Last job killed my love of IT, management beat it out of me. Wonderful company, demotivated by my manager from the first week. Couldn’t be a nicer guy, smartest tech I’ve ever met, Peter Principled his was into management.
Never been paid that much, took about every Friday off on PTO, total WFH, can’t say what my benefits cost but it wasn’t $100/mo. in total. My last job was half the pay and benefits, was so much happier. I think of that every time I read a comment about why companies need to pay more to satisfy us. Everyone should have a look at this. Had ALL that at my penultimate job, NONE at the most recent.
I feel so weird, especially at this time of life with a solid resume, interviewing for PT work at Lowe’s. Thinking I’ll be happier than a pig in shit spending 4 hours a day, just walking around helping people, doing what ever bullshit I’m asked to do. Looking to see how it goes, see if there are ways to work myself up to FT, better schedule, supervisor, whatever.
Thought about “retiring” to work in a hardware store to keep busy and fit, but not for a decade+. Excepting my credit card bills, and what my wife sends home to the Philippines, she makes enough to cover everything. Won’t take much to take the edge off.
I love hardware and tools and plants, about everything they sell. Hoping to learn a lot as well. Helping people is really satisfying to me, and I’m excellent at handling customers. LOL, I’m best with the angry ones, sometimes get them apologizing. :)
Need a sanity check, am I losing it!? Been through the worst depression of my life the past few years, hoping this will break me back into a normal state of mind.
EDIT: Got the job! Holy shit, the assistant manager is just like me! Dropped out of tech to take a minimum wage job at Lowe’s 8 years ago, now he’s at $90K. We’ve even done much of the same work in the IT space. “I did DSL for Bellsouth when it was new!” “Yep, did my time as a cable internet guy.”
Seems to be a lot of space and opportunity to move up. I’m going to knock this out the fucking park!
BONUS: Clerk at the shady gas station overhead me telling my neighbor about quitting IT and getting hired today. Guy ask me what I did in IT, gave him a run down. “Yeah. I was a web dev for 20-years, couldn’t take staring at a screen any more.”
In the words of another man who left IT for manual labor:
You have no idea how much more sane that made me feel.
Left IT to become a machinist… Best decision of my life (38).
Best decision of your life, so far.
You are correct :)
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As someone who just got his A+ certification and is looking for his first job in IT, why do/did you feel this way?
I am doing a career switch from marketing/SEO which was…! Manipulating everything for people to sell shit and my job is beholden to whatever the FUCK Google wants to do today? No thanks!
It depends A LOT what kind of IT career you do. If you are a sysadmin with a shitty manager/company you’ll hate it. If you do helpdesk you’ll hate the whole human race.
But you can become devops, SRE, cloud engineer, architect, so you get all the fun at tinkering without the bullshit (most of the time, no job is perfect).
Well, I’ll have to start out in help desk but I’ve done CS as a temp job before and it was kind of fun. I don’t want to do help desk forever though, and I understand just how DUMB some people can be. Like, wow… 🤣
I dunno, I’m excited to get started in it and I don’t know what I want to specialize in yet.
If you enjoy tech, keep going for it. There’s nothing inherently shitty about the work, at any level, and it pays. As with any career, we sometimes burn out.
Thank you! I think it’s a career right up my alley and I’m excited to land my first gig - hopefully in the next couple of months.
Nah, not crazy. In my view anyway. In 2020 I left nursing in CA making close to $100k and paid zero for actually amazing insurance… to work part time at a bakery for roughly $23/hr in Norway. I was 39.
Sometimes we just have enough and we don’t need to keep chasing the dollars in favor of a simpler, cozier life.
How did you move to Norway? Afaik you can’t just show up to stay permanently.
You’re right, it is actually quite uncommon for Americans to live here without special circumstances. My husband is in tech, and managed to get hired on here, and so we are here on his work visa. We can test for citizenship after 7 years residency and testing language and civics, which we plan to do in about 3 years. We know that we are very lucky.
You’re living the dream… and I’m right behind you.
Just hit 58 and I’m still working in tech (not IT any more, but adjacent). In March I’m going to tell them that I’ll be working fewer hours. Not asking, telling.
It’s their choice whether I work zero hours or some number that’s less than the 80 I’m currently putting in. I’ll either have 3-day weekends or 7-day weekends.
That’s literally the plot of Stardew Valley. Leaving the world of digital work in favor of something more tangible is a dream come true for many of us.
Theres a reason behind the “retire and herd goats” joke for IT. Burnout sucks. Sounds like your needs will be met financially, enjoy it!
17 years in tech. Made it to director level. Decided I hated ladder climbing. Transitioned to software engineering full time and spent the last 5 years doing that. The work life balance was a lot better but the corporate BS was not. I’ve decided corporate jobs may not be for me.
Currently working on a software project of my own. If that works out, great. If not, I may get out of the business instead of going to another corporate job. I’ve got enough experience to do just about anything I want to but I honestly don’t know what that would be.
Are you me? Currently at the director level debating a switch back to dev. Prior director in my role did the same. I actually love my boss and when I’m empowered to run my org, the work is great. But too much of my job is trying to insulate my teams from the BS and it’s burning me out. But I’m not sure I’d want to give up being able to fight the BS and would eventually get frustrated by it again as a dev.
