jacking in an IT career...

[Blown2CV]

Risotto said:

Blown2CV said:

not sure what to say actually here... i figured there may be a couple of people in agreement but it's 2 pages worth already! Is it a good thing or a bad thing... at least i'm not alone! I guess the only real option is to start my own business - and then it just comes down to, in what. I am pretty disinterested in starting a new career as such - just feels too daunting and too much of a salary drop etc. My wife is currently changing career right now, and will spend 3 years from next Sept back at University before she even hits entry level... this is her 2nd career change. There is a part of me that feels it would be nice to not be the breadwinner and to be able to just pretty much do what i like with my career, but here we are. That's another topic.

I suppose you and your wife demonstrate the different approaches to the dilemma of what to do when you become dissatisfied at work.

You seem to have accepted that IT isn't a perfect fit but are at the point where the salary/expertise can't be chucked away lightly.

Your wife, perhaps, prefers to get out of unfulfilling roles earlier. While that avoids the trap of becoming stuck doing something she grows to hate, I guess there's a risk she might become disillusioned searching for the perfect career. No offence to your wife though - two career changes is hardly Mr. Benn-level indecision!

Edited by Risotto on Friday 18th June 12:13

Not really... I have changed career before; albeit a long time ago. She isn't less risk averse; she just has my income as a safety net as I earn 10x what she earns.

[768]

I managed some 15 years. Got tired of people turning to me and telling me I was right about why the project was going to go tits up, after it had gone tits up.

Some people seem to give up on life and are content to just sit taking the money, others can only do it for so long.

I've had six months off so far, mortgage paid off and spending money potentially forever but it might become a squeeze at some point. I've got a few ideas of what to spend my time doing, but the more interesting ones are blocked by covid travel restrictions.

[Blown2CV]

Abdul Abulbul Amir said:

Risotto said:

Blown2CV said:

not sure what to say actually here... i figured there may be a couple of people in agreement but it's 2 pages worth already! Is it a good thing or a bad thing... at least i'm not alone! I guess the only real option is to start my own business - and then it just comes down to, in what. I am pretty disinterested in starting a new career as such - just feels too daunting and too much of a salary drop etc. My wife is currently changing career right now, and will spend 3 years from next Sept back at University before she even hits entry level... this is her 2nd career change. There is a part of me that feels it would be nice to not be the breadwinner and to be able to just pretty much do what i like with my career, but here we are. That's another topic.

I suppose you and your wife demonstrate the different approaches to the dilemma of what to do when you become dissatisfied at work.

You seem to have accepted that IT isn't a perfect fit but are at the point where the salary/expertise can't be chucked away lightly.

Your wife, perhaps, prefers to get out of unfulfilling roles earlier. While that avoids the trap of becoming trapped doing something she hates, I guess there's a risk she might become disillusioned searching for the perfect career. No offence to your wife though - two career changes is hardly Mr. Benn-level indecision!

Edited by Risotto on Friday 18th June 12:12

What tends to happen is the chap becomes the steady bread-winner whilst the Mrs gets to chop and change careers so she's fluffy and happy whilst chappy becomes stressed, depressed and ultimately is some cases chooses a permanent way out.

that is definitely the sort of situation i find myself in

[JaredVannett]

anyone else here utterly HATE all things Agile??

Many many years ago when it was first introduced it had good intentions and was led by developers as a means to bridge developer output with business needs.

Then accreditations happened.... you could now become certified as an Agile/Scrum master by taking an exam. With IT booming, many non-techies and general PM's rushed to get the certification and parachuted into many development teams.

Essentially the whole Agile process has been bdized into micromanagement, a never-ending conveyor belt of work, churn churn churn. You don't get to stand back and appreciate what you've done because your rammed into the next work item or you never had the time to finish it.

I think this has played a significant role in the 'soul' destroying effect of being a software developer.

[768]

It's not Agile's fault. It's just that the tools it was supposed to tell where to go have adapted.

That scrum master is advertised as a job role makes me want to scream.

[pherlopolus]

I have just introduced KANBAN to event management. Agile was the only thing that kept me interested in the 4 years before the switch.

The actual application of Agile was the issue most times rather than the actual methodology.

[Chainsaw Rebuild]

Could you spend say one more year in your job where you earn good money and use the money to settle debts/overpay mortgage etc?

