honorable profession. If asked, I tell those who ask that unless they are interested in trying their legs at rock star programming, they would do just as well in a dozen other less stressful industries.
I myself now work two jobs. One mindless and stress free, but steady and reliable for those rainy periods, and the other a bit more stressful, but it pays very well when I am correct. If you are wondering, they are bus driver and equities trader. On top of the piles of cash, I now get to chat with other human beings, and that is something I don't think I would give up anytime soon. My wife and kids are also glad to see me again.
One man's solution, and probably not yours, but don't ever feel trapped in the industry. They won't grow up until they have pushed themselves into a corner, and until that happens do you really want to hang around and suffer the fools?
In B.C., our fascism is green.
I'm a sysadmin/coder, Nearly 14 years in the biz.
I have a comfy well-paying job, I love what I do.
Three years ago I've identified the early onset of exactly what you've described. The IT field was losing its zest, the revolution felt like it has ended. The field reached roughly the same progression curve cars have had for nearly 100 years. Computers get faster, more cores, hard drives get bigger, graphics cards push more better-looking frames.
Corporations play lego with grander toys, made to be ever more simple to run.
Anyone can do it. The magic is going, going, sooner or later it will be gone.
Here and there revolutionary stuff pops out. The gents at Google building insane-sized clusters of designation-less commodity-class machines, clusters that can withstand lots of failure and still work, like cells in a living body. Quantum computing is being discussed, but that's niches. By large, it's not just us. The field itself just doesn't hold the charm, the zest, the spirit of revolution it had in our day.
When I identified this, I decided to change direction. I popped my head out, had a look around. The revolution is pushing on. Huge changes are afoot, they just won't be happening in the world of UNIX system administration, of C++, perl, bash or Ruby on Rails.
Biology is nearly at critical mass. Our genetic toolbox is nearly ripe, our ability to sequence genes and proteins is nearing a price point where it will be dirt-cheap. Mountains of data are pouring in. New organisms are being sequenced. HUMANS are being sequenced. Many different humans.
Genetics, the art of recording instructions to build machinery, a fine art of reverse-engineering a bunch of atoms that compose everything from the hard-drive head to the bits of a complex filesystem, is but a cornerstone. Proteomics, the study of the assembled machines themselves, is barely touched. We have yardfuls of machines whose function we do not know yet, and synthetic biology is better at constructing custom ones. Metabolomics, the processes that make them all worth together, is a layer of complexity we're only starting to gawk at.
What most people hear is better medicine, perhaps cheaper medicine, maybe kicking alzheimers, malaria and a dozen cancers in the balls. Perhaps finally finding a way to give a virus a proper kick.
What the true thinkers are saying is too radical to comprehend. Radical life extension and robust adult rejuvenation. Machine/neural I/O. Personalized medicine. Regrowth of limbs. The decade-long ethical embryonic-stem-cell stalemate had its back broken in the last three months. Pluripotent stem-cells can be produced from multiple new sources, problems associated being relatively minor. BIG shit is happening. This is not a decade away. This is *NOW*.
I've started doing a bachelor in bio in part-time, spreading it across as many generalist majors as I can. Biochem and Molecular bio, Cell bio, genetics, some anatomy. I'll follow it up with a Honors & PhD in an IT-related biology field, cutting me a multi-specialized role within a decade, giving me PhD status in IT (without ever doing any undergrad work), somewhat-above-fresh-PhD status in IT-related biology fields, and while I'll likely take a pay-cut to switch over, I'll get back on the revolution horse for a few dacedes more. I'll have the tools neccesary to get involved in what's really changing our world.
Remember, you're not measured by how much money you make. You're measured by how much money you make doing that which you love.
Synthetic biology is being discussed, protein engineering.
Being self-taught as I was, I've put together a long-term plan to re-qualify.
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I was born into poverty so of course my priority #1 is to move up. And you are right, not everyone is born into the ghetto, but the majority of the world is born into the ghetto.
I'm speaking from the view of the person at the bottom trying to make life better for their family, the African struggling to survive in Africa, or the immigrant.
If you come from a family that owns lots of property, and that already has wealth, then you probably wont understand a word of what I'm saying but we can agree on one thing, we work too many hours per week and we should shorten the work week to 20/hours a day per week.
This would provide room for a balance that everyone talks about. Until that happens, you can't blame a person who IS in the ghetto if they work 2 jobs and sacrifice their happiness, or if they are doing everything they can to buy their first or second house.
People who own multiple houses and live in the nice neighborhood already, all you have to focus on is being happy.
Of course they'll go to Harvard and get the MBA and probably hate it. But they'll have kids who will be able to go to Julliard for music or to art school.
You cannot just skip from poverty to the upper middle class in one generation unless you get rich. Usually it takes a couple generations to do it, the first generation sacrifices themselves in order to get that first house, and the second generation sacrifices themselves in order to get a house in the "good" neighborhood to put their kid in the "good" school so they can go to the "good" university.
And as long as all the educations, schools and degrees aren't equal, it's going to be our desire for us to sacrifice to get our kids into these "elite" schools. There are kids coming from asian who don't do anything else besides study, and who have parents to hold them to high standards.
Westerners just aren't going to be able to compete because westerners are too focused on being happy that they'll lose the competition in the end.
I was reading your comments on the topic and couldn't agree with you at all. I couldn't quite figure out what made me believe the exact opposite of what you believe in, until the very moment I read that quote. You have some very good points about responsibility to your family, which should never be ignored, but that one thing you said is simply utterly and completely wrong, regardless of how you look at it.
Survival can't possibly come before happiness. What the hell is the point of living if you're not happy? So you spend your entire life in a job you hate just so you can make sure your children have the greatest possible opportunities in life...and then you expect your children to be miserable their entire lives to give security to their children, and the cycle of complete unhappiness continues. Why? If we're all supposed to be miserable all our lives, why are we so concerned about continuing on with our lives or our children lives? Why not just let humanity end?
The exact opposite is true. We continue on living because things in life makes us happy. Now, I do agree with you, and recommend anyone in a good paying job to be responsible enough to make backup plans while changing careers. Not because sacrifice of happiness for security is something one should aim for (on the contrary, you can sacrifice anything for happiness, but you should never sacrifice happiness itself), but because you're not going to be happy if your new venture fails and you end up in the poorhouse. So plan things wisely if you're making that move.
And it's okay that you are irrational, but putting any emotion before survival is irrational.I am considering the same change as you are and just met with a career counsellor who suggested that I consider a 'portfolio' career - one where your career consists of a number of jobs in parallel. You might work 3 days a week in an IT role and the other 2 days in a completely different field or industry rather than 5 full days in one role for one company.
Balance doing what you have to do and what you love to do.
Why further your education if you just want to be happy? Why get an MBA or do some boring degree if you just want to be happy?
No one stops you from being happy, you can be happy if you have freedom to do whatever you want to do.
You assume everyone likes something that pays a lot of money. Most people like stuff which COSTS money and which wont earn them a dime.
Also, why do you say we should focus on being happy but you, and others who think like you, aren't doing anything to reduce the current 40-80 hour work week down to 20 hours?
What if spending time with my family makes me happy? In that case in order to be happy I'd have to work less. So it becomes impossible to find happiness while also being a provider.
Well, unless I can play sports or make music, but really how many people get to do this?
If happiness were free, shouldn't the people in Africa starving and struggling be the happiest people on earth? They have all the free time while we work 40-80 hours a week.
Would you like to trade places with them?
Getting out of IT was the best thing I ever did. Itâ(TM)s been a long time since somebody expected me to do the impossible on half the necessary budget and then canceled the project and laid off half the people I know. I donâ(TM)t really miss it much.
I've been working in IT since 1996. I spent seven of the last eight years as a consultant. Now I'm a DBA at one of my previous clients. I took this job because it is stable and relatively mindless. I held onto one of my clients from the consulting gig. They are in the waste management business and into all sorts of cool things that are very relevant in day to day life. They have facilities spread throughout the state and are constantly implementing new technologies to keep up with the owner's need for information about his diverse operations. Most of my free time is spent training martial arts though. I found out about six years ago that martial arts and philosophy (specifically Buddhism and Daoism) are what really do it for me. So at this point in my life I organize everything else around that. I'll never be materially rich but I am spiritually satisfied.
You should start a blog and put some ads on it, then quit your job.
Just a suggestion, I entered this thread in search of answers but found the remainder of the posts to be along the same line...if you're paid well then why change.
So instead I have decided to add something.
The nice thing about a boring repetitive job is that they are often easier to optimize, be more efficient. Doing this makes the job slightly more challenging and provides the benefit of more spare time.
Ok..so it's still a boring job. FINE. With the extra time, join a charitable works fund, do some part time perhaps weekend volunteer or community work. PErhaps even do it with your wife and kids.
You would be surprised how grateful people are when you bring experience (which you may find boring) into the lives of those who can benefit from any extra help in whatever form it takes.
Remember, there are still people who are scared to turn on a computer.
Your local community will no doubt be in need of something...planting trees, building websites,fixing old computers on a budget.. choose something that interests you.
Just a thought
From my own experience, I know of no better way to ruin a hobby for myself then to try and make a career out of it.
Hobbies are just that. Hobbies.
The moment you have to do it when you do not want to, the pleasure derived from it starts to leak away.......
My advice, find something your REALLY good at and make THAT your career choice. If your above-the-rest good at something, the money comes naturally and opens up room for more/different hobbies.
Just my $2.
Why not become a Stay at Home Dad (SAHD)? I did it after 8 years in IT (first as a tech, then as management), and it's going pretty well. My commute sure is a lot shorter. It's tough not being able to play with the latest toys, and having your family income cut in half, but in the end it will be worth it.
Next week or so, my job difficulty doubles when my daughter arrives. Still, it beats 3 hour meetings.
If you're completely unhappy at your current job, the size of your paycheck is practically irrelevant. This is because said lack of happiness is going to cause you to perform at a much lower level than you might normally. Eventually, this will become a vicious circle, and I suspect you will find yourself caught up in the next batch of layoffs anyway.
I find it a little eerie that what you're describing is almost exactly what happened to me. I started out fixing Teletype machines, many moons ago. I moved on from there to doing telephone work, got bored with it, then moved into fixing land/mobile 2-way radios.
I went from that into computers, added networking to the mix, then finally got burned out with IT as a career and went back to my first and foremost interest (radios, RF, etc.) when I landed in a nice civil-service slot. Been there ever since, and I believe I've actually found the place I'll retire with.
My points are that there's nothing at all wrong with changing careers, and that you really do need to find an environment you can live with. For my part, I had no idea that I had the necessary mindset for civil service, or I would have done it years ago.
The difference for me is that, for the most part, the private sector is no longer about making the best product or service, and letting said product or service simply sell itself. Hasn't been for decades, ever since we sold off most of our manufacturing infrastructure and skill base to China, et al. All most places seem to be interested in is the worship of money, and finding new ways to get and accumulate it.
I don't think that way, I don't work that way. I guess the simple way to say it is that the private sector and I just don't get along.
Civil service, on the other wing, has proven to be a place where I get to use ALL my skills, not just a fraction of them. It has also proven to be a place where I actually feel like I'm making a real difference, every single day.
That's important, no matter where you are.
So, in essence -- find what you're happy with, find a spot where you can actually look forward to coming in, and you've got it made. Don't worry too much about pay changes. I took a pay cut when I first moved from Boeing to WA State government service -- and then a year later I was making more than I ever had at Boeing!
Oh, BTW... Blue Feather Tech, as referenced in my signature line, is just a side business for me, not my day job.
Happy travels.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
The 21st century is calling, today a man is not required to provide. Stay at Home Dads are growing in numbers. While my sister runs her own business my brother-in-law stays home taking care of their daughter.
But when you talk about the below $100k range, well, I'd rather sacrifice my happiness to get into the $100k range so my kids can go to Yale.
Ever hear of financial aid? Even Yale offers financial aid. Me, I went into the military to save money to go to college as I came from a low income family. The military will even help you take college classes while in the military. While I was in one Sargent I knew in my unit was awarded his BA degree, that was the happiest day for him. You can also get leadership training while in. Neither of my parents got so much as a BA degree yet my mom taught us that we could become almost anything we wanted as long as we worked at it. There's me and two 2 sisters in my family, my older sister's a nurse and my younger sister, the one above, has her masters.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I found myself in this situation a few years ago. I got my then-employer to pay for me to go to night classes to get a MS. Once I got the degree, I had no trouble finding a software job at a major cancer research center.
I traded about 30% of my income for a huge quality-of-life boost. I still get to use a lot of the skills I built in my former life, I get to learn lots of interesting new stuff, and I'm still making enough money to do OK.
I don't know what I'll be doing in 10 years, but I know I won't be back doing what I was doing before.
Some people think the universe is a program, you're a programmer, you know how to think this way. You're looking at porting an OS to a new hardware configuration. The system has legacy dependencies and five nines is demanded by third parties. The advantages are greatly increased efficiency, serious growth potential, and increased producer/customer satisfaction. The buzzword is virtualize, but real testing is needed. Take a holiday, plan it thoroughly, demo it, take your measurements. Sit on the results for 6 months. Seek peer review. Go for it.
science in government
I had an IT career for 15 years. I finally had my dream job, Director of IT for a medium sized but very well known auto club. Then the merger came. The larger club took over and I became a Systems Admin II. The new bosses were.. well lets say less than stellar. I quit on a Monday after a 3 months in hell project that I did not nor would not complete.
I joined a friend who had his own construction/remodel business. It has been good but the money certainly is not near what I was making. I've had to make some lifestyle changes but it has been worth it. Try to make sure you have some savings to fall back on for big expenses (like a new roof).
I'm even thinking of returning to IT now as my head has cleared from the depression of the last job. Or maybe return to school for a Master's of an IT forensics job.
Good Luck, You'll probably do fine.
Linuxmon
America is a capitalist country. Under capitalism, people sacrifice themselves for money.
Under capitalism people have the free will to choose what they want to do.
Under capitalism, society does not care whether or not happiness is increasing, thats why we keep working 8 hour days even though we don't have to work 8 hours a day. Thats why 2 parents work 8 hour days even though we don't have to work so hard.
You have the choice of living how you want to, within ability or whatever.
As long as we are a capitlaist country, everything I said in my post will remain true.
The US, I assume that's the country you're talking about, is not a capitalist country. It is a corporate aristocracy bent on making people believe that in order to be happy they have to consume more and more.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I was where you were at the end of last year, after 15+ years developing apps. So I gave notice after New Year's and I was out of there in 2 weeks. Now I'm working on a dozen different projects that I haven't had time to work on before between work and the kids. Most of the jobs I had were with cutting edge technology when I started, but a couple of years into it and it was legacy code; management never bought our arguments to rewrite the codebase to keep it current. And obviously, it is a lot more fun to write new apps than do maintenance on legacy apps.
Now I'm working with the latest technologies. All of the projects are simple enough that I can deploy them pretty quickly; I can get them to market in weeks or months, not years. So what's the downside? I've got pretty low expenses - paid off our cars years ago; mainly just have the mortgage and health insurance; I take the kids to Costco for samples when they get hungry (kidding!). If I don't make a dime from any of these projects I'm back on the job market - with a lot of relevant new technology experience on my resume; technology I can show to a prospective employer - who should appreciate the effort and initiative I put into the projects.
When I read of people reminiscing on their lives, they regret mostly that they didn't try things they wanted to try - much more so than things they tried and failed at.
Life's too short to wake up and hate your life every day because you hate your job. Yes, you need to provide for your family, but beyond basics the most important thing you can pass on to your kids is your happiness, positive attitude, and general sense of well-being. If you feed them, clothe them, and house them but instill in them a deep sense of resentment, depression, and defeatism, then they will never be truly successful in their own lives.
So don't listen to the posts here telling you to suck it up and be a man--they're coming from men who've already made the wrong decision and are trying to drag you down with them. You owe it to your kids and yourself to follow your heart.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I swapped IT for Finance (Risk) a few months ago and found three things really helpful in thinking through whether to change or not:
1) GROW is a framework for thinking about what you want from life:
- Goals (what you want from life, what is it that really enthuses you and you can't help but share with your gf/wife/family)
- Reality (where you are today - strengths as well as weaknesses, industry as well as personal)
- Options (ways of achieving Goals given Reality)
- Will (pick an option and do it!)
2) Talking to a professional career coach who helped me think through what I wanted from my life and my career was a *huge* help, easily worth the cost
3) Interview my friends about their jobs - I found out very quickly that those who had careers I was jealous of were actually doing jobs I'd hate (my Goals would not have been met doing them). Hugely helpful.
