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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.
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.
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 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
I got the perfect thing for you; Cat Juggler:
http://www.diamond-jim.com/catjuggler/
Table-ized A.I.
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.
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.
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.
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
Several of my friends did construction for a while. A year later they were back in IT. They say the change was great.
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.
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.
You are oversimplying -- dangerously so, I think.
Your kids MUST be your number one priority, but should NOT be your only purpose.
If they are, there won't be much left of you or your marriage or your future once they leave the nest.
Having only one point to your existence is unhealthy. Your kids your first priority? Good. The only purpose? Bad -- even for the kids.
Life is short: void the warranty.
Get your finances under control. Reduce your need for money. The difference between how much you make and how much you must spend reflects the size of choices available in your life. Reduce your dependence on needing a lot of money each month, and the number of choices available to you increases dramatically, and your freedom increases dramatically.
In my case, I used to own two cars, now I own none. I moved to another state that is 1/2 the price for housing. I quit eating out, started buying things like pinto beans and rice, and cook all my own meals. After restructuring my life, I have far more money and options available to me.
Once your finances are in order, and you learn to do without things like starbucks every day and whatnot, you may find you have the freedom you need to pursue your dreams. It may take years to get to that point, but you must try to take control. Otherwise you forfeit control of your life to the will of others.
You're making the implicit, and totally unwarranted, assumption that the sole measure of a father's success is his ability to bring in money. Dropping out of IT might mean a drop in income, but it doesn't mean he can't find a different way to make money, which is what I assume he intends. There is absolutely no reason to think that he can't raise his children to be at least as healthy and happy on a smaller income.
Depending on what he goes into, he may end up with more time to devote to his family, which is worth more than money.
I'm not saying money is irrelevant, but it is not nearly so important as some people make it out to be.
The only thing dumber than Joel Spolsky are the followers who quote him like he's some kind of prophet. If we listened to Joel, no one would ever start anything new, because the only thing worth doing is maintaining old crap, no matter how broken it is.
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?
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.
well, self-employment isn't for everyone.
FreeBSD for the impatient.
Time machine, duh.
Get in comrades, we'll stop the capitalist pigs this time!
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
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?
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.
I thought in the Soviet USA the USSR came to you. Problem solved!
"Just a fox, a whisper."