Then at least when you do move you can afford the wage drop.

Also you try and mould your job to your liking relatively aggressively; you plan on leaving anyway, so can you get more wfh time, delegate more etc.

[Aunty Pasty]

I've worked with Agile in a number of different companies. Each one slightly different on a basic theme. Some companies do it better than others. Thinking about it, it's a good question to bounce back to the interviewer. How is Agile working at this company?

[Blown2CV]

JaredVannett said:

anyone else here utterly HATE all things Agile??

Many many years ago when it was first introduced it had good intentions and was led by developers as a means to bridge developer output with business needs.

Then accreditations happened.... you could now become certified as an Agile/Scrum master by taking an exam. With IT booming, many non-techies and general PM's rushed to get the certification and parachuted into many development teams.

Essentially the whole Agile process has been bdized into micromanagement, a never-ending conveyor belt of work, churn churn churn. You don't get to stand back and appreciate what you've done because your rammed into the next work item or you never had the time to finish it.

I think this has played a significant role in the 'soul' destroying effect of being a software developer.

it can work OK for internally-developed apps, and it can work really well for developing a product, but where it really falls apart is when you are building something for a client. The commercial model just implodes the fking thing, and the concept of what agile is almost always differs massively between the organisations. I've rarely seen it work well there, and it almost always falls back to some kind of stty 'scrumfall' hack where no one is happy a massive amount of effort gets burnt on admin and PM bks.

[Blown2CV]

Chainsaw Rebuild said:

Could you spend say one more year in your job where you earn good money and use the money to settle debts/overpay mortgage etc?

Then at least when you do move you can afford the wage drop.

Also you try and mould your job to your liking relatively aggressively; you plan on leaving anyway, so can you get more wfh time, delegate more etc.

i mean i probably will yes. I guess i have good days and bad days, and on the bad days it feels like it's the end of the road, and on the good days it feels like maybe i would be being hasty to jack it in. The bad days come in clusters though. Ultimately i think I am probably depressed as I am not really able to take criticism well at all any more, and I feel a lot more emotionally invested than i should do in a) a job b) something i don't really like much and c) a role where I am meant to be a leader! The toxic thing is that I still feel a childish need to get people to like me, even though the only way to bring about real positive change and to make a difference is to piss some people off and be comfortable with that. I'd never admit this to anyone i work with right now.

[Olivera]

JaredVannett said:

anyone else here utterly HATE all things Agile??

Agile itself is good practice, as in the points in the Agile Manifesto. Unfortunately Agile has been bastardised into full methodologies such as Scrum.

Scrum is a simply a clusterfk. Whoever decided on an abitrary standard 2 week sprint should be shot. Sprint planning, standups, retros, story points and all the other associated horsest needs to be killed. It also encourages nothing but rampant short termism and micro management.

[stevesuk]

This is an interesting thread.

In the last 30 years (my tenure in the industry) things have really changed beyond all recognition. In the 1990s, unless you worked for a huge company, the IT guy tended to cover absolutely everything that was vaguely related to computers or tech. I fixed people's printers, procured laptops, developed Word templates, helped Finance with spreadsheets, coded the company website...

Since then, career evolution in IT seems to have been about picking your pathway through an ever narrowing series of niches.

Being the main breadwinner in my household, and starting a family later in life, I'm not at all in a position financially to start again from scratch - however tempting that idea might be. I just hope my career survives another 15 years before I can think about retiring.

If I had the choice? I'd do something involved with nature and the outdoors. Land management, conservation or similar. But ask me in the middle of winter when its been raining all day, and I guess I might change my mind about that too

[pherlopolus]

Olivera said:

Agile itself is good practice, as in the points in the Agile Manifesto. Unfortunately Agile has been bastardised into full methodologies such as Scrum.

Scrum is a simply a clusterfk. Whoever decided on an abitrary standard 2 week sprint should be shot. Sprint planning, standups, retros, story points and all the other associated horsest needs to be killed. It also encourages nothing but rampant short termism and micro management.

And don’t even start on SAFe

[768]

pherlopolus said:

And don’t even start on SAFe

[dmahon]

JaredVannett said:

anyone else here utterly HATE all things Agile??

Someone once described it to me as micromanagement without the management. Think it’s accurate.

