Sorry to bring things down a bit when there's such a positive and friendly tone about the place today, but I've been working long hours recently and fatigue depression has partially taken hold. You see, it's occurred to me that I am really, really bored with my job and normally when one thinks like that one also thinks, "nay matter, I'll try something else next year or something". But I've reached my level of incompetence. I can do this job and do it to a level which pleases my employers greatly, but I am aware that times are changing and there are conspiracies afoot to make the sweet, simple Web into a fearful place where only autistic geeks may survive.
The last couple of weekends I've been doing some overtime to enter a load of data into a Documentum system. For those that have never encountered Documentum, it is proprietary software which stores and organises documents (Word, Excel, anything) into 'taxonomies' (i.e. categories like a mental filing system) and integrates these documents with a web front end, or a portal as they call it these days. It does this in the most astonishingly convoluted way. I mean to the point when one is almost in tears with the complexity of creating a basic page of links to other pages, something which was the whole perfect, simple joy of the web when it was invented.
Now, the thing is that this sort of system is taking over in business and for someone who has worked on the web since it was all static HTML and animated gifs it is as much of a nightmare as electronic engine management systems and on board computers are to someone who's spent years lying under cars with a set of spanners and a tin of oil. It's taking all the pleasure and intimate knowledge out of the job and leaving me cold. I'm coming to hate it.
Thing is, I have 25 years to go before retirement - at the current retirement age, and that could well be raised at any time. Unlike quite a few people of my age I am nowhere near paying off my mortgage, so I can't kick back a bit and take a lower paid job. I may be able to sell up and move to a smaller place when the kids leave home, but that's got to be another 16 years away, near on.
I've got myself in a bit of a pickle then. I've chosen a career which I enjoyed as a novelty and for its beautiful simplicity, and I've got to the top of the pay scale in that job (near enough, without going to work in Riyadh or something), but now I'm really coming to hate it, and the thought of hanging on for another couple of years, let alone 25 of them, is frankly not exciting me. I've always had something to aim for before, always a promotion or a better job, but I'm in the best job and at the top of the scale. Doh.
What should one do then?
Posted by ben (Member # 13) on :
No time for a longer post, but I reckon you should use the Christmas break to draw up a list of things that you want from your career and possible avenues for you to explore - including freelancing, consultancy or a complete career change (retraining and going into landscape gardening or catering or whatever it is that might tickle you the way IT used to).
Believe me, I am surrounded by "lifers" where I work and to spend - literally - decade after decade grumbling about the good old days while hanging around for the pension is pretty much death-in-life.
Think there are a few people with human resources/retraining experience posting on the forum - hopefully they can point you in a number of fruitful directions...
Posted by dang65 (Member # 102) on :
quote:Originally posted by ben: Believe me, I am surrounded by "lifers" where I work and to spend - literally - decade after decade grumbling about the good old days while hanging around for the pension is pretty much death-in-life.
Yes, I must avoid this at all costs.
Actually, I have decided that I could carry on doing the work if I was doing it somewhere like Paris or Rome or Munich. Somewhere I could look forward to exploring every night after work. Mrs Dang has even agreed to me buggering off abroad and coming back at the weekend, which I did for a while when we in the Isle of Man. But it's not easy to walk into a job in forren when they've got plenty of their own people to do the work. Might try that path though. Maybe even working towards it would lighten my mood a bit.
As I say, I'm well knackered just now and that always fucks one's life view up somewhat.
Posted by Vogon Poetess (Member # 164) on :
Hi Dang,
I'm not used to giving "advice" to people who have chile-flavoured responsibilities.
I always thought you'd make quite a good teacher (primary or secondary), but it would take a year to do the PGCE and you would be unlikely to earn as much as you presumably do now.
I would also say doing a dull job abroad isn't as great as you may think; the novelty of the funny forrens and their silly ways soon wears off.
It's not an economically sound suggestion, but would you consider working four days a week and doing voluntary stuff for one day? There would be plenty of variety there, and you'd feel all virtuous, helping your community, making new friends la la la. Could make the grind a bit less grinding.
Posted by jonesy999 (Member # 5) on :
I don't know if it helps or not; in fact, it almost certainly doesn't, but my father went through a similar thing 15 years or so ago. To try and put a positive spin on your situation, Dang, he didn't have the options which I believe are open to you.
He was a computer engineer, my father. He worked for ICL for over twenty years. I seem to remember he never had a day off in the first 21 of them. He was that 'mechanic' you mention: flat on his back under huge main-frame machines with a soldering iron, sorting out East Anglia's minor technological disasters. I think he enjoyed his job. He's a practical man and these were problems which could be fixed with his practical hands. He was pushed towards management on a few occasions but resisted, preferring to be a foot soldier rather than a general. Instead, the middle management positions above him were filled with recent graduates, people with "degrees in bloody microbiology, who wouldn't know a computer from a Rover SRI".
