How can you tell that it is time for a new career?
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Thunderbox666 wrote:
cars (body work) or Wood Work
You'll end up doing work that is not your choice, get covered in dirt, come home smelly and probably earn a third of what you do now. Whatever you do they'll be days you wish you were doing something else, programming pays well, is easy physically and for me allows me the financial freedom to do the things I want outside of work Take up wood work or whatever as a hobby
Josh Gray wrote:
You'll end up doing work that is not your choice
Thats me now
Josh Gray wrote:
get covered in dirt, come home smelly
I worked in construction for a bit when I left school so I am used to this (well i was then lol)
Josh Gray wrote:
and probably earn a third of what you do now
Not possible... I live in Regional NSW (Australia) and dont even clear AU$40k/year (less then US$35k for those overseas) My main roll isnt programming (as I am still a Noob compared to most people) but I am starting to get my name out there and doing a bit. But in the meantime, I am on the crap wage, long hours, and have very little job satisfaction. Most of the coding I do get to do is in my own time, which isnt so bad as it means I get to keep any money I make from it instead of it going to a CEO's new car or something
"There are three sides to every story. Yours, mine and the truth" ~ unknown "All things good to know are difficult to learn" ~ Greek Proverb "The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary" ~ Vidal Sassoon
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Josh Gray wrote:
You'll end up doing work that is not your choice
Thats me now
Josh Gray wrote:
get covered in dirt, come home smelly
I worked in construction for a bit when I left school so I am used to this (well i was then lol)
Josh Gray wrote:
and probably earn a third of what you do now
Not possible... I live in Regional NSW (Australia) and dont even clear AU$40k/year (less then US$35k for those overseas) My main roll isnt programming (as I am still a Noob compared to most people) but I am starting to get my name out there and doing a bit. But in the meantime, I am on the crap wage, long hours, and have very little job satisfaction. Most of the coding I do get to do is in my own time, which isnt so bad as it means I get to keep any money I make from it instead of it going to a CEO's new car or something
"There are three sides to every story. Yours, mine and the truth" ~ unknown "All things good to know are difficult to learn" ~ Greek Proverb "The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary" ~ Vidal Sassoon
Oh well dont listen to me, I spent the weekend sanding an old window frame and I hate wood today :) I dare say you'd earn a bit more in Sydney.... But think about it, do you reakon a pannel beater gets to work on BMW's all day every day? More likely its the single mothers Kingswood with the baby crap all over the seats. Same as programming :)
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Oh well dont listen to me, I spent the weekend sanding an old window frame and I hate wood today :) I dare say you'd earn a bit more in Sydney.... But think about it, do you reakon a pannel beater gets to work on BMW's all day every day? More likely its the single mothers Kingswood with the baby crap all over the seats. Same as programming :)
Josh Gray wrote:
I dare say you'd earn a bit more in Sydney....
Sydney... Double the pay, double the living costs, tripple the stress... No thanks
Josh Gray wrote:
But think about it, do you reakon a pannel beater gets to work on BMW's all day every day?
No job is glamorous, I know that. But just because a job isnt glamorous doesnt mean you dont enjoy it.
"There are three sides to every story. Yours, mine and the truth" ~ unknown "All things good to know are difficult to learn" ~ Greek Proverb "The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary" ~ Vidal Sassoon
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Josh Gray wrote:
I dare say you'd earn a bit more in Sydney....
Sydney... Double the pay, double the living costs, tripple the stress... No thanks
Josh Gray wrote:
But think about it, do you reakon a pannel beater gets to work on BMW's all day every day?
No job is glamorous, I know that. But just because a job isnt glamorous doesnt mean you dont enjoy it.
"There are three sides to every story. Yours, mine and the truth" ~ unknown "All things good to know are difficult to learn" ~ Greek Proverb "The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary" ~ Vidal Sassoon
Thunderbox666 wrote:
No job is glamorous, I know that. But just because a job isnt glamorous doesnt mean you dont enjoy it.
If you've just starting out in a programming career then I'd stick it out for a bit, like anything it gets easier and more fun with time.
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I still enjoy coding and working with computers, but at times I just want to throw it all away before I no longer enjoy it. When is it time to hang it all up, and move on?
"There are three sides to every story. Yours, mine and the truth" ~ unknown
"All things good to know are difficult to learn" ~ Greek Proverb
"The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary" ~ Vidal Sassoon
The best time to consider a new career is when you are safely ensconced in your existing position.
-------------------- Jayvardhan Patil
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I still enjoy coding and working with computers, but at times I just want to throw it all away before I no longer enjoy it. When is it time to hang it all up, and move on?
"There are three sides to every story. Yours, mine and the truth" ~ unknown
"All things good to know are difficult to learn" ~ Greek Proverb
"The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary" ~ Vidal Sassoon
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I still enjoy coding and working with computers, but at times I just want to throw it all away before I no longer enjoy it. When is it time to hang it all up, and move on?