It takes time to think these things through if you want to get it right - don't make any rash decisions.
Good luck!
I've been in the IT industry for almost 15 years now. About two years ago I hit the same rut you are going through right now. The same disillusionment etc...
Last year I changed my stream and went into management. What did I find? The same disillusionment hit me in 3 months instead of 12 years. This job change was a huge mistake. It cost me in terms of finance and family. I have learnt the hard way that you are going to feel disillusionment no matter what you are doing.
I remember talking to some scientists at a nuclear research center way back in 1994. They were doing great stuff. But all of these scientists and I do mean all the scientists I spoke to advised me to stay away from their field. No prizes for guessing that they were disillusioned.
I saw the same thing across a variety of careers, no matter how exciting they appeared to be. Pilots, river rafting guides, rally car drivers, research scientists etc... have advised me to stay away. And now belatedly I understand why.
The key here would be to recognize this as a part of every career. But this should not stop you from changing careers to grow.
I did learn a lot from this experience and am thankful. I do plan to continue with this change in career. But am doing it in a much more structured way.
My advice. Change is good. You should change your stream. BUT, stick to what you have been doing till you are VERY SURE of what you want to do next.
There is a lot of good advice by a lot of people on this page. It will save you a lot of time.
I did IT all across the board for a decade as well. When I finally stopped denying my true calling and pursued my passion in self-employment, I took a huge risk, with 4 kids, a mortgage, and two car notes. Despite this, I cashed in my feeble 401(k) and started up my LLC, doing what I was born to do. A year later, I am making about the same sustainable salary that I had been. Two bits of advice - do your numbers scenarios thoroughly before jumping, and consider your health insurance situation. You will have to make some adjustments, but executed correctly, the 'dip' in income will be nothing more than a passing learning experience. You can do it. Don't be afraid, just go. Your newfound gusto will blow away all misgivings. Follow your Dream. You can and you must.
Take a vacation and spend the time volunteering in a homeless shelter and then go back to work and see how you feel.
Well, assuming you can afford to reduce your income and/or live off savings for a while, you have a couple other considerations.
Is your family willing to support you in what could be a less stable short-term situation that what you have now, and are they willing to live long-term with what could be a substantially different lifestyle depending on what field you get into?
What level of risk are you willing to go through and put your family through, for how long? Obviously the risk will depend on your current circumstances.
How bad is it really at work? Are you just bored, or are you seriously unhappy? Boredom comes and goes, but hating your job is something else again.
A few replies have told you to just man up and provide for the family like a good 1950's husband would do, no matter how much you hate your current field. I don't believe happiness at work and a happy family are mutually exclusive, in fact it's sure possible to be unhappy enough at work to bring some of those feelings home to infect your family. If you think you need the change, and you and your family think you can handle the risk, then by all means take the chance. You always have 12 years of experience to fall back on if things go awry.
While I do not have a family to support as you do I did buy a house 2 years ago and caring for a parent so I need to find a salary to match my current bills. I just lost my IT job (Developer/Programer) and was wondering what to do next. IT were I live (East Coast) has lost much of its shine and the more interviews I go on the more I wonder what's the point? Will I be bored after a year or two? Is the IT industry the same as when I started 11+ years ago and I have grown out of it? Or maybe it is just the area I have been working for the past 11+ years (Philadelphia, PA Metro Area) and need a change of scene? I have developed some new hobbies and would like to make a career out of them the only problem is I would need to go back school and since I still have student loans to pay back and would have to move to the West Coast to even have a shot. That is out of the question
I have several friends and old co-workers that feel the same way and even feel IT has become to corporate to be innovative anymore.
Hope you find your way because I know how you feel........
36, sick of IT, bored to death with Interactive, looking to make a career change (into science, in my case). But to those sounding the heavy fear alarm here, you don't have to make six figures to live in this country, even now. If you can change careers to something you love but pays, say, $50K, then you're still making a lot more than the median wage in this country. You can live pretty well on that, because most people do.
Look, what things do you really need that you must make a lot of money to have? $100 steaks? A Maserati? Vacations in Monte Carlo? A steak is a steak, my friend. Your Nissan will get you to work through the inevitable traffic as fast as a Maserati ever would. And a beach is a beach, for crying out loud.
Keep food on the table and a roof over your head. For everything else, it's not worth your happiness or your life to waste it on something you hate. After all, you only get to do this once.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I felt the same way about 5 years ago. I got into video editing and audio production. I also started working fewer hours - 40-45 instead of 50-60. It helped me optimize my work time, go home and do fun projects - usually with my kids. My day job funds my hobbies and allows me to take vacation with my family. Make the most of that time and grow strong hedges around that time. Don't take work home with you, including mentally. Balance your time and make your job work for you. It's worked for me for 3 years as it took 2 years to figure out how to make it work.
But I've just put it down to old age/getting bored/getting frustrated with incompatible software.
I tend to get frustrated with things that take a long time to implement. As if the last 30 years of IT hasn't given us anything that is EASY to implement. There are some good examples, however, the vast majority of software is a pain in the ass to implement whether free or not.
After more than 30 years we should have more modularized software - ie drop in/take out software, that has no dependancies, or if it does auto-install.
Each O/S has it's ups and downs, and do things either better or worse. But, IMHO, it's time for a revolution. We're already seeing the signs of software becoming a commodity - let's hope it continues, because it'll end up with software that interacts and works well with each other.
-- main(s){printf(s="main(s){printf(s=%c%s%c,34,s,34
Isn't it a flawed assumption to assume (at least what I think people are assuming here) is that the "higher paying job" is better for the kids. What if you take a lesser paying job, that pays 80% of what you got before, but you love it AND you get 8 hours more a week to be with your family (due to less "unpaid" overtime, assuming you are salaried)? Plus if you are doing what you like, your overall happiness might tend to be higher, and trickle down into your relationships. Just some thoughts, no hard scientific facts.
Nothing is as expensive as regret.
That is why there are so many IT people working at Starbucks.
All the posts I have read say either go for it or that your family is more important than your happiness, with some with some sympathizers telling their stories. I say review how your life is going. Try to figure out how to make it better without drastic changes. I read some were that someone did a study and concluded being happy takes allot of energy. That means you have to try to be happy. It is not just a given no matter how good your situation is. You might be little depressed so maybe some therapy. I recently found a book called "Mind Over Mood" on cognitive therapy that would not even require a therapist although you could probably use it better with one.
As everyone here at Slashdot always claims whenever filesharing comes up, there is value to a physical CD beyond the mere bits of the audio.
It's a way I can give my fans something tangible.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
The full story comes out! You're so pessimistic about the US and capitalism because you've gotten crushed under its foot. Unfortunately, there's always someone who draws the short straw, regardless of the intended economic system. But you might consider researching moving to a different nation, if you think it'll improve your lot in life.
...and any sympathy I could have had for your predicament has immediately evaporated, upon seeing such a stupid racist comment.
I'm not a racist person, but I'm a bit of a nationalist. I'm American, I'm not Asian, and you aren't in China either, so all of your kids have to compete with the Chinese and the Indians for jobs as well, and theres nothing racist about it.In a global economy, this is what you should expect to happen.
I kind of got the same way, but I just jumped over to Biotech and Genetics Research, working in Bioinformatics.
It's more fun, and if you choose a good group, you can work for useful things that you don't feel ethically constrained by.
You can cash out and work on the commercial side, or you can work for various educational institutions (like me at the University of Washington) or non-profits.
The fun thing is that it's both new and not new at the same time, but you're accomplishing useful things - like working on cures for malaria, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, you name it.
Personally I enjoy the change.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I am exactly same situation as you. So what I am doing is starting side business (I bought a BP Service station) and hiring some people I can trust to run for me, and going to do semi-management. Then slowly move into that business completely.
I hope that may help you.
Yes I have been through what you're asking. 18 years into software development it got boring. I'd managed teams up to 50 with long life cycles, demanding apps like commodity trading and radar processing, really wasn't much else challenging on the software front. I approached a customer that used our services and made it clear I wanted to not do IT but do business analysis and business development in their operations department. 5 years later it's all good, no regrets on the career change. With this change it's not possible to totally get away from software development, instead I leverage the previous knowledge to businesses advantage but day-to-day sort out business problems rather than code.
I was in the same spot in 2003 - I had been in the industry for a decade, and was just fed up with it. I'll tell you straight out, it's hard to keep up a lifestyle you've grown accustomed to while working in IT. If you can manage the lifestyle change, I'd say dump it. I was out of the IT market until this past summer, and I really regret getting back into it. The money's good (though not as good as it was back then), but I liked having my days off to myself, and I think I'd rather have that time than the extra money/goodies/whatever. It was pretty refreshing to know that I wasn't going to be required to work overtime or on my days off (as I'm writing this I'm finishing up a 12 hour day where I have been waiting for people to finish up so I can do my thing). It was a lot easier to plan vacations and long weekends, knowing that I wasn't expected to be on-call 24x7, regardless of what I'd been told to expect.
I hate IT now - it's full of a lot of fscktards who know nothing at all, but have certifications to "prove" otherwise, and manage to charge an arm and a leg for substandard IT support. It's also full of people that think they can replace you with a drop of a hat, and love to second-guess your troubleshooting and technical recommendations (my best friend and I had a saying when we worked in IT at the same company - "everyone's a fucking computer genius, until it comes time to stay late and fix shit.") with knowledge they've gleaned from someone's blog or a magazine article.
I guess my advice would be to make a decision about which is more important to you - making money to support your lifestyle as it is now, or making do with less so you can do something that makes you happy. The money's hard to live without, for a while anyway, but it's awesome to have time that belongs solely to you.
Besides, it doesn't seem like those of us old-timers who've been around doing real IT work (not phone support at a call-center, or swapping toner cartridges) since before the Y2K thing are as respected for our knowledge and experience as we should be.
You can lose everything you have in a hurricane. That's not fear mongering, it happened.
I'm sure there are many single parents living in the ghetto or inner city raising their daughter, who love their daughter just as much as you love yours, but what is society doing for them?
Not a damn thing!
Society tells them to pull themselves out of it by their bootstraps? Well the only way to do that is through sacrifice, blood sweat and tears. There is no easy way to pull yourself up, and society does very little to help people trying to pull themselves up.
Seriously. I'm a Reservist. Every few years I get a free vacation to get my ass shot off (expeditionary intel/CNO). In all honesty, it's a great change of pace, and my civilian job is guaranteed when I return. Where else do you get to be the IT guru by day and blow stuff up on the weekends (well, except for that one guy on Myth Busters). I love it, though I'll admit it takes a different kind of person.
Basic fact of life is that every type of job gets old when you do the same thing over and over. If the field you are in is something you tend to have interest in, you are fortunate, so then don't switch fields: find a job with better problems to apply your skills to.
In the tech field, a tip I would give is to not focus on the technology, but on solving interesting problems. That's the core of what is interesting in CS/IT and what draws us to it.
There's a handful of useful CS/IT ideas, and all the rest is the same stuff re-hashed, re-packaged and re-hyped (as you seem to have discovered). Find a job with problems to solve, not technology to learn. Learning new technologies is only useful when it lies on the path from problem to solution. Otherwise it is just technical masturbation.
That's what I did after 10 years in a nice IT job.
This depends on what your wife is skilled in, and if she wants to work. For us, I was burning out and ready for a change, my wife, recently having received her PhD., was ready to launch her own career. Both of us thought having one parent stay home with our new baby was the right thing to do, even if it mean watching the budget closer.
1.5 years later, I can honestly say I don't miss IT in the slightest. Except that I have a whole new respect for stay at home parents! It is more rewarding, and at the same time more challenging than the IT job ever was.
Hadn't seen it posted yet, so wanted to throw that out there.
"Hey Albert, Good luck exploring the infinite abyss."
Not only has IT lost its pizazz, but it has dramatically disintegrated in quality and qualifications.
When all it takes for every Jack and Jill to get into IT is a quick 2 year course or diploma and absolutely no Bachelor Degree, quality and standards are lost. But that's really not Jack and Jill's fault. When almost every IT recruiter/headhunter/HR is unqualified or lacks qualifications in _IT_ we will be getting more and more of those stooges and ultimately IT becomes a mediocre job only a dull person can like.
Can you imagine this happening in a decent profession? doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. have higher standards and at least a Bachelor Degree!
We talked about this subject last year. Check out the other thread for more ideas.
I did this a couple of years ago when my home actually had some equity. Just decided to chuck the whole thing and buy a bar. I lasted 1 year. Turns out running your own business is much more difficult that dealing with the day to days of working in IT.
I would never do this again, the only way I'd leave a steady paying job to go it alone is if I some how become independently wealthy and don't have to worry about a steady pay check.
Trust me the stress of not being able to pay your bills is much, much greater than whatever you are currently dealing with. If you are that burned out I'd try to find a way to take a few months off to get some perspective and re-charge before I'd consider changing industries and trying to adjust your lifestyle to your new income level.
My dad was a VP of an insurance company in the 70's, but loved nothing better than playing in the dirt. At age 37 with 4 kids he dumped it and became a self employed landscape architect(fancy name for a landscaper with a degree from UMASS Amherst). Now past the age of retirement he can't picture himself not doing the work do to the love of it. he always said you spend way to much time at work to not do what you love, if you enjoy it it will never be at work and you will excel at it. He's living proof of that, currently he has one home in an upper class town east coast and a home in Hawaii.
If you're into science you could look for a reasonable university salary doing IT/data analysis/lab management while pursuing graduate degree, then find your way into a faculty position. At age 29 I came back to neuroscience after five years at an ISP. Salaries are lower than industry, but with better benefits and job stability. Good luck.
My dad used to be a family farmer. He quit that and went to work at the landfill (he works with industrial waste, not garbage). Hasn't regretted it for a second.
There is good money to be made cranking out healthy white children.
Part of your responsibility is to care for your children. They cannot care for themselves. If you do not care for them, the state will take them away, and most of your loved ones will probably turn against you.
You can only give them the best chances by taking care of your children. It reminds me of something Sidney Poitier's character in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" tells his dad that if he ever has children his duty will be to give them the best chance they have.
But as far as giving them the "best chance" possible? Best chance for *what?* Entering the next couple of higher rungs on the social/economic status ladder? Winning a Nobel prize? Reproducing?
The best chances of them doing what they want to do or be what they want to be, the best chance to have a happy life.
We are so *not* at risk as individuals in developed countries of dying of hunger and exposure, but we still have a lot of the language that suggests that we are.
Our society may, and to a degree is that way, but not all individuals are like that. I grew up "in the woods" so to speak. I could and did go into the woods and knew how to find food and water and how to make a shelter. Any kids I have I want to be able to do the same thing. I love to garden, actually I have about 2 weeks until our last frost date here and have been preparing my garden, and I want my kids to be able to garden as well. When my produce is ready I plan to can most of what I've grown.
When I think of the interesting, courageous, successful and self-confident people I know, they report childhoods filled not with sacrifice, resentment and martyrdom, but with optimism, curiosity, life-long learning, travel, change, even risk (including periods of real poverty.)
That basically describes how I was brought up. My family was poor but mom taught us we could be almost anything we wanted as long as we worked at it. I have two sisters and though our parents didn't go to college my sisters and I did. My older sister's a nurse. My younger sister got her Master and now runs her own business. Unfortunately for me, while in college majoring in Computer Engineering I had an accident that ended that. I survived, and I mean "survived" because I wasn't expected to live, a Traumatic Brain Injury or TBI. While in a coma the docs told my family it would be a miracle if I did live.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Wife, kids, mortgage, trapped...well, you should have checked out http://dont-marry.com/
.. many a people that I know , and myself have found ourselves in this very situation .. truth be told .. we even have a job doing some very interesting stuff .. research .. and inspite of that our frustrations stem from a lack of progress in the corporate world towards newer technologies .. the main issue really stems from the lack of REAL comp.sci education for those "calling the shots" .. people that make decisions dont really understand the true nature of new technology .. and this is hampering every industry .. the answer is in hiring tech experts to rule tech companies .. not "marketing" and "management" types
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...and say that putting your family through some short-term sacrifice/danger/inconvenience may not be a bad thing is the longer-term payoff is worth it. Let's say you take a temporary income hit in order to switch careers. The payoff is that you're happier, don't snap at the kids and wife as much, have higher earning potential, feel more satisfaction with your life. Sounds worth it to me. My reaction to all of these 'dig ditches and put up with it for the sake of your family' posters is that they're being overly fatalistic.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
Get in touch with this dude name Morpheus. He will help you make a *complete* break with you IT albatross, and he will make you very, very good at Kung-Fu.
