Basically I’ve been running my employer’s IT helpdesk for 10 years. In those 10 years I’ve gotten some (minor) raises and perks, but never a promotion or job title change. I just “failed” my second year performance evaluation which comes down to “we know you’re already overworked and understaffed but we need you to give 150% daily, every day”.
As a result the opposite has happened and I basically don’t GAF anymore. I close maybe half of the tickets I used to because I just can’t bring myself to care anymore. Also, if after 10 years nothing has fundamentally changed, it would be madness to assume it somehow magically will.
Thing is, I used to be very enthousiastic about my field (IT) but lately I’ve fallen completely out of love with it. Every single month there are changes and evolutions to the many tech stacks we use and I just can’t be arsed to keep up anymore. The enthousiasm has been completely replaced with mostly apathy and a side dish of simmering resentment.
I’m not immediately afraid of getting shitcanned because:
- there’s a lot more work to do than there are hands available to do it
- company has been looking for people for my role for over 5 years but never hires anyone
- I’ve been there a decade which would mean making me redundant would cost the company a pretty penny in severance
- no one currently employed there would want to take over my job duties. In IT, the helpdesk is the lowest of the low. Always has been, always will be.
Regardless, I’m in my 40’s now with one degree that doesn’t have anything to do with IT and without joking, I would rather die tomorrow than keep doing this until pension age. Any of you have decent tips or examples of where someone in my position could aim to end up for the second half of my life’s career?
If money were no object (it is) I would go back to college and pick up archaeology/history. That was what I wanted to do as a child but I had to give it up because “it wasn’t a realistic life path”, dixit my parents and every counselor I spoke to in that era.
I don’t even work fulltime right now and still I feel like I would want to spend those 2,5 days a week doing something marginally less painful, like stick my dick in the oven.
EDIT: thanks for the responses all. I’ve reevaluated my situation and sent my boss and his boss a mail explaining my situation and requesting either some guidance/help/training or a demotion to a lesser position depending on where they think I should be heading. Chances are it’ll be ignored, but at this point I don’t really give a flying fuck anymore. If they want to get rid of me, they will. Add another corpse to the pile, see if anyone bats an eyelid.
100% you are burnt out. That was me a couple of years ago in a very similar position and problems.
Find a new job while you keep working there then leave as soon as you can. If it’s legal where you are, then leave them stranded with no notice. Even if they counter-offer with a pay rise, the problems will still be there (like, why didn’t they pay you that to start with!?) as well the expectation of 150% - probably more if they’re paying you more!
Look for something completely different outside help desk/operations to give yourself a mental break and after a couple of years you may find your passion for IT comes back. Even moving to another area of IT might be enough of a change.
Good on your for recognizing it but that sort of environment can kill you and your passion if you try to push through it. Get out of there and things will get immeasurably better!
Thanks for your advice. I definitely would want to do something completely different. The problem is that I only have experience with this (IT helpdesk) and nothing else. I get job offers out the wazoo, but it’s all for the exact same thing: tier 1/2 helpdesk for whatever organisation. If I amend my info on Linkedin or whatever site to say I’m not interested in tech support jobs, I don’t get any offers at all.
Take another job anyway. Your job search doesn’t have to stop just because you started a new job. The change, even though it’s not the end goal, might help. You might make more money, be able to set boundaries about effort/expectations early, and possibly find connections that will help you get to the end goal of finding something really new. Be honest in interviews too, really treat that like you are interviewing them and make your boundaries known where you can.
I’ve taken my own advice too. I never actually changed industries but was able to find something that worked for me. Plus I’ve met a lot of people along the way which has directly resulted in more and different job opportunities. Anyway, don’t give up on the dream but do be flexible on how you get there.
It’s usually possible to walk away. There are exceptions, like if your sainted mother is disabled and needs your income for her supply of oxygen tank, but I walked away and usually recommend walking away.
checked out a decade ago and still not fired?
Check out even harder
Automate that shit, don’t tell anyone and get some passive income.
Passive income was always a code phrase for “own property that makes other people make money for you”
Automating your job is just taking advantage of business majors in the way God intended
It’s a job of a decade
They are checked out now… not for a decade
Get a second job and collect two incomes until your fired from the first one
I mean you’re parents weren’t wrong that archeology wasn’t a realistic life path. Maybe start watching YT videos about archeology while you are on the clock?
I checked out of my IT job of 15 years. I was throughly depressed with it all. I had a fair amount of website experience and got a few clients who pay regularly for their website and support. I sold all my crap, bought a great laptop and I travel full time now and sometimes I use trustedhousesitters in between just traveling. I’ve never looked back and I’ve been doing this for over 6.5 years… I’m 51 now.
Perhaps what I’m saying is it’s never too late to follow your dream, mine was travel, yours might be something else. Just go for it.
Do you make money while traveling, or did you change to a low cost lifestyle and are living off savings/investments?
I about break even. I started off with savings, but now I just use my income. It’s still cheaper than renting an apartment in the center of Amsterdam though.
This sounds like me a few years ago.