[Jaguar99]

stevesuk said:

Since then, career evolution in IT seems to have been about picking your pathway through an ever narrowing series of niches.

That’s especially true if you look at the job market. There are a small number of more generalist type roles but mainly very specific, very focused roles with long lists of requirements that only a tiny number of people would ever match with

[768]

Jaguar99 said:

stevesuk said:

Since then, career evolution in IT seems to have been about picking your pathway through an ever narrowing series of niches.

That’s especially true if you look at the job market. There are a small number of more generalist type roles but mainly very specific, very focused roles with long lists of requirements that only a tiny number of people would ever match with

And when those few people come along they're used to being charged out at £1500/day, but the job is offering £45k and 25 days holiday.

I saw one the other day offering an extra day's holiday if you need it for mental health. I'm not sure that sent quite the message they were intending on multiple counts. Contracting's ruined me.

[Monsterlime]

Goodness me! Nice to see I am not the only one! Been in IT 20 years, now early 40's and am doing well but all the politics and general stupidity is very tiring.

I am a geek and like messing with tech, but I have gradually moved up in seniority and that means much less time to actually get my hands dirty. Most of the time it is meetings and emails and then dishing out the interesting work to my team. Essentially a glorified DBA manager who happens to have Director in his job title, but like most I started on a helpdesk and gradually moved companies/roles until my current place where I have been for 10 years. I started here as a MS SQL Server DBA, but am now responsible for that and all other RDBMS platforms along with all the NoSQL stuff and bits in-between.

Allegedly I make the decisions on how our systems are used, set policies and standards etc but mainly now just spend my time trying to tell either internal people or 3rd party vendors that what they are doing/have done is awful and doesn't/won't work.

I have been offered more senior positions, like Infrastructure and Ops director for EMEA etc, but I saw what that did to the others in those roles and it is even less technical than my current role so turned them down.

There are times I have thought about getting out of IT, but I have no idea what I would do. I would never be able to replicate my salary outside of IT, especially as I am now on a London wage living in Scotland (have worked from home for 4+ years and my team is spread across the globe) so do feel a bit stuck. Pretty sure I couldn't get anywhere close to my salary in IT in Scotland as well, but the wife wanted to move "home", and my work were happy enough for me to do it.

[RDMcG]

If you hate your job it is very difficult to excel and be motivated. I have run some very big IT shops over the years and the people who do well get ahead of the technology. If your skill sets do not change you will become less valuable.
We are heading into immense technological change -AI/5G/IoT and the rest of it that will change the nature of work in the next ten years.
I would say that it is time to urgently seek an alternative.
Fit young people reading this thread I would suggest that you assume that most of what you learn has a fairly short useful life and to keep moving and renewing.
As it happens I like work a lot. At 72 I do not work as much as I did but the constant change in the world is fascinating. I started as an accountant,moved to a railroad,took over the CIO role among other things, sat on advisory boards for some major technology global,went into a big telco and another CIO role,consulted with a very big tech global to upgrade its senior sakes force,now do Board of Directors roles in some smaller public tech players. Started work at 11.
The point is that change was a constant. Even within each company I sought new roles,worked behond my formal responsibilities if I could do something useful.

I have done lots of the travel/cars/hobby stuff and do not seek a quiet life. Have to keep doing something new.
Right now filling in an interim CEO role in a company while we appoint a replacement. No idea what changes will come next -but they will surely come.

Am well aware that life is not infinite and at some point I too will decline and become obsolete,very unlikely I will do this at 80, when even the garage will empty out, but at least I know that I changed everything every chance I got.

Wish OP luck with this -there is always fear of the unknown but being stuck in a job you hate will only get worse over time. I realize that there are responsibilities in life. I got divorced at 47 and was flat broke and living in a small flat for a couple of years. That was certainly not in the plan , and took me a while to recover. New city,new job,much higher risk,but more opportunity.

Change is not your enemy. Not changing is.

[Olivera]

Monsterlime said:

Pretty sure I couldn't get anywhere close to my salary in IT in Scotland as well, but the wife wanted to move "home", and my work were happy enough for me to do it.

It's definitely possible to earn 60-70k per annum as a developer or business analyst in Scotland, going up from there for VP and Director roles. You can contract for more still. This is in financial services.