I was a hard-core nerd all through school and got a Comp Sci degree and went to work for IBM circa 2000 -- it was a good to place to be during the dot-bomb. After 3 years I decided that I was going the wrong direction returned to school and will graduate in two weeks (!) at age 31 with a MS in Chemical Engineering. I learned three important lessons during this process:
:)
1) You are only as old as you want to be. Seriously, taking organic chemistry 2 *seven years* after organic chemistry 1 and still getting a B- shows that my brain even approaching 30 was fine at learning "hard" things. Since then I've had to pick up fluids, heat transfer, quantum chemistry, and many other things that I once thought would be impossible to learn, but with the support of my awesome wife it's not really that bad. You *can* pick it up, and with your experience you can be much faster at the homework than your young college peers.
2) Almost *anything* can be made fun once you put in the time to get good at it. What I wanted was a job that was fun but not my whole identity, yet still paid well enough to support a family. Chemical engineering was a really good fit for me: the pay is really good (my entry-level offer was within 1% of IBM's parting salary), but it's a manufacturing process where I *can't* do work when I am not physically on the plant. So after 5pm I get to go home and enjoy the rest of my life. Also, many chemical plants are located in smaller (cheaper) towns, yet the plants still have to pay competitively nationally to get the students to hire on, so you get to live in a cheap town yet enjoy expensive town salary.
3) Most interesting: the value-add of non-programming technical skills to a programming position is not nearly as great as the value-add of programming skills to a non-programming technical position. In other words, engineers of all stripes can become far more effective engineers if they pick up good programming skills: they can automate everything from complex calculations to routine data gathering to minor workflow improvements. But programmers with engineering skills only gain in the area of modeling their domain, they still spend most of their time in the writing/testing/debugging of the code rather than in the derivation of the formulas that the code must embody. (Also: both programmers and engineers gain greatly from technical writing and personal communications skills, but they seem to both gain about the same amount of value.) So if you are an engineer who has a vast toolset at your disposal from your previous career, you can leverage that into a real advantage at your new job; of course, you'd still be an engineer so you'd only code occasionally, but each little program finished would add more time every week for your real job, so it would still feel a lot like hobby coding rather than full-time-grind coding.
Well, I'd better get back to my last couple homework assignments.
This is the saddest thing I have ever read in a long while. What kind of children can you raise with an attitude like that? Mechanical ones?
Let me tell you a story. It's about a friend of mine from college.
Before he was born, his parents were successful entrepreneurs. Neither had attended college, but that didn't matter: They owned a factory, and they made lots of money. They had a nice, big house, and they drove BMWs.
Then one day they decided their lives were meaningless as things stood. They sold the factory; they sold their house; they sold their cars. They kept just enough to buy a much smaller house down in New Mexico, and gave the rest away -- almost everything -- to charity.
Since then, they've worked a string of not-very-lucrative jobs, as much for the purpose of trying out different walks of life as getting a paycheck. They don't make much, but they don't spend much either, so they make ends meet.
Then my friend, their son, was born.
For them, it didn't change much, really. They didn't decide, "We need to make tons of money so we can send Narendra to college." They just kept on living; they raised him to appreciate life, and he did well on his own.
I use the name, 'Narendra,' but this is not his real name. However, it captures something true: Although he and his parents are Caucasian, his name was Sanskrit. That tells you something about their philosophy.
So what happened for 'Narendra?' He went to school, and when he wasn't in school he spent a lot of time outside learning about animals -- really, these were important, and interesting, things to him -- and generally cultivated an open-minded curiosity. Eventually, he reached his senior year in high school, and he approached his parents with an idea:
Narendra: "So, I was thinking about going to college."
Parents: "Hmm... ok. You know you don't have to, right? Are you sure?"
Narendra: "Yeah, I think do want to."
Parents: "Well, Ok! Sure. Where do you want to go?"
So, Narendra looked around, and picked a college, pretty much by looking at the brochure; he thought it looked nice. It was at pretty much the opposite corner of the country, in icy New Hampshire. That was half the appeal; he'd never lived someplace like that before.
And so, Narendra applied to an Ivy league college. And was admitted. And received as much financial aid as he needed.
I think there's something to learn from the story of my friend and his parents. He was an intelligent, open-minded person who consistently did well -- and he did it with a philosophy which always felt healthier than that of the stressing, striving, Type-A overachievers. He achieved, sure -- but it seemed to be because he thought it'd be a nice idea to.
Right now, I feel a little too much like a machine. But I hope that one day I can follow that example, at least a little bit. He succeeded by going along a completely path than the one you describe, and he seemed entirely better for it. Maybe you and I can both learn from him?
If you are good at IT, you will be fine in Physics. Physics is the ultimate ADD job. You never do the same thing twice, if you did you are an engineer (and probably a lot better at the one thing you do than a physicist).
If you don't want to take the time out to go back to school, look for a mid size (10-20 people) startup hightech research group. They normally need a jack of all trades IT person to make the infrastructure work efficiently.
Of course, the money will be worse.....:-)
I myself went through a similar thing. After 7 years in IT, I ended up making good money, but really disliking my job. Long story short, I went back to college for a couple of years. While there, besides my studies I took a low-paying student job doing IT work. With my student loans and the job I kept afloat. The commute was cheaper ( 20 minute bike ride each way on my $50 bike ).
While there I also did my usual hobbyist tinkering with Unix, programming, and networking. After a year I got recruited by the networking department. Talking about my hobbyist projects around the coffee maker and taking cig breaks at the loading dock, turned out my interests were a perfect match for the network group.
In the network department I got to develop a lot of new skills, but it was in a spirit of fun. Through contacts I made there, I now spend most of my time working on Juniper routers, in more of a telecom position. What I do is NOT IT, but rather I make a statewide network go flickety-flock. I make a lot more money than I did at the job I hated. A couple of times a week I get in the truck or van and drive 5 or 6 hours to do remote work. Beats being in a cube, and I don't have that "computer janitor" feeling any more.
What do I do when this has run its course? I don't know. Maybe I'll open a guitar shop in the desert or something.
Your kids MUST be your number one priority, but should NOT be your only purpose.
I am sure they are his priority. But how can you be good to your children if you have money but are so miserable they don't like you? I/T, I bet if they did a divorce rate and firing rate study it would be near the top of the list in both accounts. In many places it is a high pressure job with lots of abuse. I/T pays well and is very demanding, but the social life is void. And in the end some business person will fire you anyway.
In the end the children will remember playing baseball, football and not the Nitendo or Xbox. They will remember crib, chess and the times with Dad. We are so caught up with having the latest todays gadgets, we forgot real family values.
I remember the times fishing with my poor grandfather in a row boat as there was not money for the gas/motor. I remember chopping wood as the electric bill would be too much for heat. I remember playing crib with my grandfather all the time. These were simple, cheap family times. I don't remember my dad much, always on the road making big bucks and in the end he blew on women and booze. But the miserable bastard made money. I would have rather had a father.
Yup. I'm a lifer - been in 10 years or so already. =)
Northshield is the kingdom here, though I'm not a member or been to any meets. I moved years ago but I used to go to meets and events in the Kingdom of Trimaris. Like you one of the things I wanted to learn was metallurgy.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Ok generally I lurk but occasionally I see a post that I have personal experience in and I can't keep my mouth shut. I was in your situation only 4 years ago. I started in IT in 1993 and found a very lucrative and rewarding career only to find myself slowly getting bored with the field I thought I loved. I felt like I was just constantly relearning the same skill set over and over in a slightly different variation constantly afraid that my current skillset was going to be obsolete. So I went to law school. In my first weeks in class I learned that in other professions you can learn a skill and still have it be meaningful 10 years later! For example, I studied a contract case that is over 200 years old, and it is still good law and will never be obsolete (in common law countries). That was a revelation and a realization that I don't want to go back on. In IT I had to relearn the same skill set every few years. Now, to be frank I made more money in IT than I do in law now (just graduated). However, I have a whole new perspective and a career path that is solidly supported by two differing skill sets. I am currently working as a litigation technology consultant for a large consulting practice that consults on enormous trials (my first job was $65 Billion). I now have a lot more respect, self confidence, knowledge, and a better perspective. I love having solid IT skills. I also have a LOT more school debt...but I can envision paying it off in 5-10 years and it is "good" debt. I do have a wife and newborn child, my wife is working, and we do ok. Am I living the lifestyle I want? Not yet. But do I feel trapped by my career? Not at all. I have so many more career options now the hardest part is keeping focused on whats in front of me.
I guess the answer depend on what your wife does and wants to do.
If she is earning a good income and is happy with what she is doing then you can chase your dream a bit.
If she's currently a stay at home mother and wants to get back into the workforce then this could also work in your favour. You could aim at rearranging your work (either in your current job or a different one) so as to spend more time at home with your children. Putting more energy into the day-to-day lives of your children is a change in direction too few fathers seem to consider.
Perhaps your wife also feels stuck in a rut. Is there anything business/work wise that you could pursue together? If so then that will probably be more acceptable to your family.
There are other things that you can trade off for money too. For example a job where you work from home would be better for your family than just lots of money.
Also, I think it is positive to set an example for your children that says 'I'm doing what I want to do.' It is important, I think, that kids realise they can pursue careers they are passionate about and have a family. It doesn't have to be a choice.
Conservation of angular momentum makes the world go round.
Stop looking for fun at work. You get paid because people won't do it for free. If people did do it for free it'd be called a hobby or charity work. Jobs are where you make a trade. Your time doing crap for other people in exchange for them paying you money.
Most others responses have it pretty right. Spend time and effort on your family (including your wife not just the kids), find a hobby - the world's full of interesting things to do if you have a bit of spare cash. (I fly remote control aircraft, am into photography and astronomy, and computers - particularly simulation). If you don't have spare cash there are cheaper hobbies (If I couldn't fly r/c I'd go fly a kite as I find that fun)
Only if you're at the point where you're going to do something stupid (like harm yourself or your family, intentionally or otherwise) should you quit your job.
Also realize that if you jump into something else you love doing now, 10 years of doing it might make you disillusioned with that too.
That job might suck sometimes but life would be a lot worse without it.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
no realy.
:O
if u dont like it piss off and make room for me to move up to a job were i'm paid half what i'm worth!!
i might even be able to get a gf and have a family like u
Actually, I've just recently (one year ago) left behind IT after more than a decade. I was tired of running into MCSEs that insisted that Windows Server 2000 had no Small Business Edition a scant hour after I had installed it on a customer machine. I was pissed at having to be on call 24/7/365. So I sat down in the sun on the back porch and started thinking of some other field that interested me, and it hit me like a swig. Brewing! I like beer! Hefeweizens are cool! Hops are neat! Think of all the different grain combinations!
Three months went by with me washing buckets and reading books to prove that I was actually interested. Another nine went by and now I know all sorts of stuff about yeast, hops, worts, grains, bittering agents, and boredom. There isn't that much to it. Where is the excitement that you get when you finally nail that complicated formula or scripting problem? The problems aren't really there, and if they are, they aren't unique. It's all been done.
Besides, the pay is crap.
I'm getting back into IT now, and if anyone out there needs a Linux/Unix sysadmin ar LAMP admin, let me know. Please.
and my wife almost has a masters.
Financial aid is the problem. We are so far in debt that now I need to move in with my parents because a B.A. will not pay the rent if we have to pay $2,000 a month for 30 years to pay for our education. Teachers make shit.
I don't know your situation but have you thought about one of you working full time while the other works on a degree, then once one gets the degree they can work while the other is working on a degree? Unless the economy in your area is really depressed and or prices are high one income should be enough for a couple of years or more. Or maybe both of you can work part time.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I've been in IT for about 11 years now. Getting paid really well, and I like the work. But there is a backdrop to this. I worked in some factories and had very bad experiences as a "blue collar working class guy". Really harsh working conditions and low pay. Then I went to college and got a degree in Environmental Sciences. I worked in that field for about 10 years, and advanced very well. I didn't pay as well as most professional jobs, and eventually I grew tired of it for various reasons. The reasons are not important - it's how you look at your job and life in your current situation. When I was near the end of that career, I got married, and moved into IT. I had a keen interest in it, and took advantage of the Chubb Top Gun program, which no longer exists. I got to get 4 free months of education and then placement with a company, where I had to work as an indentured servant for 8 months at really low pay. But after that my salary increased dramatically ever since. (I can't believe how much I make now.) I have a family to support now, and I do it well, in large part because of my switch to IT. A year ago, I felt exactly the same as you, and made the decision, at considerable risk of stability and accrued benefits, to change my job because I "just couldn't take working for that place anymore". I now have a really good gig that I can definitely live with and allows me to spend plenty of time with my family. Sure, IT is kind of "old" for me, but I think what I am doing now, combined with the family responsibilities, is a reasonable compromise.
So, to summarize - we all eventually grow tired of the same IT stuff after a while. But you can make a change that takes advantage of your experience that will give you enough of a change of scenery and enough challenges to motivate you. Going into something completely different may seem good in the beginning, but you may feel the same as you do now after a number of years. Examine yourself and your own feelings about why you find your work "very tedious, repetitive, and boring".
Good luck.
You have summed up my dilemma exactly, brother. I have been working in IT for just about as long and in many of the same roles and have almost quit twice this year. I'm at a point in my career where I'm making good money and just bought a house, so it would be irresponsible to do anything rash. My issue is more that I hate IT but love technology. When I say IT I mean the end users, change management and politics. Unfortunately end users never seem to go away. The only thing that has made it sufferable (besides the paycheque) is taking the technology home (home automation, media PCs and building my own 'toys'). Playing with some of the bleeding edge technology helps take the sting out of 9 to 5.
The guy wants alternatives to IT and we're playing who's-the-good-dad / who's-the-bad-dad.
The question he raised is legitimate. What else can you do if IT is mined out as a career? Other people outside the industry can answer it for themselves, but what career options are available for people who want to leverage their hard-won existing skills and disciplines (and in IT if you're into it deeply enough, you *will* have them). Can we please track the guy's question?
It strikes a chord with me, too. I'm 58, have been in IT since the SDS 930 was hot kit. I can't use my legacy knowledge, but I can dirty well continue to use the logic, tenacity and creativity those hard yards engendered in my working life.
What about law? I'd say -- read Groklaw for a while, maybe ask a few questions -- what sort of legal training (short of a full law degree) would you need to be able to help the legal professionals with their discoveries? I know there are good legals out there who could use help. Their hair-splitting logic has a certain appeal, and I would suggest good logical people with some care to their use of language -- and a profound knowledge of IT -- might be of some use to the profession.
Downside -- we'd end up with less to gripe about regarding laws and their interpretations. Hey you legal folks, want to venture an opinion here?
IANAL. IAAITP. Some lawyers and paralegals I respect more than the law itself (Hi, PJ!).
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Well if you have gotten past the slurry of goatse references, random trolls, and at least one or two (hundred) Vista jabs, I laud your patience and thank you for reading my $0.02. I was in IT for about 10 years, worked hard, made great money, and never lacked for a job.
But I had to leave.
It wasn't just the continued feel of deja vu. I mean, if you switch jobs or do consulting/contracting, you get used to arguing for the benefits of process, unit testing, design, etc... But everything just was getting so boring. The options of tech people -- staying in the trenches and fighting the same battles year after year or going into management (yawn) weren't really appealing to me. And really at the heart of it was a nagging feeling of there being something that would be better for me to do (more complimentary to my strengths, more intellectually interesting, more personally satisfying).
I think you need to look at what you feel is missing with your job. Many people have suggested looking for a different job in the same field. That is good advice. If you do not think you can get what you need in the field, then consider a job switch. If you think you need a job switch, make sure you and your wife are in agreement on the course of action (well - since I do not have a wife, I would assume this is the best course of action :)
Even though you have a wife and kids, many things are possible. I switched from IT to medical school, and am almost 1/2 way done with my M.D. I have many classmates who are in the 40s (and some in their 50s) with wife and kids and manage to make things meet. I do not regret the switch one bit, and while the loss of income is difficult, it is only temporary.
Many will argue that you need to stay where you are for your kids. Perhaps that is true, although giving your kids an example of having strength/tenacity/etc... to make a positive change in your life might be good as well. You have been given a gift of having options in your life. That is not something that many people in this world have (even in the US). As an engineer you know that there are many ways to fix a problem - the trick is to find the right method for the given situation.
Not sure if this has helped out at all, but you know what they say about free advice...
-- The Genesis project? What's that?
try working in freezing/boiling weather [outside, of course] doing dirty, dangerous, physically exhausting, and [relatively] poorly paying work for a few years.
