jacking in an IT career...

[Blown2CV]

i've been in IT 20 years next year. I've done well, starting out coding, through consultancy, architecture and now I am a technical director for a fintech. I earn good money, but I think I am growing to hate it. I thought 'it' was my previous job, which was a director-level role in a big consultancy, so i made a massive change (for my branch of IT at least) and went for a different type of company, more young and dynamic, fewer hours, more money (quite a lot more) etc. I thought that would fix everything, and 6 months in I am worried that I am starting to hate this job too... and if i am starting to hate it, then maybe it is the whole industry. I don't really feel that passionate about it. I am not a lifestyle nerd or a gamer. I don't build apps in my spare time. I am starting to feel really fking old, and I am only 43. I feel myself getting irritated and frustrated with people not being able to do their jobs properly. I feel sick of clients giving me grief. I feel like my "oh just fk OFF" moment is looming.

I've come across a few people over the years who've jacked in a successful career in IT to go do something else. I've always wondered what it is about IT that makes people do that... maybe now I know.

Anyone else have a similar experience? Where did you go to, what did you do?

[Blown2CV]

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.

[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.

[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

[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.

[Blown2CV]

agile... polarising topic! Well... good ole waterfall was great for those who want a solution building for them but st for the builders. Agile is great (and was designed) for the builders but (by at least several measures) st for those who want the thing to be built. I can't help but feel there is a middle ground somewhere to be had, rather than continually flogging the 'agile is the only way to build software' mantra.

[Blown2CV]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

neither work really. Waterfall because its core founding principles are horsest, and agile because of the practical application of it... in the majority of practical commercial scenarios, and it only works if everyone understands it well (vewy few do), applies it flawlessly (almost never happens), and is OK with all it represents (the 'money people' often hate it). Agile works incredibly well when there is no customer, no contract and only one company involved.

[Blown2CV]

Joey Deacon said:

Another issue is that when I first started I used to love messing with computers in my own time. I would love spending my weekends building PCs and installing software or building a home network and server. I was happy to spend hours messing around with Autoexec.bat and Config.sys just to release enough memory to get Grand Prix to run. There was no internet, so everything was self taught or learnt from others.

Now I have no interest in this whatsoever, I just want stuff to work. In the past I would relish the challenge of fixing things, now it is just an inconvenience.

I think that is half the problem, the interest and enthusiasm I used to have for computers has now completely vanished.

very similar to how i feel.

[Blown2CV]

devnull said:

Think we all need a group hug in this thread, although whilst I am not tired of the industry, I am more worried about how i can sustain being in the IT industry for another 20 years or so, what with tech changes and an ever increasing workforce who are ready and willing to step into your technical shoes.

Rather like a lot of people in this thread, I had a deep interest in computers, I knew I wanted a job in IT and here I am. But of course that deep interest meant very hands on work, which I did a lot of, thousands and thousands of hours worth in the earlier days. But you get to the point and realise there's a ceiling to your earning potential as an engineer / coder and you need to branch out into operations or management to earn more.

What has baffled / exasperated me the most in recent times is the contracting and legal process for software. The back and forth between vendor and buyer is crazy, with customers often just trying to write things completely their own way. That might work in some legal areas, but in the software industry it basically means the customer is trying to fundamentally change the software capability through legal wording.

Or to put it another way in PH speak: as you are about to sign the lease agreement for your base spec A180 at the Mercedes dealership, you change the specs of the car on the invoice to say that the car will now be capable of 200mph and that you will never need to pay for tyres out of your own pocket.

username acknowledged and appreciated

The craft of IT is thrilling. The business of IT is depressing. I spend my days reviewing contracts, dealing with the commercial theatricals that we go through every day with clients and their healthy and above board way of handing suppliers, spreadsheets, slide decks and video calls. I regularly think to myself, how did it come to this. I don't feel there is a group of people in the IT world now, that i feel like they are 'my people'. I used to feel so at home with engineers, and later with architects, but now i feel like I am on the outside. You can't effect positive change from the outside.

I've always struggled a bit with people... i've never been a natural raconteur or people person as such. I have learned and forced myself to be like this through years and years of trying (and failing, sometimes really badly) and I still feel I don't do it particularly well.... but i feel this latest role i have picked up there were some very negative stakeholders from the get-go. I'm not sure i have the will to try and win people around. I just don't feel like I give a st.

[Blown2CV]

PurpleTurtle said:

rustyuk said:

Olivera said:

PurpleTurtle said:

26 years (and counting) an IBM Mainframe contractor coder checking in here - 23 of those with my current client co.