"There are three sides to every story. Yours, mine and the truth" ~ unknown
"All things good to know are difficult to learn" ~ Greek Proverb
"The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary" ~ Vidal Sassoon
Hey man I feel your pain, Sometimes I wish I was a goat farmer in the montains and the only thing I had to worry about was milking my goats, walking them and tending to my weed bushes on the outcrop of some cliff somewhere, Other than that when you feel like if you see a another computer again you gonna commit mass murder its normally a good sign that its time to hang up your keybourd and move onto working in the sun or something.
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I still enjoy coding and working with computers, but at times I just want to throw it all away before I no longer enjoy it. When is it time to hang it all up, and move on?
"There are three sides to every story. Yours, mine and the truth" ~ unknown
"All things good to know are difficult to learn" ~ Greek Proverb
"The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary" ~ Vidal Sassoon
I've been programming in one form or another for over 30 years and I'll tell you something you've probably heard before... that the grass isn't always greener on the other side. It's true as more than a few times in those 30 years I've contemplated what it'd be like to be a farmer, a business owner, etc. When I think seriously about it I know that those would have been wrong things for me to run to. My last career position almost took it all out of me. I was 6 years in that position and survived 9 layoffs in the company until the 10th one got me too. Within a month after the layoff I had a new job and a new enthusiasm for programming. Sometimes all it takes is a change of environment and even that you sometimes have to be forced into (like me - why I stayed in that last position for 6 years I'll never know). Good luck.
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I still enjoy coding and working with computers, but at times I just want to throw it all away before I no longer enjoy it. When is it time to hang it all up, and move on?
"There are three sides to every story. Yours, mine and the truth" ~ unknown
"All things good to know are difficult to learn" ~ Greek Proverb
"The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary" ~ Vidal Sassoon
When the only interview question is "can you ask questions on the internet?" and burger flipping pays more.
We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
blog: TDD - the Aha! | Linkify!| FoldWithUs! | sighist -
I still enjoy coding and working with computers, but at times I just want to throw it all away before I no longer enjoy it. When is it time to hang it all up, and move on?
"There are three sides to every story. Yours, mine and the truth" ~ unknown
"All things good to know are difficult to learn" ~ Greek Proverb
"The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary" ~ Vidal Sassoon
I know exactly what you mean, I spend a hell of a lot of national lottery tickets to prove it. Sometimes you gotta get really tired and fed up and sick, in order to see the light at the other side ie what doesan't kill you makes you stronger. All jobs are like this, unless you own your own self-sustaining company and are sitting on a beach somewhere while other people make you money. But being a programmer in one company doesn't mean it wil be the same in another. I used to work in a games company which needed long hours from it's staff and yes it was a good end product but over time you do start wondering if there's something different available. I think it's easy to lose sight of the other things you could be doing, when you're up to the eyeballs in work or hours (not necessarily tied, I found). The ups and downs are very misleading also, when a job is going wrong, making you're behind, or you've taken the wrong path of development about 2 months ago and now have to make it all up. It's easy to be negative and convince yourself you want to get out. But then twhen it's going well you wonder what all teh fuss was about. I still can't get my head around this! I suppose if you wake up and cry consistently for 6 months, time to leave. But you do have to wait things out to see whether the sun is shining above the clouds.
Ben Glancy Software Developer
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Hey man I feel your pain, Sometimes I wish I was a goat farmer in the montains and the only thing I had to worry about was milking my goats, walking them and tending to my weed bushes on the outcrop of some cliff somewhere, Other than that when you feel like if you see a another computer again you gonna commit mass murder its normally a good sign that its time to hang up your keybourd and move onto working in the sun or something.
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I still enjoy coding and working with computers, but at times I just want to throw it all away before I no longer enjoy it. When is it time to hang it all up, and move on?
"There are three sides to every story. Yours, mine and the truth" ~ unknown
"All things good to know are difficult to learn" ~ Greek Proverb
"The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary" ~ Vidal Sassoon
One philosophy: when you discover there's more to life than computers and you're not doing them. What are the other jobs? The president of a bank is still just a glorified teller. A talking head on the news creates nothing. A philopher/king once dispaired: "Everything which can be said has been said; everything that can be done has been done; and there's nothing knew under the sun." (A guy named Solomon.) Is coding the be all and end all? No - I could probably be happy as a photographer - but wait - to make a living at it you usually do crappy sittings of brats and their hellspawn. My imagined view of hours in the darkroom creating art - easily as comforting as hours creating a new class library - rarely earns one a living. For a while, I was blessed: I always wanted to be a Chemist - and was. I had great fun with computers, and combined them both. What a way to earn a living. All things must pass. Now, circumstances are such that only the computers are left. Sometimes, it sucks. Sometimes, more often, the day flies by. But, by and large, it starts to come down to a single phrase for however you earn your vegetables: "That's why they call it work!" If it were fun all the time, it would be called something else. Moreover, they'd not have to pay anyone to do it. Don't dispair - in the long run, we're all just worm-bait on-the-hoof.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"How do you find out if you're unwanted if everyone you try to ask tells you to go away?" - Balboos HaGadol -
I still enjoy coding and working with computers, but at times I just want to throw it all away before I no longer enjoy it. When is it time to hang it all up, and move on?