I don't mean to sound like your dad, but...
Right after I got out of college I went to work in engineering. I was good at it. I hated it. In fact, as a sophomore I did an internship in the same field and promised to myself that i would never do that particular field. So after two years I quit. now I do the previous paragraph. I've been out of the engineering world too long to get back in without some major changes in my life.
A good gig is a good gig. if it pays well, you don't have to risk your life to do it, think about changing occupations real hard. don't talk with your friends about it, talk to a therapist or a spiritual advisor. You need impartial advice. -=$0.02
sig sig sig siggy sig
People always say "do what you love", but I have a different mantra. Most things that people love to do they love to do ON THEIR OWN SCHEDULE. When you HAVE to do it, eventually you come to hate it.
If so maybe you should have more than one hobby. Years ago, before I had an accident, while majoring in Computer Engineering in college I also took classes in dancing and theatre. People who knew me and my major couldn't understand why I'd take these extra classes. I took them because I love dancing and theatre. I also love hiking, gardening, and scuba diving.
In short, my opinion is that most people are going to come to loathe whatever they do for a living. Might not happen as fast if you pick something you like, but EVENTUALLY, you will hate it.
Then when you hate what you do at work change your career. The average American changes careers a number of tymes.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Find something you really enjoy doing. I am nearly at that point myself and am ready to take everything I have learned in IT and beyond and start my own machine shop. I want to get into something I am most passionate about, manufacturing music gear...so that is what I am doing...I hope to be able to make the full transition within about 2 years.
Get a vision, and get a goal...
When I'm feeling less-than-excited about work, I'll take the time to do something random but interesting for a few weeks. Recent things I've tried: volunteer for a political campaign; learn to make bacon and sausage; take a graduate CS class at the local university.
Each one has given me a better sense of perspective about the relative importance and value of my job, and most have taught me things that were worth applying at the office.
At the very least, having something current other than TV shows and weather to talk about with my co-workers makes me feel like a more well-rounded individual, and makes getting through the work day that much easier.
I'm in a similar state of mind, but happily, I have no wife & no kids, just a house.
I've changed over to being a contractor, with the result of increasing my income 4x - 5x over. My plan is to save up, pay off all my debts and go travelling. After a few years of that, maybe I'll know where I want to be. Maybe not.
I plan to work my way: either doing IT, or working as a teacher of English as a Foreign Language (TEFL).
One important detail you don't mention is where you live. The Western developed nations are expensive. There are many places which are not, for instance the Pacific Rim and Latin America, but which offer a high quality of life. Uruguay, for instance, is a quite developed country but much cheaper than North America.
Consider keeping your career but changing your country and indeed language.
Liam P. ~ "Intelligence is a lethal mutation." (me)
For me it's a ceiling. No matter what I do I keep getting stuck with implementation and support instead of design and engineering.
For what it's worth here are my thoughts:
1) IT is ubiquitous. It's time you take a moment and assay what else you love and see if you can combine it with IT. I've just finished a Bachelors in Theater Arts / Directing with a minors in Business. My journey begins in about 2 weeks when the final credits are complete.
2) Research the trends and see what takes your fancy. Two that come to mind are handheld computing and also a more business orientated approach to computing, such as Business Analyst and Technical Architect.
3) Make your peace. If you haven't already found an outside hobby perhaps its time to invest time in one or invest more time in it. Find what you love beyond the daily grind, but be aware that IT is competitive and if you are not driven to do it for whatever reason you will be finding a new position. Hopefully that will happen when you've found a new calling instead of being outsourced or replaced.
4) Consult with your wife. Me and mine got a little crossways because we were "reinventing" ourselves at the same time. Perhaps its time for her to hit her power stroke while you explore what you want. Mine has the job she loves and now I get some time to explore my new "niche". In the end working for just the money won't cut it.
Well wishes to you!
"Don't fear death... fear not living..." -me
It's a job. You have a wife and kids. Feelings are irrelevant. Be a man, money, safety, security first. Period.
I know how you feel and so I went looking for greener pastures, found them and returned completely reinvigorated. It changed my way of thinking, looking from the outside in.
You're in a really good place, if your ready to make a move anyway, start taking risks at work. Do projects you feel need to be done, shake things up. What's the worse that'll happen they'll get rid of you - for taking initiative.
The only way to get out of the doldrums is to pick a direction and move. The two directions listed here - move on and return or shake things up and leave forever are only two. What ever you do don't forget to be a decent person, if if you're a risk taker you will be rewarded.
For a third option...consider Plumbing.
The truth is, we don't live in a society where this is possible. We don't live in a society where going to college is an option.
The options that todays youth have are
1. Go to college
2. Go into the military/law enforcement/government/church
3. Go to prison
We do not live in an environment where opportunities are free. In order to get something from this society you have to give up a part of yourself. You must play the game, and play to win.
I know this is hard for people to accept. I did not instantly accept reality, but reality is what it is. Opportunity is not free. Happiness is not free.
Why ? Because we don't have universal healthcare. Healthcare is not free. We don't have universal college education, so creating opportunity is not free. The truth is, you have to sacrifice parts of yourself to survive in a world which demands more and more from you.
Now the world is demanding a masters degree from you, and threatening you with life in a ghetto if you don't get one. The world also threatens you with death if you don't pay for health insurance, and the world will let your kids die if you can't afford to protect them.
We do not live in a world where success is free. This is why a lot of the time the most successful people are the least happy. It seems the people at the very top and very bottom are the least happy, and the middle class has some kind of happiness but at the same time the middle class has this ridiculous sense of entitlement, as if you just deserve to have a job, or physical security, just because you are born and are happy.
Don't you realize that if you don't sacrifice your happiness for success, that the billions of the worlds poor in Asia and Africa would gladly be willing to get Masters degrees and take your place? What are your kids supposed to do when your kids have to compete with people from Africa and Asia who speak 5 languages and who all have MBA's?
It's simple. The America middle class will not exist in 50 years because the American middle class has a sense of entitlement, a sense that this middle class will always exist, and that they can focus on being happy.
Well guess what? This middle class life that you have now, the people in Asia and Africa are coming to take that from you. Why? Because they WILL become machines, and WILL sacrifice their happiness, and WILL work 80 hour work weeks, and WILL get MBA's and learn 5 languages.
And they will do this because they want a better life than the one they have. And to top it all off, they'll work for less money than you will.
Do you see the problem with your story now?
Get yourself a nice red convertible and put the top down. Find an IT job with less/no after hours requirements. It's just a job, apply the dedication you use to apply to the job to your family and happiness&well-being.
If the govt becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law, it invites man to become his own law, it invites anarchy
all my previous landlords in a major metropolitan city have either been gay couples, married couples without kids, and bachelor men in the 40s without kids. This struck me at one point that perhaps that not having children might be related by being financially successful and my parents didn't have me until they were well in their 30s
From another anecdotal perspective: My sister got married while earning her BA to a blue collar construction worker. After the wedding she moved to his homestate whereupon she got pregnant. Between morning sickness and homesickness they moved back. Once back while working and raising her son she finished her BA and then her Masters. Now she works for a business she and some friends started. On top of that she now owns some rental property.
Sure there are plenty of exceptions of people able to be financially successful while having kids at an early age but for the vast majority of Americans having kids early hampers your ability to finish college and get a successful career.
Ok, I see you say there are exceptions.
The major point that many people overlook when having kids is that not only are you impacting yourself but you are all impacting the person you bring into the world because if you can't afford to send them to college, stastically speaking on the average they aren't going to go.
I come from a low income family. My dad enlisted in the military and my mom worked part tyme, while raising my 2 sisters and me, and attended a technical school to be certified as a lab tech in a hospital. Both of my sisters and I went on to college. My older sister is now a nurse and my younger one, as I say above, runs her own business.
Now with the recession, having kids will be almost intolerable for an entire generation. There was an article on CNN about people putting off having kids with the economic situation we are having these days. Anyone seriously responsible would give it a great deal of thought at this point of our history whether or not to have children.
Not only do I agree but I'd add that almost everyone should think long and hard on whether they will have children no matter the state of the economy. People never know the future, there could be a booming economy like there was in the 1990s to have the economy go south like it is today.
FalconShould there be a Law?
This may not apply, because the ending is '...and now he has a job as a developer...' but it's still something that I've considered inspiring when thinking about life and career.
For, basically my whole life, I had this great plan. Go to school, get a degree, get a girl, get married, get a career, have kids, die. Seemed like all I needed to know when I was young -- unfortunately, I completed most of that list by the time I was 22 and suddenly it seemed kinda depressing. I thought for a long time about a career change, but I kept saying to myself "I can't change careers, I've already invested 8/9/10 years down this path..."
Then I met this guy at my work place, and started talking with him about how he got here. He was working as a developer on my team, and he was in his late 40s. Being young, this was weird to me. The average age in the office was probably 27 or so, so this guy definitely stuck out.
When I asked how he got here, he told me a bunch about where he'd come from.
He grew up in a small town, on a farm, in a very religious family. Up until some time in his late teens, he was destined to take over the farm. At some point, though, he picked up a French Horn, and decided that it seemed interesting, so he signed up for a Music degree at a local Christian University, and off he went.
A couple years later, he dropped out to take a position with a symphony. This lasted for about two years, and then he made a pretty major life change. As part of the change, he distanced himself a great deal from his past, including the horn, so he dropped what he was doing and became a trucker.
A few years driving trucks, and he'd seen a good deal of North America. He met some friends out on the West Coast, and decided that he wanted to move on out. He could settle with his job as a trucker, which he loved, so he had to change up his life again. He made a career change into a wholesale/retail operation.
He worked in the retail sector until the early 90s, then his company started tracking inventory in this 'database' thing. This marked his move into the IT sector as a DBA. He took some time here and there to invest into a new passion of his: writing. And he did that semi-professionally for quite some time.
He worked in 'light IT' for about 6 years, doing simple DBA and dev work, and then wanted to take the plunge into full on application dev. No one would have him without a formal education. So, he quit what he was doing, took four months off with no pay, and got a couple of certifications, and now he has a job as a developer.
For me, meeting this guy has been one of the most liberating experiences in my (still pretty young) life. It doesn't sound that cool at first, but for me, I'd always been led to believe that 10 years is a long time to do something - far too long to consider doing something else. Also, once you had a good paying job with a 'career path' you should shut up and stick to it until you retire.
This guy has been a farmer, a musician, a trucker, a retailer, a DBA, a writer and at 45 years of age, he made another career change to a developer.
He's taught me that I'm not committed because I've done something for ten years; rather, I have 40 more years of work to get through, which is a whole lot of time to change gears, try something else new, and see what else is out there.
You've got a long life in the work force - you might as well take some chances and make the most of it.
BattleCat - even if Hans Reiser is an arrogant condescending loudmouth who behaves erratically, there is no way to explain away his patterns and behavior after Nina went missing.
Hosing out the inside of his car? Yeah, I would be interested in cleaning my car if my wife went missing. And I would somehow forget about it being all wet when I told the cops that's why I removed the seat - so I could sleep in an inch or so of water?
And the drive to sample a buffet? Yeah, I drive across country to go eat at a buffet. And how does anyone explain away a six inch circle of blood by saying it happened during sex? Must have been pretty rough and with no lubrication, huh?
Or the blood inside their house. They had sex on a pillar? I don't think so.
I think you might be right about the emotional part, though, and that is why Nina is no longer alive and her body disposed of. Him and his martial arts and emotionality is why she is dead.
He might not be a premeditated murderer, but all signs point to him being a murderer.
I was in a similar situation. I came across 2 career paths that leveraged my CS background, my facility with spoken and written (human) language, and my positive, outgoing personality.
/. crowd.
1) The path I chose was to become an R&D Tax specialist. Gov't gives tax incentives for qualifying R&D work. Claiming yourself can be hard, so you hire consultants like Deloitte & Touche (employer plug) to do it for you. That's where I come in. This is a dream job for me, because I get to stay current with a lot of cool technology coming out, I get the behind the scenes look at many tech companies, talk to smart people, discuss ideas, document them, and move on. There are also boutique firms that do this kind of work, but a large professional services firm is more likely to be interested in fully developing you, as is definitely the case with D&T.
2) The path I originally explored was becoming a patent agent. Similar in many respects to my chosen path, but I've found accountants much more laid back and open to work/life balance than lawyers. And this is a particularly poor choice karma-wise for the
Both are paths with good salaries and potential for upward mobility. Check it out.
--
quality costs *less*
From replies here some people say "stop complaining and appreciate what you've got", others say "take a chance while you can".
It really depends on you and your wife's attitude to lifestyle, risk and your need for change. Your kids can probably handle a change to a new school or the country side or whatever. They're flexible. Wives are trickier. Does she want to move away from her friends/family? Does she want to lose the SUV? Does she want to lose the nice clothes and not having to work (or not have to work too much)?
I suspect what you're thinking of is a change or career without losing income. This will save a lot of grief on the home front.
I really understand where you're coming from in terms of needing a change. Sure some people are ok in the same career for life. Others just slowly die on the inside having to get up and do the same job every day. It gets to the point where you can't relate to your family or you feel you've not done anything significant with your life and time is ticking by.
After 20+ yrs in computing I went back and studied counselling and built up a practice in the evenings. It was very fullfilling but a lot more stress really. I ended up with major health issues so had to cut right back. Now I do share trading and am building up enough skill and funds to retire in 5 or so years (at the current rate). It has the main advantage of not requiring much time and still being intellectually stimulating.
Other pursuits such as setting up an online business (or less likely to succeed, writing) are good too, because, like share trading, the profit returned is not directly connected to the hrs you work. Like if you write some software and sell it online you write once and sell again and again, same with a book. How about a technical book on the area you specialise in at work? That will utilise your experience so you're not throwing those years away. You can build up slowly in the evenings. The chance of publishing technical material is far greater than fiction. Also writing, an online business and shares can all be done from anywhere in the world.
Or start an online newsletter, again on the technical subjects you know. You might even get your wife to work with you helping with layout or web design (if you're going to do it yourself) and startup costs are very low.
It may take a while and you'll make mistakes but just starting on something new will be a breath of fresh air and may give you impetus to try other things. It'll at least give you the heart to realise there's an end in sight, a way out.
If your heart is saying you need to get out before you die inside, then listen to it, speak to your wife and then write down some plans, set some goals. Idealise your perfect life you want in 5 or 10 yrs and work back from that to see what you have to do to get there - where would you be in 2 years then? So if you're at that point in 2 yrs, where do you need to be in 12 months, 6 months, next month? This will help you to act and also see it is possible to change. The first steps are small but with a plan you can see how it will start you towards that final goal.
This may be nonsense talk to some people and to others it'll be a breath of fresh air before they go postal or the last light fades from their weary eyes. I guarantee your wife and kids will love a newly reinvigorated you and your zest for life will be infectious. Your kids have great lessons to learn from watching you work through your own issues and sorting out what's important. Later in life they then have the option to choose to do the corporate 9-5 thing or branch out on their own and they know they have a great example to look up to for both of those things.
I wouldn't say anything to the people at work though - just do it quietly on the side until you're ready to leave. Then, when you're ready to jump, still take accumulated annual leave or better yet, negotiate to cut back your day job to 3 or 4 days a week (tell them it's for health reasons or something). This way you can transit
pithy comment
I recently (last week) quit my current job to take another engineering job in a completely different domain (left aerospace for digital signal processing), and I can say that the change is very refreshing. I used to dread waking up in the morning to go to another day of the same old crap at the office. Often, all it takes to regain motivation is the necessity to learn something new. I'm now excited to wake up every morning and go to work. I know eventually that feeling will pass, and it will be time to move on again. I will eventually hit the "Value Apex" again. Link
It's not a bug, it's a feature
It's not even worth pointing out how deeply flawed your premises are, how twisted your conclusions. Nor is it worthwhile to speculate how sad your life must be. One can't even call you crazy for believing what you do. You're simply not interested in other people's opinions or ideas. That's fine, but few are interested in your version of the One True Whatever. So maybe quit with the trolling and the ranting? Be on topic? Use logic when assembling an argument? Spelling and grammar are optionals :)
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
i'm in my mid 30s. i left IT 4 years ago because it wasn't for cowboys and adventurers any more. i'm retired now. i thrived on the edge; you'd never catch me writing unit test code. another issue is that no matter how well you're paid, you never get the customer feedback that gives you ultimate satisfaction -- that you're being of use to this world.
the interesting part in IT today is efficient management, whether of human or computing resources. witness cloud computing and its popularity -- good use of IT to provide easily managed resources.
i'm a cowboy, and got tired of being a sys architect/team leader. i had manager(s) and a team, and what i wanted was freedom. especially from the sucky manager who wanted me to be in by 10am.
that was 4 years ago. i left IT, promised myself that i would never write a resume again, and went into Real Estate and built a tidy portfolio of investments. i retired in Jan 2008. not a day goes by where i thank my stars that i don't have a fucking boss to deal with.