Within five years it was all software. Most of the old engineers were made redundant but my father was kept on. Some of the old machines needed support and, as he was the best engineer there, he was given that task. His office, the place he hung out between calls, bonded with likeminded men and did the crossword, was not so lucky. Suddenly my dad was a mobile engineer: has tool box, will travel. They gave him a mobile phone built into a briefcase and told him he now worked from home. He couldn't handle it.
For the first year he would get up in the morning, put a suit on and then sit in the kitchen waiting to be called out. If the briefcase didn't ring, at 5:30 he would go upstairs, take off his suit and come back down for tea. He refused to turn on the TV, listen to the radio or do anything much to fill the time. He was at work.
I remember working on my car in the garage and asking for his help with something. "I can't. I'm wearing a suit" he said. He refused to listen to me when I reasoned that it would only take ten minutes to change out of his overalls if there was a call out. So I struggled on my own while he sat in the kitchen...going slowly mad.
I knew he was slipping when I was at university and started getting phone calls from him asking if I thought Anne and Nick were more natural together than Richard and Judy.
They never got time to make him redundant because he eventually had a nervous breakdown. The family upped sticks and moved to a cheaper house. He's never been back to work but he wheels and deals, making money on cars, property and boats - all of which he's worked his arse off to restore. In the last couple of years they have moved into their fourth house since he left his job and, he admitted recently, it's the first time he's felt truly happy in all that time. He feels he worked hard to get my mother the kind of property she wanted and then he took it away from her. "I've finally given her back what she had 15 years ago."
My mum and the rest of the family obviously couldn't give a monkey's where they live as long as everyone is healthy and happy, but it's clearly something that's been preying on his mind all that time.
So, to return to that positive spin. You aren't in the same situation, as far as I can tell. In terms of foresight, you're way ahead of my father. You have time on your hands, your skills are more relevant to other areas and you're currently in work. Take Ben's advice and head the future off at the pass.
That was rubbish. I'll X it shortly I expect.
[ 22.12.2004, 06:59: Message edited by: jonesy999 ]
Posted by dang65 (Member # 102) on :
quote:Originally posted by jonesy999: That was rubbish. I'll X it shortly I expect.
Don't you dare.
Although I'm not one of those "old reliable" sort of people, I do strive to cut through the shite and simply produce the finished website which has been asked for. This is always appreciated, I can tell, and means I get kept on in places when others are "let go". I can very much relate to your dad in this way.
I can also relate to the situation of wanting to give your family, especially your wife, the kind of life you think they want. I think all the career and geographical moves I've made since we got married have been toward that goal and not toward my own ideal life. Not that I haven't benefitted from having a happy family etc, but a lot of the time it's really not been my personal choice.
It's a really stupid situation, to be so well paid in relation to so many others, and more secure too, and yet be so fucking miserable. I do need to change, that's in my nature. There's a woman here who recently celebrated 25 years in the same job. She's happy as can be, completely settled, well off, married, kids etc. I think of the number of different jobs I've done in the last 20 years and I can't believe she's been in this same place all that time, before I even left school. That suits some people just fine.
I have worked abroad before, and moved around a lot in the UK. New places and new people keep me sane, really. Always have done. It sounds a bit simplistic that, but I've never found anywhere where I've wanted to live for ever more.
Posted by ally (Member # 600) on :
There is a book called What Colour is Your Parachute that is designed to help you work out where to go in life when the path you're on has run its course. My sister swears by it, as it helped her plan and execute her escape from accountancy. I've seen it in the business section of bookshops too, so you won't have to suffer the ignominy of browsing the self-help shelves.
I think if you're unhappy doing what you do, you should move on. The short-term discomfort of change is preferable to long-term dissolution in your current environment.
Posted by dang65 (Member # 102) on :
quote:Originally posted by ally: There is a book called What Colour is Your Parachute
Seems to have an accompanying website which I'm about to browse through. Ta.
Posted by herbs (Member # 101) on :
I bought that book to break out of the apathetic state of equilibrium I found myself in. But I couldn't be bothered to do the exercises.
Dang, why don't you write a column for the Observer magazine about living a family life with four boys and a long-suffering wife, making sure you make every sentence at least twice as long as this one?
Posted by I am not... (Member # 25) on :
And publish your fucking book.
Posted by I am not... (Member # 25) on :
Note I was trying to be friendly jokey there but it all came out wrong.