23 years at the same client, impressive, but also squeaky bum time.

Unless you have been inside or using a brolly then I'd be retiring somewhere warm! HMRC just won something of a victory against an IT contractor at Nationwide. They had only been there 3 years, with a QDOS approved contract.

I can't see me taking an outside gig again to be honest. Just easier to try and get a bit more for an inside gig.

Inside all the time so I can sleep easy.

if they designate you outside and then get you doing an inside role that's their problem now not yours.

[Blown2CV]

dealing with toxic PMs is always a low point, when you are also at the level of some kind of project resource. I've performed various architect roles and if you're stuck with a nob of a PM who wants to misrepresent the truth to protect themselves, doesn't understand their own role and accountabilities, just wants to force anything through (basically the opposite of why architects exist), and doesn't care about humanity... even worse when it is covered up or management are apologists... some companies are terrible for it, particularly banks. Tier 2 can be crazy environments, and Tier 1 can be so large and complex that toxic behaviour is not dealt with. Fortunately i am now at a level where i just go to portfolio heads / heads of change and call these people out because nearly always they are lying in steercos and putting green all over things which are not green... although it's sad fact that this is often the only bit management care about, not the actual 'treating people like dogs' angle.

[Blown2CV]

i guess the issue with MVP is the definitions of 'Minimal' and 'Viable' need to account for non-functional as well as functional elements. Morons believe that if you can deliver a functionally minimal product, then the non-functional elements can be reduced proportionately. Clearly a massive error. Just because you only have 20% the functionality doesn't inherently mean you only need 20% of the security or 20% of the scalability. Of course if you come along as an architect saying these things then you're seen as an enemy of agile, an anti-digital dinosaur and just generally an ivory tower .

[Blown2CV]

The spinner of plates said:

Olivera said:

Perhaps it's just the organisations that I've worked for, but do any other experienced IT professionals find themselves getting increasingly cantankerous with onerous (planned or unplanned) out-of-hours work?

In my 20s working a weekend or into the night/early-hours was par for the course, now it just fks me off.

It’s not just IT, it’s all management roles.

I think as we get older we also have more responsibilities outside or work (spouse / kids / house stuff / elderly parents etc).

Plus as we reach middle years we just have less energy. In your 20s you bounce back from a late one without noticing. But when they’re regular and you’ve done it for two decades and in your 40s, it just turns into an ongoing fatigue. Which in turn leads us to look out of the window and think ‘what else...’

think so. In your 20s you're probably getting your feet under the table and really starting to be good at something. In your 30s you're probably starting to get decent promotions and feeling like the world is your oyster. In your 40s you're probably thinking right so, i am close enough to the higher layers of management to know that the oasis was in fact a mirage, and in the meantime I've seen the negative effects of working my arse off, feeling like health issues are creeping in, realising the most important things in life are not work, starting to see retirement coming over the distant horizon and finally dawning that I'm not going to be the next Steve Jobs or Elon Musk... staring down the barrel of middle management obscurity in a vague and hard to explain domain... starting to feel like you'll end up not making a mark on the world. I think it's a literal mid-life crisis.

[Blown2CV]

spanky3 said:

On topic - 25 years in IT, now a bored programme manager.

Off topic - What's all this not understanding what MVP means? Minimum Viable Product has nothing to do with cutting corners on quality, else it wouldn't be a viable product.

MVP is about delivering just enough functionality to get a viable (usable) product out there. Example - Your customer needs to export documents. Fine. But do they really need to export in 8 different formats on day one? Instead we can deliver that in our v2, or v3 or whatever drop. If your company is delivering all the functionality but none of the QA and calling that an MVP then no wonder you're all fed up.

Think you've missed the point. We all get the theory of the MVP and the theory of Agile etc etc. The theories are always great, however the practical application of these things is very often poor, and almost always knobbled. Somewhere along the line these things get fked up because some dhead skim-read an article or sat in a sales pitch and believed it all uncritically..... and therefore now wants the benefits but no downsides/trade-offs. e.g. I want the predictability of waterfall (sham as that is) with the ease and flexibility of Agile. I want the speed of the MVP without having to plead with the business to re-prioritise or apologise to users because they are getting half of what they want. I want the light-weight nature of a PoC and take it straight into production without throwing anything away or doing any designs or boring, time-wasting st like that. I want BE IN THE CLOUD without actually using any cloud native features because i am st scared of vendor lock-in.... i mean i could go on and on.

[Blown2CV]

rustyuk said:

Nothing against MVP as a concept but it can be wildly misused.