I would agree with others who have said this: sit down with your wife and look at your finances. Consider how to live as frugally as possible to save money to either go back to school to train for another profession or to invest to start another career, or just to save yourself in the recession. OR look to hobbies or outside activities for your joy.
That said, consider changing your perspective. There is a great Jewish joke about a man who complained to his rabbi that his home was too crowded and noisy. The rabbi told him to move his goats INSIDE his house... It is a long joke. Look it up. In the end, when the rabbi told him to take the goats back outside (along with all the OTHER animals he'd taken inside), the man realized how nice and quiet it was in his home!
CHANGE YOUR PERSPECTIVE. Here's something to ponder... It ~could~ be your life in the future (or something like it could happen to you). I sincerely hope not...
I had a job which I loved. I worked in it for about 15 years and found it was starting to become boring as you described. I changed to part-time (2/3) and joined a company doing something else which I loved to do as a hobby. It was great for several years, except I became a workaholic and neglected my family. Not so good...
And then what? My health went to hell. I became disabled. (NOTE: 1/3 people become disabled at least temporarily in their lives.) I lost my job and subsequently lost my marriage. Now I live alone - without a workplace to socialize with people with similar interests and intellectual development. (I've found that just socializing at work was something I look back on fondly. I think many folks underestimate how much it means to them to have colleagues or friends at work...)
So, what next? I worked as a consultant, got a Masters degree in a field that interested me (and then found out my disability limited me too much to really work in the field). Then my kids went off to college and our contact diminished as it should when they leave the nest...
And now? I see a shrink to adjust my antidepressants, which aren't working well enough (obviously). I read a lot. I try to socialize as much as I can. I'm considering volunteering to mentor high school (or younger students) in science (which is greatly needed), and am considering writing an article or book which I wished someone else had written on a topic which interests me greatly.
I am in constant pain. I start every day I gritting my teeth, waiting for the pain to subside so I can do the simplest things, like a load of laundry or shopping for food. (I bet you take those for granted, don't you?) I pace myself, usually doing only one thing each day to minimize the pain... Sounds pathetic, doesn't it?
YET! I enjoy a beautiful sunset, pleasant music, intellectually challenging things I read and other moments in the day. They are only moments, but these are the things that keep me alive. Without those moments I would be dead.
Think about it! What if you lost your vision, the ability to read the code you work with or the code you write. What if you had a brain injury which made it difficult for you to express yourself (such as ideas which you currently put into code). Aren't you glad you HAVE a wife and kids? Aren't you glad you have two legs to walk on or run with your kids?
Take some time to think about how many things you are grateful for!
Good luck and hang in there!
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Ran a network for a *big* name company about 10 years ago (hint - they just keep on dropping the ball with revolutionary technologies, like the idea of a GUI, etc). Anyway, after getting into much of the same, linux/unix, MS products, Novell etc etc etc, I was getting bored. I was actually beginning to hate the idea of a "new release"...each felt like more of the same crap, and I was just having to learn the peculiarities of each new product. So... I left the group for a life of popping pustules, and legally distributing various pharmaceuticals. Get a job you actually like - you'll be happier no matter what...
PS. I didn't have kids, so YMMV...
PPS. I still owe a whopping load of cash.
ppps. the rest of my small group continued upgrading their skills, moved to CA, and took on consulting jobs...they all make more than me now
PPPPS. Thanks to Francois, for really rubbing it in one New Years Eve, when he called me from San Jose suggesting I come visit, and he'd let me drive his year-old BMW, while he took out the new XJS
So, in order for your statement to be true, it would be sufficient to show that most of those factors have remained constant for all populations and that one or a few have consistently decreased. Then, as health is a factor in quality of life, argue that the advances in medical science of the last few centuries (my original stated timeframe) are outweighed by the regressive tendencies of the other factor(s).
Can't do that? Hmm. Maybe what you say is ridiculous on its face then. Maybe that means you shouldn't have said it...
Everything in that wikipedia quote is debateable.I could make the case that quality of life has gone down, that we have a lot less freedoms than the previous generation had. That life is far more complex and a lot less rewarding than the previous generation. That the obesity,cancer and heart disease rates are proof that our diets are not as good as the previous generations or even as good as some of the developing countries.
I'll agree with you that science has advanced a lot, but I'd say science has just made it easier for our bosses to keep track of us and keep us working longer hours. Can we really say that science is improving our quality(not quantity) of life?
I work in a library and i find it much better then the corporate world. NO rush to do projects. Everybody is friendly . More freedom to do things like check out linux. Its just a huge change from the corporate world. Give you the chance to actually enjoy IT.
The truth of the matter is, society is cold, heartless, and ruthless. You've got to look out for #1, that is the only rule in society and in capitalism. That is the only rule in politics.
Look out for #1, protect you and yours, and I'll protect me and mine. And that is American capitalism.
You can say that not every American believes in the capitalist culture, but the truth is, the people who make the decisions don't really care what you or I believe in. They have decided on this form of capitalism where we work longer and harder, they have decided to let the environment get this bad, and my thinking and philosophy is very flexible.
When my environment changes, my philosophy changes to adapt to my environment. I don't keep a static philosophy in an environment of constant change. This means when the economy is good perhaps I won't be so pessimistic, but we are in pessimistic times.
The USA is in the process of collapse, you can believe what I'm saying or stay naive, but the dollar is sinking and oil is rising, which means the USA is collapsing. If the USA is collapsing and we hit rock bottom, we will end up with another Gilded Age and another Depression.
If you look at what our bosses/leaders are saying, they are just telling us to compete more, work harder, and compete with the billions of Asians, and Africans in a fight for our lives/jobs. So we no longer dictate the rules anymore, if we ever did. If they say you have to work longer hours just to maintain your current quality of life, then you'll have to work longer hours.
And if you want your children to have a quality of life as good as yours, if you have a bachelors degree, your children need a masters degree. This means you can't keep doing the same thing you have been doing anymore. It's not enough to just stay afloat and get by in an environment where your job and your skills aren't extremely valuable.
What I'm trying to say is, we are not in a position to dictate what kind of capitalism we have. We have global capitalism, in a global economy, with global corporations, and therefore we have global competition.
How do you expect to survive if you keep acting like you have the same challenges and competition level that your grand parents had? You don't live in the same world they had, they did not have competition from China, India, Africa and Mexico offering ever cheaper yet more skilled labor.
I respect your point of view, I just think it's an outdated view of the world. It's the old view of the new world and it isn't going to work in a global economy. Perhaps if the economy were not global I'd be taking the exact same view as you.
Look around you a bit more, young man.
Those people who are your bosses who you think are leaving you such a bad thing -- they're not retiring early or enjoying it any more than you are.
They make more money, but they also spend more money.
The only way to BEAT them (or the system) is to live far below your means, save more than you earn, and learn to be happy with it.
My family's not "aristocratic" by any stretch of the imagination. Only my youngest sibling ever completed a college degree, and yet every generation has retired early and enjoyed themselves along the way.
It's all about teaching a different set of money values. You work to save, not to spend... so you don't have to work anymore.
Mom and Dad both "retired" from middle-management jobs in their 50's, taking "early out" offers when they were offered. That's timing and luck a little bit, but they were both financially prepared to leave when the opportunity presented itself. Both now have "retirement jobs" because not working is pretty boring, and my generation and my siblings are following suit.
We work hard, young. Put as much of it away as we can, and play hard but frugally when we play, so life's still enjoyable. The habits get built up to live on very little money over time, and when it comes time to "retire" you have things paid off and ready to go.
Quit whining about "the system" and learn how it works. Spend less than everyone else expects you to. Laugh when they ask why you drive a 10 year old car, knowing that you've done the math and even with extra maintenance and an annual mechanical issue or two, you've saved tens of thousands of dollars versus your peers. Buy a smaller house than you want. (I messed up on this one but it's not ruined me.)
Choose. Every day. Choose to KEEP whatever you have made for yourself. It's yours. It gives you options other people don't have.
+++OK ATH
Around 1880 or so, an exciting, growing field was "stationary engineering". Factories and cities were getting steam and electric power, and people were needed to make it all work. This was a good field for a bright young person interested in technology. "Stationary engineers" installed the equipment and kept it going.
Stationary engineering is still an active field. There are about 120,000 members of the Stationary Department of the International Union of Operating Engineers, keeping the wheels going around, the boilers hot, and the pressure within limits. The symbol of the IUOE is a steam pressure gauge. These are important jobs. Without them, industrial civilization would literally grind to a halt.
It's been a long time since stationary engineering was an exciting growth industry. Today, it's a dull maintenance job. That's where most of information technology is going.
Except that IT isn't unionized.
This only applies to people who already think like you do. If you aren't already in this mentality, what you have said is pretty nonsensical.
Who is demanding masters of anyone? I am working as a systems administrator now, and recently got offered a 90k job as director of IT. I studied philosophy in college, I might as well have been a highschool dropout. Even my first boss said my education was completely irrelevant in my application.
The problem is, people like you think you get paid for your education. No. You get paid for being useful and accomplishing things. You don't have to be a college graduate to work in a fedex store, spot a way to cut costs by 15-20%, get a raise, and 5 years later be a regional manager. I have friends who have done just this. You don't have to work 90 hour weeks at a law firm to move up - you can accomplish the same goal by spending 2 hours in a bar after hours.
anyways, there was no problem with his story. People who are genuinely driven to do something because they think it is a worthwhile thing to do will, with a bit of intelligence, always have no problem in accomplishing it.
There are LOTS of other options than the three you describe. If that's your view of the world, you missed something so big somewhere in your upbringing that it's going to be a struggle to show you anything different.
Let's take one you WILL understand... work your way in from the bottom up. It *can* be done. Why do I know?
I have no degree. My career started as a call center operator. From there, a lowly callcenter technician, then on to Field Engineering (Appeasement Engineer), Product Support Specialist, Lead Product Support Engineer, Data Center Engineer, and now the "official" title is Technical Account Representative. I handle as a single-point-of-contact, all of the technical requests of a medium-sized hardware vendor that come in from a multi-billion dollar telecom carrier. I've been in meetings where VP's of these companies were listening (with interest) to what I had to say... because I tell them how to alleviate risks (I've seen most of them in over 10 years of doing this job, and 15 years in the industry) and how to make money. In fact "alleviating risk" is just techie speak for "keeping the money they made".
I studied and spent lots of time fixing things no one else wanted to fix, but needed fixing. I figured things out when multi-million dollar systems wouldn't run. I was persistent at doing a good job, sometimes to a fault. And it does get noticed.
You won't get there fast, but you won't have $50K in student loans either.
Along the way I got a pilot's license, have flown search and rescue missions, worked with radios and radio systems (as a hobby, but now people ask me questions about how their radios work), helped build some computer systems that are used worldwide (and learned that a team of dedicated and interested people is all that you need to do this -- not "budgets" and marketing and hand-waving, just a need and a group of people determined to fill that need)... and in all -- have had a marvelous time doing all of it.
NONE of it with a degree. I was working on a degree back when I got the call center job to pay the gas and school bills. Back then I had that job, and also threw baggage for an airline and US Mail during holiday rushes. I had to choose where I spent my money carefully, and work hard.
It's all about work ethic. And it does all get better if you have one. I've seen a lot of "educated" people come and go, some making more money than me, some less... but if I stop to take time to compare myself to them (and everyone falls into this trap once in a while), I wouldn't be where I am today.
Learn to work. Learn to enjoy whatever it is that you're doing. Learn to play. Ignore others who say you're doing it wrong.
+++OK ATH
.. but sometimes one needs to find something in their everyday work routine and capitalize on it, but more on that shortly.
I saw a comment earlier about working in less than ideal conditions, like on a farm outside for a living. People with âoecrappyâ jobs like that are just as likely to love/hate their job as anyone else. While there is more physical demand there is more physical satisfaction, such as physically seeing a house you built or the seeing the very ground transformed like in the farming example above.
Take a more active roll in things, make it your personal mission to improve upon something that has a direct impact on the company. Sometimes personal satisfaction is the only thing that makes people happy enough to keep coming in every day. Without more information I canâ(TM)t give you a good example but you mention it being repetitive, find a way to automate things. Usually the people who hate doing a repetitive task are the best to automate it because due to negativity they are more in tune with every process. A normal person tries to tune repetitive things out, for a frustrated person every step grates on them.
Even if you are in IT your company still has an infrastructure like any other and usually that means there is an opening somewhere else in the company that focuses on something different.
I was unemployed for an extended period due to a change of government - I live in Canberra, Australia, and at election time about 20% of the people employed or contracted to the public service stand to lose their jobs based on federal priorities.
For about six months I was on "new start" payments, while looking for a new programming job. Then one day I woke up and just decided to go apply for a light earth moving course - it turns out that retraining is part of the services available at subsidised rates through the "new start" programme, so I ended up with something constructive to do rather than applying for positions that I knew I'd never actually get.
Operating earthmoving equipment was fun while it lasted, but I never got a real job in the industry - everyone working here was from Sydney (300km away) and I didn't want to move to Sydney to get the job just so I could commute back to Canberra to do the work. I had a partner at the time, which complicated my decision.
Now I'm back in IT, thinking about moving into earthmoving again - with no partner to worry about, this time I'll be prepared to move for an interesting job.
Earthmoving is fun - the kind of fun you can have down the beach fun. Well, when you can work around the fact that you have to build exactly this sandcastle, not just the one that exists in your imagination :)
...running for office. Start small: maybe school board or city council. It's something you could do without letting go of the career you already have. I don't know where you live, but where I come from, most of the successful politicians started off with other careers and then did political work in the evenings. They didn't have to quit their day jobs until they were well-established in politics. It might not be your kind of thing, but it would be pretty different from what you do now, it's low risk (financially), and you'd be working to make the world a better place. (Believe it or not, that IS the reason most politicians get started.)
Perhaps try for a full time telecommute, to be with your family more. Or try looking for another job in a smaller firm where you could have a hand in more than just IT. Or,if you just have to leave IT, think about what you would enjoy doing most, find a field using that with similar pay and take some classes to prepare for that change. The classes may be enough distraction to allow you to enjoy your job, but if they are not, you are still preparing for a change.
Yer woman is your number one priority. Kids are up there, but not the same. Unless you're doing something really sick and illegal.
Remember, your kids are going to grow up and leave. Your wife? She's there until you kick the bucket.
I follow a simple moto. Do what I Love and Love what I Do. This keeps me in spirit and keeps me going every day, even when things get tough.
Enjoy
You were supposed to have automated all the repetitive parts by now. Or are you using that point and click stuff that you can't script?
I made a midlife career change at 44. I've been doing IT consulting for several years and am still enjoying it. But I also know that IT isn't for everyone, and even for those it suits, it doesn't always have to be a lifetime career choice.
If you're feeling stale, move on to something that interests you. If you're just in it for the money, you'll become another soulless time-server who just kills the enjoyment of the job for those of us who still give a shit.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
Still one of my fav ask/. articles is related to this one is "Where to go after a lifetime in IT"
http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/07/05/09/1728252.shtml
I still try to keep in mind the deathbed rule that one commenter mentioned. Put up and shut up, or start living your life with no regrets
I am old enough to remember when there was not so much angst about having to get "rich". We all sound like we are living in a 2cd world country, gone back to only thinking about survival. Unfortunately it appears that is becomming true. Part of the reason is because we have such low expectations. There is no reason we cannot have a decent job market with enough opportunity that we have extraordinary choices, like being able to work something fulfilling. There is also no reason that we cannot have a more stable foundation without all the economic turmoil our ideologies have us caught into now. We must just choose to make a better way. We have all the resources to do it. Unfortunately it seems so many are willing to accept a "dog eat dog" society. We are moving backwards, not forwards....
If you look around you at what is happening to the economy, and what direction it's headed THEN make up your mind about.. ..it is not better to search a job in europe! Away from the depression and other bad stuff.
But okay, you have a family, it is a little bit hard to change your home.
But its worth thinking of.