"There are three sides to every story. Yours, mine and the truth" ~ unknown
"All things good to know are difficult to learn" ~ Greek Proverb
"The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary" ~ Vidal Sassoon
I think that when you start to drink more than you should is a good sign that something is wrong. If the job is the cause you should hang up the keyboard then.
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I've been programming in one form or another for over 30 years and I'll tell you something you've probably heard before... that the grass isn't always greener on the other side. It's true as more than a few times in those 30 years I've contemplated what it'd be like to be a farmer, a business owner, etc. When I think seriously about it I know that those would have been wrong things for me to run to. My last career position almost took it all out of me. I was 6 years in that position and survived 9 layoffs in the company until the 10th one got me too. Within a month after the layoff I had a new job and a new enthusiasm for programming. Sometimes all it takes is a change of environment and even that you sometimes have to be forced into (like me - why I stayed in that last position for 6 years I'll never know). Good luck.
I don't have such a wide background but I completely agree. Sometimes you wish you were doing something else and that what you do sucks a bunch, but when you finally change carreers you see that you are not as happy as you thought you would be.
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Hey man I feel your pain, Sometimes I wish I was a goat farmer in the montains and the only thing I had to worry about was milking my goats, walking them and tending to my weed bushes on the outcrop of some cliff somewhere, Other than that when you feel like if you see a another computer again you gonna commit mass murder its normally a good sign that its time to hang up your keybourd and move onto working in the sun or something.
I thought about that too. Being a farmer and stuff. But to do that you have to let go other stuff you enjoy as well, so when I learned that I knew couldn't be a farmer
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I still enjoy coding and working with computers, but at times I just want to throw it all away before I no longer enjoy it. When is it time to hang it all up, and move on?
"There are three sides to every story. Yours, mine and the truth" ~ unknown
"All things good to know are difficult to learn" ~ Greek Proverb
"The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary" ~ Vidal Sassoon
A few parameters or environmental signals: 1) No work assigned for a prolonged time. 2) The team coworkers do not cooperate. 3) Peers lower than you are promoted or given a higher priority. ...
Vasudevan Deepak Kumar Personal Homepage
Tech Gossips
A pessimist sees only the dark side of the clouds, and mopes; a philosopher sees both sides, and shrugs; an optimist doesn't see the clouds at all - he's walking on them. --Leonard Louis Levinson -
I still enjoy coding and working with computers, but at times I just want to throw it all away before I no longer enjoy it. When is it time to hang it all up, and move on?
"There are three sides to every story. Yours, mine and the truth" ~ unknown
"All things good to know are difficult to learn" ~ Greek Proverb
"The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary" ~ Vidal Sassoon
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I still enjoy coding and working with computers, but at times I just want to throw it all away before I no longer enjoy it. When is it time to hang it all up, and move on?
"There are three sides to every story. Yours, mine and the truth" ~ unknown
"All things good to know are difficult to learn" ~ Greek Proverb
"The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary" ~ Vidal Sassoon
After 30 years of programming and 5 attempting not to and still eat, the question to ask your self is why did you go into programming and what is not meeting your needs right now? Answer this - when you write/code and you run it and it works - do you get a rush? If you do find a new programming job, if you don't find a new career.
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I don't want to switch my career for now but I have thought of the same idea that you've mentioned! I guess this is common between developers!
Make it simple, as simple as possible, but not simpler.
I think we all feel that way from time-to-time. However for me all I have to do is see that guy with the jack-hammer on the side of the road as I drive in to the office and that usually cures it! -CB :D
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I still enjoy coding and working with computers, but at times I just want to throw it all away before I no longer enjoy it. When is it time to hang it all up, and move on?
"There are three sides to every story. Yours, mine and the truth" ~ unknown
"All things good to know are difficult to learn" ~ Greek Proverb
"The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary" ~ Vidal Sassoon
Funny this came up after I spent most of my weekend daydreaming about leaving the keyboard and becoming a sushi chef. I've been in one facet of IT or another now for about 20 years and there are those days that we all have. It's really just my complete distaste for the whole job hunting process that keeps me where I'm at some days. It used to bother me to know that I would take a big hit financially to leave this field with no experience with anything else that pays well, so I started preparing myself financially... spending less, eliminating the consumer mentality, simplifying. Over the course of about a year, I've managed to lower my required income to something that could be covered with half my current paycheck. I live in a smaller place, eat more vegetables at home, spend more time creating instead of consuming. The results were not what I expected. While my career hasn't changed, my attitude has. I don't resent my career anymore because I no longer feel like a slave to it. I have options. It's easier now, I feel, to do a better job because I don't worry so much about the peripheral BS. The point I'm trying to make is, if you're unhappy about your work, you might want to step back farther than just focusing on what you do. Look at the big picture. Work to live, don't live to work. Your skills will improve with time and you'll make more money. Use that to finance the things that give you pleasure. I've been to too many funerals and I've never heard anyone say, "this guy was an awesome (programmer|DBA|basket weaver|etc)."