Couple of contracts ago I created a MVP to automate some process currently being carried out by an intern over the period of 2 days a week.

NLP engine that matched some diagnosis and then we displayed some charts. This was valued by the manager as potentially generating something stupid like $30 million a year, (a couple of million per sale)

All made up nonsense

It may be worth something in terms of realising more revenue due to more throughput but that assumes there is a stload of pent up demand... usually process automation just saves headcount. So if the process was undertaken today by an intern at minimum (or lower) wage, so not even 1 FTE... how was automating the process worth 30M PA?! Surely anyone he showed that to would have seen straight through it.

Process automation is a difficult one with the MVP idea as you have to put so much in place to automate even one step that you may as well automate the entire process.

[Blown2CV]

the big 4 employ the cleverest graduates so they can then pass them off as consultants on 2k a day after a bit of training. Because they are clever they can kind of get by on having no experience. The lesser consultancies get the cheapest possible people from the cheapest parts of the world, whether they are clever or not really, and whilst they bill out at far less money than the big 4, the cost almost nothing, and so coast on the incredible margins for a while, often reliant on one experienced person in a team covering for a ton of dolts and noobs. Both business models appear to rely upon just seeing how long you can get away with it for, until you get booted out. The number of times I have seen big 4 get booted en masse it is incredible.

[Blown2CV]

i think anyone that says to themselves that some new tech development is just the same as a previous thing from decades ago, and it didn't work then and it won't work now... they prob are showing signs that they need to jack the profession in. I feel pretty cynical but i am not sure i have managed to reach that point of persistent cynicism about everything that comes along. It's rarely the tech that annoys me anyway, it's the people and the organisations.

[Blown2CV]

lyonspride said:

Jaguar99 said:

Blown2CV said:

i think anyone that says to themselves that some new tech development is just the same as a previous thing from decades ago, and it didn't work then and it won't work now... they prob are showing signs that they need to jack the profession in. I feel pretty cynical but i am not sure i have managed to reach that point of persistent cynicism about everything that comes along. It's rarely the tech that annoys me anyway, it's the people and the organisations.

Agreed. Apart from Windows Updates (eg server with “Getting Windows ready” for two hours this morning during a simple reboot) the tech and keeping up with what’s what isn’t the issue

The change of attitude towards IT by both management (budget cutting and outsourcing to the detriment of service) and by users who have more tech than they used to meaning they now “know” how everything in IT works questioning everything you do are the big issues

Problem is there are A LOT of IT people who have a degree in computer science but don't actually know what they're doing.....

In my last workplace they were trying to run a remote audit on all the machines, to figure out whats installed etc, but couldn't do it because my machine and someone else's had lost their administrative shares (C$). I was sat next to the highly paid manager from our external IT company, whilst he was Googling how to set up administrative shares, I mean seriously shouldn't this guy know how to use the "net share" command? I'd expect any IT guy to know command prompt and ALL the common commands like they were second nature........

to be honest i've been away from that sort of thing for so long that i'd have to probably google it too.

[Blown2CV]

lyonspride said:

Blown2CV said:

lyonspride said:

Jaguar99 said:

Blown2CV said:

i think anyone that says to themselves that some new tech development is just the same as a previous thing from decades ago, and it didn't work then and it won't work now... they prob are showing signs that they need to jack the profession in. I feel pretty cynical but i am not sure i have managed to reach that point of persistent cynicism about everything that comes along. It's rarely the tech that annoys me anyway, it's the people and the organisations.

Agreed. Apart from Windows Updates (eg server with “Getting Windows ready” for two hours this morning during a simple reboot) the tech and keeping up with what’s what isn’t the issue

The change of attitude towards IT by both management (budget cutting and outsourcing to the detriment of service) and by users who have more tech than they used to meaning they now “know” how everything in IT works questioning everything you do are the big issues

Problem is there are A LOT of IT people who have a degree in computer science but don't actually know what they're doing.....

In my last workplace they were trying to run a remote audit on all the machines, to figure out whats installed etc, but couldn't do it because my machine and someone else's had lost their administrative shares (C$). I was sat next to the highly paid manager from our external IT company, whilst he was Googling how to set up administrative shares, I mean seriously shouldn't this guy know how to use the "net share" command? I'd expect any IT guy to know command prompt and ALL the common commands like they were second nature........

to be honest i've been away from that sort of thing for so long that i'd have to probably google it too.

I feel like many have moved to software solutions that do it for them, it's another thing I come across a lot, people messing about with expensive software that simply acts as a fluffy bunny interface for native windows features.

or they have a wee man that does it.