I also have been in the IT industry for 12 years. Frankly, I'm tired of it all. My frustration stems from all of the new technology that is released on what seems like a monthly basis. When I first started, the only thing I had to worry about was Windows NT and some desktop software. Now I've decided to start my own business which is getting off the ground now. I still work, but I know if I work hard enough on my business, I should be able to quit my job in a year. If anybody else is tired of IT or their job in general, let me know. ijuiced@gmail.com
oh, and for the record my estimate of 2,080 hours of work is per year, 40 hours a week. compared to 8760 hours total in a year, and that's counting the ones you sleep.
I'm kind of struggling through the same thing. (My first problem is that I'm only recently graduated and haven't had a chance to work a full career in IT - but that's neither here nor there. :P Maybe if I'd have a little more luck finding jobs...)
:) What matters is that you live a good life now, and if you're clawing your way through life,
First I thought like you did: hey, I'll do what I love! Unfortunately for me, there isn't much future in "backpacking" careers, metal workers actually don't make all that much money, and my interest in "shooting things" really only qualifies me to be a hitman or join the military - both career choices which, unfortunately, aren't great for a family man.
And, in all seriousness, changing careers these days - if you want to be paid much of anything - involves spending a fair amount of time going back to school, and then starting all over. They make the whole process quite unappealing.
(So if you're young and inexperienced right now, and trying to decide what you want to do with your life/what to major in, I suggest actually working somewhere, for shit wages, and trying to live on it for a while. And then go to school; it'll give you new perspective.)
Now, I'm resigned to dying young - either that, or just 'trudging away' to put the bread on the table, and enjoy my time off. There are a lot worse fates that working a relatively easy job which allows you to use your head instead of your back to earn a living, and having time off and money on the weekends.
Someone else said, "Do what you love. In the end it is all that matters." I'd argue that, in the end, nothing at all matters, because you're dead.
Of course, another option is to just work less, or work smarter. If there's a demand for your time, charge more for it, and spend more of it yourself. Time, my friend, is truly the only thing you've got, and if you've not got enough to spend the money you've made, what good is the money?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
...had the same problem. He quit computers and started a night club -- http://dnalounge.com/
[off-topic: even though I love regular expressions, and I use them all the time, I find JWZ's comment about regexes hilarious -- mainly because I can apply it to any technology I hate. He said something like: "Programmer has a problem. He decides to use regexes. Now he has two problems"!]
It strikes me as funny that a forum of techies like /. gives you such completely Neanderthal answers. You have to be responsible to your kid apparently means you have to bring in the bacon, and it is implied that your wife sits at home and needs taking care of.
/. has erroneously been making so far:
Our situations are similar in that I have worked at HP for 12 years and went through the same arch of experience as you, meaning holding different jobs and having a wife and a kid and a good salary but doubting the point of it all. My wife however is a very intelligent woman who finished her army time in the VMS operator group, got into HP after the IDF and then became an ASM and later on support engineer for the EMEA region, just like me. This is, after all, how we met.
So having said that I would like to tackle two base assumptions
1) You want to start your own business.
You never said that. You said you want to do something you love. I have been thinking of becoming a certified teacher so that I would teach English, Dutch or Lit. The other things I can come up with are starting to work as a chef or a record store employee. While all of these options would mean a drop in pay, they are by no means dis-honorable professions, and they do give you a pay check.
Making a career change might or might not mean a drop in income, but doesn't need to be less "stable" per se. Whatever that means. God knows they've been outsourcing people like us by the droves anyway, so "security" is all very relative.
2) Your wife is left out of the picture.
I have a son of 3 months now. But my wife will definitely get back to work in August, and her salary almost equals mine. She's been with the company for 10 years, rather, so there's the explanation for the gap.
My wife and I function as a peer-level economical unit. If one wants to make executive decisions about career changes, the other needs to approve of said change. But at the end of the day, we grant each other the freedom to entertain these thoughts, because we know we could survive very comfortably on one HP salary and one "career-change-salary".
So depending on your relationship with your wife, her education level and her profession, I would argue that you could even take a 6 month to a year sabbatical to be with your kids while she brings home the bacon so that you can spend some time with your family and ponder what you want to do in life.
Now, having said that I must caution you about something. I've thought about the IT industry long and hard, and it beats working in a coal mine. I say this because the money and fringe benefits are good. I get to travel a bit, routinely speak to people from ~14 different countries or more, and have a diverse job.
Any other job that you will take because you have a passion for it will invariably also turn out to be just that. A Job. Because such is the nature of Jobs. So I think it might be worthwhile to adapt an attitude of "I work to live, I don't live to work" instead, and re-think why you are disappointed with your work. I switch jobs within HP every 2-3 years to keep motivated and to keep on my toes.
Depending on your options, you might find out IT ain't all that bad. Just get a hobby. Or two. This was my conclusion, but do as you will. You're not the only one that can bring home the bacon. I assume your wife is not a numbnut.
I'm in the same boat. When your resume is full of IT experience, it makes it hard. And I sympathize with the money thing...it's very tempting to keep slogging it out to support your lifestyle. But ultimately you have to do what is right for you as well as your family. My solution was to retool. I saved up as much as I could and enrolled in an MBA program that I'll start in the fall. That isn't necessarily going into "Management". Finance, Marketing, and HR are all possibilities. You don't have to return to managing High Tech. Additionally, with the Baby Boomers retiring from a large number of high-ranking positions, there is going to be a vacuum. Now is a great time to get ready to fill that vacuum. There are tons of other graduate programs to consider as well. Of course, this requires that leave your job, which means tightening your belts temporarily. But struggling together as a family can strengthen you, if you approach it with a unified front. And in the end you'll probably end up making more money. All good things.
While it may not be what you expected for youself when you started in IT industry work with what pays the bills and seek your personal fullfillment among family and friends when you're not working.
You and I have some serious fundamental disagreements about how the world works. That is fine--I will be the first to admit that economic theory is voodoo to me. However, I have the feeling that if you try this magical get rich business plan you will find that Reality is waiting for you and when it finds you it will not be kind.
Yea, reality is strange isn't it? My sisters and I came from a low income family with no money to speak of. While my parents didn't have any college education, their children worked their way at least partially through college. My older sister is now a nurse. My younger sister got her Masters degree and now a partner in her own business as well as owns some rental property. Maybe it makes a difference than our parents raised us to believe we could be and do almost anything we wanted as long as we worked at it hard. My mom would be among the first to tell the person asking what he should do to start his own business.
It's better to dream, work on fulfilling that dream, and fail than not dream at all.
FalconShould there be a Law?
If you want to go into business for yourself, wait until the kids are out of the house. You'll see even less of them because self-employment is a tough taskmaster.
Maybe your wife has some skills and can go back to work while you transistion?
[signature]
"Now, IT is no where as bad as being a front line soldier (no ones buddy was ambushed by a sniper in the server room) but overall the same issues that are bad for the mind for the soldier are the same for the IT person." [Parent] I may work in the same building. Please stop making stuff like this sound like a good idea. I kid. Seriously my advice is to do something like porting VB6 to C# for some small company. Anything you do after that will seem more palatable.
For anyone thinking of leaving a good paying job, keep this in mind before you do something you will regret... I have a relative who fell out of love with his good paying (non technology) job and quit without another good job to jump to. He is a substitute teacher now at a local middle school and in case you are wondering, he does not like it. I am talking about a guy who was making over 200k per year. The main reason he quit is because he hated his boss. He hates his small paycheck a lot more now. We are not going through a Great Depression now, but economic indicators are similar.
My Grandpa told me a long time ago (1982), "Utefan001, don't ever quit a job without having a better job to jump to. I quit my job cleaning chicken coups just before the Great Depression and it was one of the worst decisions I ever made."
Of course you need to find a job that you love, but you need to BE CAREFUL.
I'm sort-of in the same situation. If you have the discipline, start your own business, but go at it slow. In your free time, develop your ideas, get any training/education you can (preferably on your current employer's dime, if it can be somehow justified) and once you have what you need, start a sideline business. After it gets up and moving, put more time into it until it can or does make enough for you to live on. After that, 86 the job and take your job on full time. There are tons of resources out there for small businesses if you know where to look. The main issue is weather you have the level of discipline required to make the jomp. As you work in IT, I'm guessing longer hours aren't foreign to you, and if you can do that, learn how to budget and are reasonably competent in a reasonably marketable skillset, doing your own business is one of the methods by which many in the US have freed themselves from the rat race. If all goes well and you get sick of running/doing the business entirely, if you get good enough at it, you can always sell it off and go another route later on.
Waaahhh deal with it, don't be a baby!
... and start toying with it. Plant a garden. Brew beer. Design RC airplanes. Learn to play an instrument. An electric guitar in the basement does wonders for blowing off steam. Worst case scenario? You end up trying a few ideas, and eventually end up with a hobby or two that you enjoy. You meet people outside of work who enjoy the same thing.
... but rather, don't immediately discount "crazy" ideas. IMHO, they are usually the most fun, and sometimes very profitable.
Be generous with your time. Volunteer at a soup kitchen or a no-kill animal shelter. Did you know a lot of these places are looking for people to volunteer on an ad-hoc basis? It's not a huge commitment to make. Depending on their age, bring your kids - it will teach them a world of wisdom they will probably never know otherwise. How's your vacation time stacking up? Take a week and volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. Start training to run 5k, 10k races. Run on behalf of your favorite charity. Don't have one? Find one.
Does your employer reimburse you for tuition? Continue your education. Take stuff that appeals to you. Steve Jobs took a freakin' calligraphy class that altered the future of computing.
1) calligraphy class
2) pretty fonts
3) Macintosh
4) profit!
Chances are that the happier you are outside of work, the happier you will be at work. So, next look for the positive aspects of things in your existing career. Better now? Great! But don't let that stop you from continuing to look for something else.
Not better? Still intolerable? Well, keep your eyes and mind open to opportunity. Planing for the future is important, but the best things in my life have happened because I seized a chance that presented itself. Goodness only knows how many others slipped right by because I wasn't looking, or wasn't open to the idea at the time. I'm not saying choose recklessly
Either way, you are now a better person, with a greater sense of what appeals to you. By getting involved, even on a non-profit, "hobby-n-charity" basis, you met new people and learned new skills. That stuff can be the basis for career change. You might happily remain where you are, having found new satisfaction in life. You might find a new opportunity and jump on it. You might gradually transition to something new. A hobby might become serious, and you might go from shift-based work to a consulting role where your time and schedule are yours to decide. Eventually your "hobby" might become full-time work, and you might leave IT altogether, except to fix the kids' computer every now and then.
The short answer is GET ACTIVE, MAN!
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
...and I think the reason is that IT isn't really about technology anymore.
For IT companies, IT is about making money ONLY, while most of the technology is total crap today.
For example, avionics computers or embedded devices which control nuclear reactors and such are customized, specialized, well-designed IT solutions that actually work.
These systems do exactly what they are supposed to do, and NOTHING ELSE. Therefore, nothing else can crash the system.
But for many branches of business there are no similar solutions available; all you can get for your "eCommerce" is, essentially, a crappy Home-PC with tons of buggy, poorly engineered, monolithic software (e.g. a lot of libraries and such) for computer games, legacy applications and thousand other things you don't need, you don't want, and you can't get rid of.
All these things are causing problems in your environment.
The problem is, noone offers something better than that for "eCommerce" - so you can actually sell crap like that and make a lot of money. So why build better systems if you can make so much money selling the bad ones?
The only reason why airplanes, nuclear reactors, medical devices etc. have better computers is that you would be DEAD if they didn't work properly.
Noone dies if your SAP GUI does not work every day, so noone cares. It's just annoying.
I do not like the military; but I guess, I may even look for a job in military-related IT in the future, simply because it is less frustrating than commercial IT, because at least some branches of the military (like aviation) simply have MUCH better computers.
Buck up and be a man! Get you arse to work.
Probably 90% of the people out there HATE THEIR JOB.
A lot of them have really crappy, mindless, boring, stinky, dirty, long hours, low paying jobs with jerks for coworkers and even bigger jerks for bosses.
At least you have a desk job that pays well and that you used to like.
You need to go be a cowboy for a week or maybe take a motorcycle ride cross country and then get back to work. (City Slicker, Wild Hogs).
Life is good. Believe it. It really is true.
- I live the greatest adventure anyone could possibly desire. - Tosk the Hunted
I've been in for 14 years now. I think the challenge level peaked over 10 years ago. Switching from Windows to UNIX/Linux about 11 years ago was the last real high point of my career. It's all been sort of downhill from there. I enjoy working with computers and technology. I just don't enjoy all of the limitations put on my ability to solve problems by the many corporate bureaucrats trying to justify their continued employment by contriving and enforcing absurd policies that I must adhere to. IT literally took a hobby and lifestyle that I loved and turned it into a vocation that I tolerate. I'm the sole supporter of a wife and three kids. It was very sobering to investigate other career paths that I might be able to apply myself to and realize not a single one of them was going to pay as well as an even junior level IT job, at least not until I've been at it for a number of years and earned some level of seniority in the new profession. Really to do anything else that would provide for my family in the means that they are accustomed to would require going back to school for a number of years to get that piece of paper that says I can do something else competently. So I'm sort of taking a different approach now. I have been working on my creative writing. I have invested in a decent digital SLR camera and I'm learning the fundamentals of professional photography. I'm going to work towards getting published here and there, build my professional portfolio, and see if I might be able to leverage some of my professional and/or personal experience in various fields in the realm of journalism. I anticipate for awhile it'll just be side money. But perhaps at some point I'll feel justified in doing IT on the side and focusing the majority of my time on journalism.
If you are feeling your job or career is not rewarding, tedious and boring, it probably means you have an over controlling micro managing boss like I have.
:-)
The only reason why I put up with this idiot (in I.T. terms) is that he is a personal friend of mine from high school, that I have known for a long time.
Secondly, in 16 months I am re-entering the academic realm, UW-Madison. So I HAVE TO put up with the idiot as I stuff checks away in the bank account and prepare to renter school at the ripe old age of 41.
But I digress, and really your problem is my problem. The people I work with particularly have very low skill sets. Nothing will tank your day, after a "boss" like my friend unilaterally decides he wants to move the primary linux router in the computer room, and plugs the thing into the wall outlet.
When, I would like to point out, this "boss" of mine spent 3K in UPS equipment and just decided the router doesn't need to be plugged into a UPS because he IS THE BOSS.
Meanwhile, my pager goes off at 2AM because the entire company is down as a result. Lots of brown outs at night in my area.
Ok, so then I install tc QoS controls on all the routers so that our new sipxpbx phone system gets the bandwidth it needs to function correctly, and this "boss" decides: "The QoS policies are not working properly, so I will just turn them off."
He can't explain why though they are not working.
(i.e. He can't understand no matter how many times I explain it, how QoS works on a computer network. He also doesn't like the term Stochastic Fairness Queueing. This frightens "boss" so he turns it off.)
1 Week later the guy installs a video surveillance system pumping video over the wan links to monitor workers. Thats fine.
But the idiot turned off the QoS policies and as a result the video system basically took over the computer network and killed all of the terminal server sessions at, you guessed it, 2AM in the morning when the supervisor was told to try it out when he got into work at the remote site.
Now, this "boss" friend of mine wasn't hired into this position as a manager. He was simply hired first, thats ALL. If he actually had to go out and compete with people for a IT management position, he would be eaten alive. (2 year tech school degree and his previous occupation was working on phone systems.)
Now if that isn't enough to make you quit, get burned out or find your job is absolutely FUTILE, I do not know what is and that is just two items off of a list of probably 10 things this guys has done in just the past year to make everyones life miserable.
The only thing that keeps me going is open source. I get to work on open source stuff all the time so I can find solace and make my own little world here at work.
That is perhaps what you need to do yourself. Find something that you can work on that isn't a drag because other people are stupid and therefore frustrate your goals.
Otherwise people like this "boss" friend of mine will drive you crazy, and make you feel like your just spinning your wheels and not getting anything accomplished.
Well, that and Slashdot because if I didn't have the community here to write too, I think I would probably freak and you would see me on Fox News or something.
"Network Manager Goes Freaky, Next on Fox N Friends in the Morning".
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Read the book "Your Soul at Work" available on amazon. It is about this exact question.
At 25, I presumed to have a dream job. A Macintosh network of 100 - 150 workstations and a nice rack of servers. A nice staff, corner office in one of the country's most exciting city. The work was hard and occupied nearly 80 hours a week at points but the company was fair and gave 20 or 30 hour weeks in the summers when work was slower. I was paid well and had a small apartment on the beach; I could walk everywhere necessary and for three years, lived very well. Good work/life balance, strong opportunity for promotion.