So here I am, riding it out. I know at some point politics will get me and my style of insulating my engineers will cost me my job, even though by doing so we have great productivity metrics. And being real - I think the hardest part is that by shielding my teams from the BS, I become the face for the shit that does get through so the people I fight so hard to protect often blame me for their very real complaints.
I’m not sure what’s next for me, but I save everything I can because I assume that the change might not be my choice.
I know at some point politics will get me and my style of insulating my engineers will cost me my job, even though by doing so we have great productivity metrics.
Mine ultimately did cost me my job. Or at least it was a contributing factor. I was so sick of the relentless conflict and the toxicity. When I eventually got fired, I missed my team but I was also relieved. It was like a huge weight being lifted. Knowing what I know now, I would never have taken the job to begin with. On the other hand, I do think it helped me grow personally and figure out what my values are. I decided I was ready to put my career on the line if I had to choose between keeping my job and doing the right thing. I did the best I could and my conscience is clear.
The best job to have is the one that you don’t need. I was fortunate enough to retire early from a high stress job. I didn’t hate the job. I just had enough. After 3 months I was bored. Got myself a part time job. And as was mentioned in an earlier comment, if the place burns down I couldn’t care less. I’m always on time, never sick, and good at my mickey mouse part time job because it’s a joke compared to the real job I had. It is fascinating to observe my fellow workers who are all very nice people because for them THIS is their career and for me it’s just a throw away to get out of the house.
Wayyyy ahead of you pal. Got into tech when I was a wee little lad, my dad would bring home computers from the work dumpster, hand me a screw driver and let me go at it.
When I was 11 I built a computer with my dad, and continued learning about tech and computers. I worked after school in middle school to help out the librarian, who had the job of looking after the laptops and computer carts.
Went into highschool and got into a Comptia± honors class, as the only freshman and the only person to get As in that class.
Fresh after highschool and 6 months into a computer job, I quit at the age of 19. Instead I went to pursue woodworking.
I had a great boss, and I was great at my job, but I was in computer repair. A dying industry and I was getting paid minimum wage, despite a lot of skill (microsoldering, logic board rework, macbook repair, liquid damage repair, etc).
Skill and knowledge that I studied for a decade, and I was being paid minimum wage. There were probably better opportunities but I wasn’t interested anymore. The environment was just far too corporate, so I decided to start building my own business, woodworking, selling tools, and help teach.
Ive gone to tool events, tuned up a lot of tools, and given presentations and its 10x more fulfilling. Havent made a lot from the “business” but I’m happy.
Good on ya mate. I retired, at least temporarily, from almost 30 years in IT today. I may do some part time consulting to pay for vacations in the future, but my FT days are over. I hope you enjoy being away from it as much as I will.
I am a programmer too. I absolutely loved it. I finally took a shot and changed my hobby into a stable good-paying job with a car, laptop, phone, whatever.
I quit a few years later. Almost exclusively because of the project managers. I was mentally exhausted because of the daily 8 hours of stress they gave me. I wasn’t able to look at code for around 8 months.
I’m working on getting my drivers license back and am thinking of getting into package delivery. I have also been working on opensource projects and have actually been enjoying it again.
This thread is really making me doubt my career path. At 20, should I even bother going into tech/IT if I switch to a trade later on?
The vast, vast majority of people don’t quit their job or their employer, but their boss and coworkers.
Don’t underestimate how much healthy relationships at work matter when you spend so much of your time there. Yes, in tech jobs as well. So stick with IT if you like it, but don’t stick around in a bad environment. Especially if you plan to have a family in X years, because then it gets a lot harder and riskier to jump ship and change your situation.
Stick with IT! There’s nothing inherently bad about the space, lots of room to move around and do different things, make solid money. 20-years of anything will burn you out unless you’re not very bright.
It’s also okay to want to take a break from a stressful career with a less stressful one. I took a break from teaching at a university to take care of therapy animals, and at year 1.5, I’ve really finally feel recharged.
This is my goal as well. Been in software for 27 years (holy shit) and want to retire by 55. Only open question for me is health insurance.
I went from being a highly technical CIO/CTO for most of my career, to becoming a bartender. I adore it, couldn’t be happier, and now am studying to become a sommelier. I still do occasional cybersecurity and tech compliance consulting when a project piques my interest, but very rarely. I absolutely loved IT, but getting out when I did (~2 years ago) saved my sanity and health. Now I do a lot of home automation programming for myself to scratch the tech itch. Best of luck!
I’m near my 40s, and have been working as software dev since finishing my masters. Few years back I started to go in the direction of more management less dev in a previous company. Saw it wasn’t for me and went to work somewhere else working as a simpler dev role. A few years after and I’m starting to feel the need to change further even. I do love coding but the whole layer of tech debt and management and meetings is wearing me out and has made me lose my love for tech. I am just lost as to what I’d do instead. Cannot work on retail with my autistic ass and since WFH was allowed and accepted I am not planning to go back to an office anyway. Maybe woodworker or something would be enjoyable for me, but there’s other constraints that won’t allow me to change right now, lots of bills to pay and my wife is an entrepreneur so we can’t really risk losing my stable position right now, with two small kids. Once they grow and get out of the house we’d likely move more country side, get some chicken to care for (we love animals) or something like that and maybe I can get space to do some wood work or whatever come to mind then.
So overall, no, you are not losing it, or maybe we are all losing it together. Same with depression, it’s such a tough shit to leave behind. I’m still fighting with it but doing better lately, the job doesn’t help at all…