My girlfriend moved away and so I filed notice. I was done with IT anyway, not because I hated IT but because at 25, I did not want to be THAT comfortable. There was a big world out there to see! What other jobs could I do?
I set my mind on bartending in the Greek Islands -- in February... of the coldest winter in 50 years. After two months of hostel living and partying in Italy and Greece, I made a u-turn and went to Reno broke -- determined to get a job in San Francisco and get my girlfriend back.
Only I did not want an IT job. I decided to move into marketing
I arrived in San Francisco and slept on a couch for six weeks before finding a small room in a group house and a $12 marketing job in Berkeley -- that barely covered my car expenses. And I only got the job because it was very complicated forms work. More IT than marketing.
But it was exciting. I was living. Even though I had taking a $40 an hour paycut. And now had no furniture and no girlfriend.
But then I went to China and starred in a PBS documentary and traveled the country on the trains meeting Shao Lin warriors and seeing amazing sights. I went to Thailand and got robbed on Ko San Road. Wow, this is exciting!
Came back and started in branding for a small agency doing transcription. At least I made triple my last wage an hour although my fingers hurt. I made friends in San Francisco and found a nice new girlfriend. I was promoted to a Junior Strategist and hosted a barbeque with all my new friends. I was in marketing! Not IT! Exciting!
Then I found a program in India about sustainable development. Two months in India looking at the environment sounded great; I like animals. During a slow time at work, off I go. Two months in India! Studying poverty -- human economic development. In the end, an amazing trip that changed how I saw the world.
Thankfully my new girlfriend understood and both dropped me off as well as picked me up from the airport. Exciting!
Back at work, I am promoted and now doing work for luxury brands, perhaps the diametric opposite of poverty. I have finally hired my own IT guy and take great joy in the fact that I do not know as much as he does.
After three years in branding, I decide it's not enough to just have a nice life, I am responsible for fixing the problems I have come to see in the world.
Where can I do that an not be poor? An MBA from a top-tier university! So I move to England. Lose the girlfriend. Start all over as a student and am poorer than before thanks to unfavorable exchange rates.
But I am in England, drinking flat beer and watching rugby while listenening to some of the best lecturers in the world talk about business and stuff. Exciting!
Now, I have a new girlfriend and she looks like a keeper. I have to find a job and change the world. I can't exactly due what I did before because of my new responsibilities -- ie. keep boo iced out and pay back some loans. So what do I do now? Well, I don't really care.
I've seen that it's not WHAT you do that makes you happy but WHO you are surrounded by. I am just at happy at MBA school as I was at branding firm as I was in a hostel in Italy as I was in IT job. I'm happy to do IT again if it helps me keep boo iced-out and pay back loans.
That's not the moral of the story however.
The moral of the story is that:
I had to run far far away from what I was good at to finally see that what you do doesn't really ma
I did my degree in Computer Science and worked for 8 years in the industry. Decided it just wasn't what I wanted out of life, and didn't believe there was likely to be sufficient work in the industry in the west to last my career.
So I finally got the nerve to do something about it. Worked hard outside my day job on Biology & Chemistry, and got myself into medical school. I've almost finished my first year and I've not looked back yet. Admittedly I'm posting on slashdot right now from a university computer, but I always said I'd keep some form of IT as a hobby, just no interest in working in it. I'd rather do something more worthwhile.
I was also pretty fed up with the idea of working for shareholders in the corporate money machine. I suppose a doctor in the US probably still would be (as well as doing something useful) but I'm in the UK where we have universal healthcare so I don't have to worry about that aspect either.
Anyway, I strongly recommend a change. If there is something else you'd like to do, go for it.
No matter what job you have, once youve mastered some key elements, the thrill of it is really gone.
Going manager will give you a few more years, but it may also involve challenges that do not particularly interest you. In a volunteer setting, it may be more satisfying, as it will have more meaning than earning a few more bucks.
So many hours we spend on working, while we grow older and constrain ourselves into all the things we "cant do". Why?
How much money can we earn, and to what end?
If youd like to study new subjects, take on economics and go management, its all yours for the taking.
But why do we need to spend 5 days a week, 8 hours and more, on doing "work"? Is it really necessary.
I decided enough is enough, and am now enjoying 60% working hours with good pay (2 days off every week!). Working in IT, you also have good pay, and this option gives you more time to spend with your family, hobby projects, volunteer activities, studies or whatever you like.
What is most difficult to people I believe, is managing their own time. So start by figuring out what YOU really want to do, and then do it! Dont do something just because youre fed up with what you have. What you have is a great base to work from!! You just need to become clear of your goals and what you want to do in this lifetime.
I grew up and realised that IT is just a job. I still code for fun, I get involved in open source projects and I do cool stuff. I just don't work for free anymore.
I also grabbed two hobbies so far away from IT that I just can't worry about work and careers while doing them. Since this, I've actually been more effective at work because I'm happier outside of work.
This happened to my boss as well... I don't want to be dismissive but I think this disillusionment has little to do with IT and would likely happen if you were in any other profession.
The only advise I can offer is, if you are not getting satisfaction from your work now. Find something new NOW or 15 years down the road you will still be stuck in this S$#@ hole occupation wishing you had done things different years ago. I've been doing IT for 27 years and the thrill has long gone. Stuff I worked on developing 20 years ago has been repackaged over and over again and called the latest great thing. This industry has completely gone to hell. The crap coming out of Microsoft has created an industry full of incompetents who can create crap code with VB and call it production while the upper level incompetents think its wonderful and won't fund any real projects.
We all make compromises, and do a lot of things that we do not want to do. I would say that if you want to step outside an established career, you should have a really good idea of what you want to do and how are are going to do it. However, even the people who follow their dreams do a whole lot of things they do not want to do. When Michelangelo was painting the Sistine, he had to design the scaffolding, hire people to build it, and then supervise its construction. When sculpting, he also procured his own marble blocks by dealing with marble quarrymen and going down into the quarries, not exactly the safest thing in the world. The guy worked 18 hours a day. and that's just one example of many. The other day, I ran across a book, "The Making of a Chef", that had some similar themes. Kind of sounds like a Suze Orman question.
The point I was making was not that you shouldn't go to college. In fact, my friend did -- and to an Ivy-League one at that.
The point I was making was about two other things.
The first was money. 'Narendra's' parents had given all the money that people normally assume you need to hoard to send you kids to college, away to charity. They had made a boatload of cash, and they had decided that it had left their lives empty and they had given it away. Isn't that a dramatic decision? And the point was that, even though they did that, 'Narendra' went to a top-tier school.
The second was philosophy. Neither 'Narendra' nor his parents were the cutthroat, soulless mechanisms you fear we must all become. They took an open-minded, curious, and interested attitude about life with them. And when they worked, what they achieved was recognizably better for it, because it had the spark of art in it.
Let me also emphasize that this is not some story about hippies thirty years ago. 'Narendra' graduated in 2007.
I have worked in IT for 30 years, since I was a teenager, and about 9 years ago I got tired of the insanity, "If one more person tells me that their computer is messed up but they didn't do anything to cause the problem, I think I will go postal". I decided to change careers, sort of, I got into teaching at a 2 year college, was definitely a drop in salary but my health improved, less stress at work and I actually enjoy going to work again. I found out that the money was not worth it, and yes I did have to trim down the life style, but again that led to less stress and pressure, the other advantage is that, as my wife puts it, I only work 37 weeks a year (not counting if I teach summers). Just posted this as a thought.
In 2003, I stood on the threshold where you are teetering. I looked back at a fun and exciting career that spanned the entire spectrum of IT, and carried my family all over the US, to Saudi, Iceland, Japan, and Thailand. And I was bored out of my skull. I made the jump back to the hills from whence I came and went into business for myself. Five years later, almost to the day, I realized that I was disillusioned with life -- not IT. My savings account ran dry; my relationships with my wife and kids went shallow; and my brain atrophied. I begged, borrowed, and stole to break back into corporate IT last month and I am VERY HAPPY. I don't usually give advice (and I wonder if you'll read this with all the postings), but here it is: dig deep into yourself to make sure the source of your boredom is IT. If it is, make a plan that won't erode your relationships. And finally, have an escape route in case you find your decision was a blunder.
I adopted a golden retriever.
... -- "Yeah. You might want to call Mike, in the mean time." -- -- "I'll give him a call when I get in range of a computer to make sure he's all right." -- ... .. . -- "Righto. Good luck with that. (prick)"
"Oh. There's a router down, huh?" "I'm sorry to hear that. I'm looking forward to the paper work for the backup gear being completed" -- "Okay, well, I'm in the middle of a cemetary that's about 5 miles outside of town at the moment." -- "Well, I'm on foot, so it'll be more like an hour." -- --
Get back in your pigeonhole!!! Don't make me cut your salary in half!
Let me help you. I am going into my 20th year of IT, and fortunately for those around me, there is that whole 3 day wait period thing. Seriously though, what does your wife do with her time? She work full time as well? If not, does she have any hobbies or small business stuff she does out of the house? Well, follow my diabolical plan, and put her to work! MWWA HAHA! Again seriously, my wife had a hobby, and she would go to craft shows and sell the product of that hobby, and it would sell like mad. Me being the observant person I am, decided we could make that into a business. It's almost 3 years, and we are still going strong, but I haven't quit my day job yet. I see a light at the end of the tunnel, and it's a matter of time before we get there. She is the day to day operations of our retail front, and I am doing the backend stuff and pushing towards the wholesale front.
Think about it, and plan carefully, and know that it will get a lot crazier before it gets better going this road, and depending on your kids ages, (7,10,and 13) here, they may have to adjust, but the long term goal of being an OWNER of a business (where you have someone running the daily ops and you and your spouse get to make the decisions), will give you mucho flexibility.
I just got done with a major career change from IT and into education. After 20 years of watching IT Security spiral and spin, I bailed, and am now in Eduction and loving every minute of it. I spend 4 years working to have the creds to move careers, adjunct teaching, getting my doctorate, just to make sure that when the cross over happened, I could end up higher in the food chain to make sure that the change of careers did not result in too big a financial hit. Hope this one helps
I'm in the same boat, I want to change, have some hobbies I'm working on, but cannot afford the salary cut. My wife cannot work outside the home since one of my kids is special needs.
So I'm stuck burning out at work, trying to hide my frustrations. And dealing with interrupted sleep, weekend work, messed up vacations (if I can get them at all).
WIth the economy the way it is, changing careers has even more of a risk.
As for the person who said suck it up, be a man, live with it for the good and welfare of your family, do you have a family you are supporting? Try giving all of yourself away 24x7 for 10-15 years and then see how you feel.
What you wrote, might as well have been written by me. I'm struggling with these same issues. I don't have an answer, but am investigating this for myself.
Here are some thoughts and some suggestions:
- Are there other root causes for your dissatisfaction?
- Would you have some symptoms of ADHD? Read the book, "Delivered from Distraction".
- Is there a lack of sense of connectedness with humans in your work environment?
- How is your family situation?
- Do you have an adequate social supporting structure around you?
- Find some hobbies, specifically non-technical, people-oriented that would interest you.
- IT is a big field. Would you enjoy different types of IT work. Explore those options.
- Are you getting enough exercise, workout etc?
- May be get some education, may be even in some field of IT that might interest you or are areas of your strength.
- Look for ways to stimulate your mind, build new neuron pathways in your brain by doing something very different from what you normally do.
- Talk to someone external, like a trusted friend or your spouse or some professional who can provide you an opinion.
I personally would be scared of making a total career change after several years of experience. I'd like to make incremental changes.
Why I decided to change was due too:
1) The extreme unprofessional behavior I have encountered.
2) The lack of respect by management.
3) Getting laid off too often.
4) Rampant ageism in the IT field. Just as your are getting to the top of your game you are laid off and then unemployable because you are "too old".
5) Offshoring, I do not want to worry about my job.
6) Too many 12+ hours per day.
My advice, find something you enjoy that requires "boots on the ground". That way you will be happier and your job will not be offshored.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
People I know that have been in IT have... ... gone back to uni to become teachers ... gone back to uni to get an MBA ... gone back to uni to lecture/research ... pursued careers as professional photographers ...and had successful careers thereafter.
The world always needs more teachers and there are rarely enough of them...
I'm thinking of it too - giving up IT as a career, going back to study something else and keeping hacking on code (ie being a member of the open source movement) as my after hours hobby.
Without any dependencies and soon no debts and only investments, I'm thinking about doing teaching and then travelling to places like Africa, South America, wherever it is that is interesting and I haven't been to work, explore the world and life. If I've got a laptop loaded with Linux and some sort of Internet at school, what more do I need, really?
Do what you love, and you won't have to work a day in your life.
Okay, I'll admit I was where you were about a year ago. In 2002, the high-tech slump hit my state pretty hard and I had to hit the streets after grant money ran out. I took a job across the country, for a lot more money, in an IT shop. It was only my second central IT job and it eventually panned out into a bastion of suckage that I cannot adequately describe. Let me sum it up by saying that, indeed, age discrimination is present in the industry and so is inept management - probably as a result of management becoming simply part of the career path to more money. My experience was that "management" was less a profession with regards to IT, but something you aspire to so that you no longer have to worry about keeping up on the rapid technological changes. The management crisis is not unique to IT and there are, no doubt, exceptions. Let's just say that I found management sorely lacking.
Let me state that my background is in biological science but I've worked in IT for almost twenty years. I'm a Systems Architect and long-time Systems Administrator who can also program in most modern languages (and some dead ones) and even sub as a competent database manager if I have to. Yes, I have certs in some bigger unices, too, so I'm not unskilled and I disagree with the previous statement that Systems Administration is getting more boring. Again, like IT management, I found that systems administration was undervalued but never boring. My last CEO could not fathom why there were three systems administrators for a company of about 1500 employees. Consequently, they all were erased from the org chart and, as one might expect, things happened. Several security breaches went undetected for too long, systems did not interact with each other, and the network guy was allowed to design a core server network that excluded many key systems. The place burned through money like some people go through shoes.
So, after the last five years of miserable Central IT, I gave up and decided to go back to where I always had the most fun: as a Systems Administrator for a small company (20 employees) on a shoestring budget. The down side is that I'm unlikely to see an annual raise of more than 3% and I certainly won't get a Christmas bonus. I will never get the money to buy something like Altiris to manage my machines. I took a 10K salary hit (but moved to a place where I wanted to live for the quality of life). On the good side - everything else. They love the work I do, I get to be a Systems Architect, Database Manager, Systems Administrator, Programmer, and Network Administrator. In short, the challenge of frugality increases the creative aspect of the position, and I love that. I work eight-hour days, flex schedule, wear t-shirts and blue jeans, and have four-to-five weeks vacation/year. I work (and learn) from people who are highly skilled in their professions. No pager, no cell phone, no Dockers, and I'm about ten times happier than I was a year ago. I've vowed not to work for a central IT group again and I network with about a dozen other system admins in similar roles who say the exact same thing as I do.
So rather than leave you hanging, I know that these positions exist, primarily in university departments and not-for-profit organizations. Research groups that rely heavily on grants and soft-money always need good, broad-range skill sets and are usually happy to have experience over specifics. Small start-ups or stable companies that use technology but are not in the technology business also provide positions that I have enjoyed. My background in science helps, but I don't think that it is a prerequisite. All disciplines seem to need IT skills in some manner, the sciences just seem to get the lion's share of grant monies. I say look below the radar because I find that these positions are a tiny percentage of IT employment listings. Small budgets mean that they can't spend a lot on advertising, so you have to target specific institutions, companies, facilities, or job boards that cater (usually for free) to the type of
...but you can't always get your family back. They grow up and move out.
This sounds like a fantastic plan.
sudo eat my shorts
Greenpeace in Washington,DC needs a Linux System Admin...a job where you can intermingle dressing up as a polar bear or locking yourself to or hanging from a building with configuring a SAN and setting up a web server. http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/about/jobs/system-administrator-2 It doesn't pay as well as IBM, but they won't encourage you to dress up as a whale and ride a Segway around town. The perfect career move for the burned-out corporate IT guy or gal.
I went and became a volunteer firefighter - it's good exercise, and something other than IT to get geeky about.
I was suffering the IT burnout thing and found out that the company had some internal training that allowed me to move into a project management position that was not solely IT. Most big companies offer college repayment programs as well, this might be the way to work toward something else without giving everything up right now.
Been there, Done that, so I sympathize with your situation. Here's what I did to make it interesting without going through a career change
A: Get away from putting out fires. you can not survive this way of life, no matter how much you like the rush.
B: Start creating more. this means letting others put out the fire, you are now on track to be a producer rather then an agent.
C: be the only one who does what you do. example, I left the big IT shop where I was 1 of 1000 geeks to work with Medical professionals where I'm the only geek and I never have to live in the shadow of someone more geekier than me.
is a luxury of the rich. Just kidding.
Maybe you could change the big picture of your job. If you work for an organization with a mission that you care deeply about, then you will be more excited to apply your IT skills to the problems. Maybe you could work in health care, alternative energy, at a high school, Church, not for profit, for profit in an entrepreneurial business, etc.
Don't get your motivation from just the IT, but from the bigger reason for the IT.
n/t
When I read the original post, I swear it must have been written by me while I was sleep walking (or sleep typing?). Anyway, I am in the same mid-career crisis as you, but I am in the Bio-tech industry. Ironically, I have been considering moving into IT. Anyway, it sounds like we have some things in common and I would like to hear more. Care to have to an offline discussion?
Burnout and boredom are, as you say, not the same thing. However let me add another: burnout and depression are not the same thing although one can easily accompany the other. One of the fundamental aspects of depression is this: you gradually/suddenly develop a highly unassailable internalized belief, about some or all of your life, that nothing you do can have any positive result. Eventually your mind concludes it is pointless to try and what do you know - all the joy is gone even if you used to be very happy with the way things were.
So yes it could be burnout - not hard to see given the conditions of work under which most IT is performed. But it could also be depression - very dangerous because often it doesn't just stay confined to the one area that may have sparked it.
I remember one place I did a contract. They needed someone for 1-2 months that they "could drop in the deep end and not worry about" so they could get the first version of their product out the door. Great - it was an interesting product and the area I would take was one I wanted to learn about. The design was finalized, the deadline was hard - yeehaw! But oops, the programming team, all quite young were focussing on coding styles wars (this was a long time ago) like whether to Hungarian or not. Meanwhile "marketing" (makes sign of cross) came along every couple of weeks and added whole rafts of changes - the management people in charge of implementation either couldn't or wouldn't insist that stop. I left two months later as I had prior commitments I had to honor - at that point they were no closer to having a product out the door but the design they then had was horribly horribly mangled. I think it was months before anything shipped. It must have been incredibly depressing for the people on the job.
Eons ago programming was fun: you were involved from requirements/analysis to design to implementation to testing to delivery etc. etc. And it was a respected activity. Programmers and computers were expensive and it was expected that programmers take the time necessary to write good quality code.
But it was a victim of its own success - the demand for programmers kept growing and growing. That had two effects. First more and more programmers were needed and as a result the IQ of the average programmer dropped, which in turn meant tools and techniques had to be developed to let the less talented contribute. Second as computers became more powerful the projects undertaken got larger and larger requiring more and more people which in turn meant developing techniques so that large numbers of people could work on one project - which had pretty much the same effect as the attempt to accommodate the less talented. The scope of the individual's job has become constantly diminished and the amount of intelligence and creativity required to do it has simultaneously diminished. At the same time the industry evolved to deal with competition so that rapid turnaround became paramount so even if everything else about the job were ok there was still the pressure to "just get it done" even if that meant producing a pile of crap in which you just couldn't have any pride, e.g. because you knew of the many bugs etc. it still contained.
With all that I'd be very surprised if many talented people weren't suffering from some level of depression after being in the business for a few years.
BTW a lot of this was predicted in the book "Programmers and Managers" by P. Kraft - short and worth a read to anyone working in IT.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
Absolutely perfect advice if you believe that men are fundamentally less valuable that women and/or children.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
I have spent around 12 years in various IT positions (UNIX/Cisco/Windows/etc.) and I can't say I was disillusioned, or bored, but the stress of being on-call and the responsibility of many times being the stop at the end of the buck had made me start looking outside of IT. I had spent some time assisting the sales force at a managed web hosting company in a previous position, so I started looking for Sales Engineer positions with technology companies.
The way technical products are sold is rapidly changing as geek has started to become chic and good Sales Engineers are in high demand. Of course, you have strong technical abilities AND be able to communicate and work effectively with sales guys (and yes I'm talking about the cliched sales guy). If you can handle all of that and find the right position, you can not only decrease your stress and day-to-day responsibility, but you can often times increase your salary.
I currently work as an SE for a global telecommunications carrier (yes, it is hard to stomach at times, but at least I don't work for AT&T, VZB, Qwest, Sprint, or any of the mega carriers) and I am significantly happier and more care free than I was previously. No on call, no late nights, flexible schedule, etc.
Sales Engineering allows you to leverage your skills and experience while ditching some of the more tedious aspects of IT. Of course you have to cope with being in sales, but I am happier for making the change.
Good luck.
I have worked in the IT industry for 20 years (programmer and infrastructure architect) and I am sick to death of deploying desktop computers only to go back within 5 years to redeploy new ones ti run an 'upgraded' operating system - recently started a course in oceanology but being the age I am I doubt I will ever swap jobs now.
Yes, of course there are a lot of people who hate their jobs.
What does "being a man" have to do with it? Is that like "bend over and take it?"
The poster took some initiative and asked for help -- isn't that an example of "self reliance?" If your suggestion is; learn to enjoy suffering. I'm assuming that most of us are doing the best we can in that regard, but if you have some Zen meditation technique that the rest of us don't know about; THAT would be useful.
Life is too short to "take it." The poster might do better explaining their abilities, and seeing if anyone has a career where this fits. Or likes and dislikes. There are promising careers in nanotechnology, farming, and outsourcing. Other than that, be happy you have income and keep looking.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Why is the only option is for you to have to work at a job you hate? The household finances are both of your responsibilities. You didn't say if your wife worked or worked at a job that she hates. If you take a job for less money that you love, perhaps she can take a job. Perhaps you can both talk about moving or something. In any case, you both have to pull your weight in this problem. With the risk of layoffs and so forth and even your death, it's stupid to think that one spouse working is enough. If your wife can't quickly get a job with insurance that pays enough, she needs to work on job qualifications.
Maybe she can take a high paying job. Really, it's stupid if she doesn't work or is able to go out and get a job with insurance quickly. If she doesn't have the skills to do that, she needs to get them, because you're both responsible for being responsible. If you get laid off or are out of the picture, if she isn't able to get a decent job quickly, you aren't planning well enough and are irresponsible.
One point to keep in mind:
Though you may need to support your family to a certain extent, think also about the example you are setting. If you stick with a job you don't like in order to afford luxuries you don't really need--what kind of message is that sending to your kids? We are, on average, so well off in the USA that we don't realize that most of the things we think we need are completely unnecessary for happiness.
There's a book you would find relevant: "What Should I do with My Life?", by Po Bronson. It's a thoughtful collection of true stories about people who have wrestled with similar questions.
Good luck.
College-Pages.com - Online Colleges, Degrees, and Programs
"I'd rather sacrifice my happiness to get into the $100k range so my kids can go to Yale."
Yale? George W. Bush went to Yale.
I assumed it was some sort of remedial school or alcoholic rehab center.
Damn right.
Today I booked a complex trip to Barcelona from London by rail and coach, I also applied to become a provider of computing services for the UK public sector, received a couple of job offers, organized a couple of meetings with friends next week (one is in Ireland, the other is in the other side of town) and interviewed a couple of guys in India to work for me for a pet project of mine.
I also called my mom and sister (hi Mum!), who live in Mexico, using Skype. I paid a couple of US dollars because my mum can't get Skype to work in Ubuntu (technical prowess of a 70 year old has limits), the call to my little sis was free. Yes, my mum is using Ubuntu.
In the meantime my PVR recorded the Chelsea-Liverpool game, which I can watch whenever I want. I also went for a run and measured the distance I ran and my pace using my Garmin 305 with integrated GPS and heart rate monitor. By the time I was home my food was warm and ready since my oven was programmed to cook it automatically about half way my run.
I will be posting a few pictures from a trip I made last week so friends all around the UK and in Mexico and Germany will be able to enjoy them.
I also just bought two tickets for the opera, and downloaded a couple of articles about Ruby in Rails (I could download a full book in a few seconds, but I am not sure I need it at the moment).
Fucking technology. It seems to be getting on the damn way all the time.
I would prefer to waste days dealing with a travel agent, wasting unholy amounts of money to talk to friends and colleagues, I would also love to guess my speed, distance and heart rate when I run and would be lovely to have to cook by hand once I get home.
Yeah, down with technology, the damn thing is useless.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I have Sysadministered most of my working life and rarely have been working a Sunday morning.
I run regularly, play the piano, travel very often, assist to the opera and classical music concerts and have a life that by most standards is quite good (now that I have been made redundant I am travelling around Europe for the next 3 or 4 months).
Your career choice is not going to ruin your life, what will do so is your decisions about what is important and your lack of capacity to say no when needed.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It's a little harder for a man ot learn to be a woman. At least one attractive enough to make money. And plus, that is a lot more of an investment then just learning how to program in HTML.
From what I understand she taught herself CGI and other languages as well as html.
As he said, "pr0n don't pay if you are male".
Sure it does, as I said start a paid website.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The best time of one's life is now.
Fuck the past, fuck the future.
Make plan for the future only if it makes you feel good in the present.
What you have stated is not a frustration with technology but one with noise. This noise unfortunately is propagated by sites like Slashdot. After 12 years in IT you have an advantage. An advantage to identify patterns (hardware and software). It is unfortunate that technology is often seen as the ends not the means to solving problems as so many of Slashdot's subscribers may wish to think. A lot of technology today is simply rehashed ideas from long ago. This is how tech firms make money by incremental updates that serve no real new benefit and it is the so called tech heads (robots) that get a kick out of it and are subservient to it. If you treat your job as one to identify these patterns, improve upon them, learn from interacting with other people I believe it will cease to become a bore. P.S. I am a programmer that believes in humans not technology.
Hi, I'm in the process of studying investing at the moment. I'm currently reading Ben Graham's book The Intelligent Investor but I'm looking for other sources of information. Do you have any suggestions? Any university courses that are worthwhile? My parent's don't have these skills to pass on and non of my schools really covered it.
Any tips would be appreciated. sqlwriter@gmail.com
"We have all the resources to do it. Unfortunately it seems so many are willing to accept a "dog eat dog" society. We are moving backwards, not forwards...."
Such is the seeds of capitalist society where your value and status as a human being is determined by your income and what kind of job you do.
Emphasis on objects and idealogy over people and their needs is the main culprit. But socialists and others have been preaching that for a long time on deaf ears, then there is the 'turnover' factor, children who've never experienced hardship become jaded and want to drag society backwards because of their selfish/materialist and other destructive bents.
My in-laws' cattle get one scoop of corn a day in the winter, every other day in the summer. The scoop's an old Folger's coffee can, so call it two pounds. The rest of the time, they're eating grass or hay. I've never followed them around, but I'm told that a 1,200 lb cow eats 28 lbs of hay/day.
Not knowing the stats I googled for them and came across TFA "Film 'King Corn' goes to roots of food system problems". It says "80 million acres of corn are grown each year to feed cows". There's even a genetically engineered corn that's isn't approved for human consumption but is for cows, Starlink. According to an article in the "New York Times" "Most cattle feed is yellow corn, while white corn is grown almost exclusively for food."
The water that the cattle drink all comes from stream-fed ponds. Climate change might be a problem, but historically this area was forest, so the only well is for the house, not the livestock.
So they've got enough water then, but if they have a lot of cattle I wonder what all that manure does to the water quality.
Down in the flatlands, however, the rice farmers are complaining about the water table dropping, and they're sitting next to major rivers.
In the Klamath Basin of Oregon?
FalconShould there be a Law?
This is based on the mistaken assumption that markets always grow and go up, never contract.
BS, investing in growth when young is based on the fact that if a growth stock crashes there's still plenty of tyme before retirement to rebuild an investment portfolio. And stats back this up. Over any given 20 year period, maybe even 10 year period, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Standard & Poor's 500 index, and other composite indexes beat inflation. An 18 year old can invest $2000 a year until the age of 25, that's 7 years, and not invest anymore money and by the tyme they reach 65 they can have more than $750,000 invested. It's simple math, have a look at Wiki's page on Future value, you could say compound interest does wonders. Heck I learned that in intro to algebra.
it is hard to see a time when they wouldn't contract or expand. Most people don't even know how to work this out when the market is "growing" nevermind when it is contracting.
Dollar cost averaging, or in Europe Euro cost averaging, helps here. By consistently investing periodically, say once a month, the ups and downs of the market are evened out. Say you invest $1000 monthly, on the first day stocks are bought a stock being bought may sell for $50. So ignoring transaction fees, which many brokers charge $10 or under, 20 stocks can be bought. The next month the stock price has increased to $55 so only 18 shares are bought. The third month the price had gone down to $45 so 22 shares are bought.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I was a tech for ten years, and it was OK much of the time. I didn't want to be doing this for the rest of my life, though. So I sat down and took about eight hours to work out how to pay the bills and live reasonably well without having to work more than a couple of hours a year, and without having to deal with customers, clients, bosses, or co-workers. It was really just a matter of applying an I.T. mindset to bank policies and patterns in the real estate market, and extrapolating from first principles. I ran the prototype system alongside my normal job for a year or so to iron out the bugs, and then quit being a tech. These days I can sleep in, go shopping during normal business hours, and take a vacation whenever I want. It's been less than a year so far, but it seems to be working well. I'm not driving matched Ferraris carved from a single block of platinum, but as long as I can buy groceries and the occasional tech-toy, I value the free time more than the extra money I could make by going back to the old 9-5. That's just me, though, and I planned much of my particular situation based on my personal psychology - what would make me happy, rather than mega-rich. Other people might have different goals or preferences.
I worked in quality control for 13 years before finally taking that leap into IT. The pay was the hardest thing to deal with, but I managed to get into it without sacrificing too much. What helped was me being able to bring my skills from my previous career to integrate into my existing one. Even though it doesn't sound plausable in your case, it actually may be. You may be able to use your previous experience to work with future suppliers or potential customers. I think what your going through is normal for a lot of people in many career fields. A lot of us were chosen by our career and not the other way around. Good Luck!
nothing more to tell:
your heart already knows, or you wouldn't be hesitating via words.
: )
Nobody can tell you what's right for you, but here's one more story to consider.
After 15 years in software companies, about half in IT positions, I got laid off in 2001. I'd done software development, project management, network installation/admin, tech writing, and started off in tech support in the late 80's. While I was looking for another job I also took classes and talked to people and tried to decide "what to do with my life". I really liked most of my jobs, but the quality of management was extremely random and a great position could suddenly become a living hell because some bozo with parent issues got a promotion and wanted to prove he's in charge (like there was a question about it). I'm sure that's happened to many, but I lost my tolerance for it and started really reconsidering my options while jobless.
Anyway, a friend of a friend suggested I meet with his son, who had left a telecom training position and was doing well in real estate appraising. It sounded good and after some classes I started as an apprentice appraiser. Up until a couple of years ago, I thought it was a good change. Despite the long hours and initial pay cut, I was working for myself and could choose when to work those long hours. But the housing market downturn has me thinking about switching again. Commercial appraisals? I've continued to program, but is there a way back to IT for me? Exotic transvestite fan dancer (probably a long shot)? I've got a family and I'm in my mid-40's and I really don't relish having to make this decision again. But most of my clients have gone out of business and it's not like I can make much less than I do now.
I guess my point is that in my life, I've often found that simply the act of looking and trying things will usually lead you to something, and it won't be what you were seeking about as often as it will be. I was afraid of change, losing my cushy salary, and being on the bottom of a new totem pole. Then I got laid off right when things were worst for a jack-of-all-trades like me and I didn't have the option of thinking anymore. But I stumbled on something totally unexpected and was happy with it for a while. Nothing lasts forever.
Insert requisite reference to fear of fear here.
I believe you. Right now she's helping OJ track the real killer.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Aren't you asking in the wrong place? Why would anyone who's made a successful career break from IT be hanging around on Slashdot?
Take the path of least regret!
Hi; I felt the same at an IT Trainer at one the second largest bank in Canada. I change from banking to career counsellor over an 8 month duration. I treated it like a project, set goals, milestones, resources, and timeline...and it worked. The hardest part was convincing my wife and our 4 teenagers. Here are my steps: 1) did on-line personality tests to confirm my choice. 2) explored employment in the new work. 3) identified and sources required training. 4) saved up money to take a 6 month leave for training. 5) acquired the training (2 year diploma in 6 months...schools are flexible). 6)started networking at month 4. 7) month 6 offered a job starting at $28/hr...get $45/hr for contract work. It's been 10 years now and the happiest 10 years of my work life!