I loved IT work when I started but the job, the positions, the customers, and my bosses sucked it out of me. I couldn’t see myself staying in the job. As each day passed I got more and more depressed and miserable. The only plus side was I was earning a bit of money.
I was also at the age (late 40s) where it was probably too late to change careers. Even if I did, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.
I decided to take a risk and open my own business - a pinball arcade. Huge risk, but if it worked it would probably be fun.
I spent 3 years collecting machines and learning how to repair them. I worked to reduce my personal overhead so I could get by earning less (which is freeing on it’s own). I was still working the horrible IT jobs, but since I had a new direction it didn’t seem to bother me as much. There was a light at the end of the tunnel.
3 years ago we opened the arcade and luckily it’s been working out. I love coming to work now. I love 99% of my customers. Some days I spend half the day playing games with people in the arcade. I’m earning a living and our sales keep going up as we add more things to the arcade.
My only advice is to find something that will make you happy and work towards it. You don’t have to stay in a job you hate.
If you’re in the same job for ten years you’re over worked and under paid
Quit and find the same exact job and you’ll still be happier.
IT sucks. Solving problems with technology is fun. Once it’s your job capitalism sucks all the joy out of it.
What hobbies do you love? I like plants and being outside so I fantasize about getting a part time job at a nursery.
Anything you could pivot too? Pay will likely not be comparable but if it isn’t soul sucking it might be an option.
No idea on experience. You may have to start at the bottom unless it’s something that you can prove competence with, without a degree.
What was your exit strategy if you where unable to work?
You only have 100% to give.
If you regularly are expected to give more, that is the new norm, which is a symptoms of poor scheduling and bad management.
If your miserable in whatever situation you’re in. Leave.
Ive been were you are at. That is one nice thing about contracting and im hoping to do a few in the near term. At least you change what your doing. Unless its bs contract to hire. 3month and 6 month contracts are the bomb.
a few options
travel Is my first one, seems to reinvigorate a lot of people. hostels are 120 to 300 a month, Private apartments are $300-400 a month in a lot of countries, so for a couple grand you can take 6 months off and figure out if there’s something you would rather be doing. or just take time off.
If you hate your current job that much, then whatever you find when you feel like you want to start working again is going to be better than what you’re doing now.
it looks like there are a few archeology and anthropology programs online that you could take, and then follow up with an in-person advanced degree after you start the core classes.
or you can just hang out.
Hey, what’s up. I usually just lurk because I can’t keep myself from getting into stupid discussions and wasting all of my time getting angry, but I feel like you do when it comes to work and I thought I’d share. I’ll be deleting my credentials after responding, because of a lack of discipline on my end, FYI.
So I’m in a type of system administration. Not your run-of-the-mill IT shop, it’s sort of in the direction of devops and provisioning classic on prem environments. There’s also other stuff, some of it challenging because of technical complexity, some of it challenging due to brain dead QA procedures and corporate inflexibility.
I also feel like I ‘did my time in the trenches’ in the past when I worked IT help desk, but having seen the other side, advancing your career into more technical roles will not offer any salvation. It’s the same bland, corporate controlled, big tech dominated horse shit patch and pray dance. You learn a new thing only for it to be superseded or abandoned, or worse, rolled over from a permanently licensed product to a subscription. In this field there is no such thing as perennial knowledge. The only place experience has any hope of sticking are the soft skills. It’s building on quick sand.
That’s why life feels like a treadmill. Even a bigger pay check won’t offer much in the way of contentment. It’s fun for a while but you get used to it. If you can make due with what you’ve got now, more money won’t offer a way out.
If you ask me, which you kind of did by way of this post, modern life fades into meaninglessness easily. There is not much connection between the actions you take and the results unless you perform manual labor or better yet, a craft. That’s why a lot of people in the IT field have hobbies like woodworking. Personally I like motorcycle riding and maintenance. At least when I’m done reassembling a carburetor the result is a running engine.
I guess what I’m saying is, if you have a job that pays the bills, you should be fine not giving a flying fuck about your job, your employer or the efficiency of your coworkers. Do the bare minimum you need to do in order not to get fired. Your job is just a means to an end; you are employed in the service of yourself and your loved ones. If the CEO of your company could generate a quarter point on the NYSE by stabbing your grandma to death, then they will. If you’re anything like me, you define work as anything you do solely for the economic incentive. Treat it as such. Behave like the Homo Economicus every institution expects you to; take what you can, give nothing back. Let go of the idea that work should be fulfilling; our current economic system simply isn’t built for anything but ruthless extraction of value. Anything you do consider fulfilling is almost by definition a cost. That’s okay. Really.
Build the mental fortitude to accept your lot, which considering human history is not actually that bad. We have easy access to high quality food, shelter and leisure time. Slack as hard as you can get away with; read books on company time, work on personal projects, play games or just stare off into the clouds. When you clock out, slam that door behind you and pretend like your employer does not exist. Don’t lose your job or give it up until you have a solid plan to switch into something else, but always remember that a job is by definition something nobody would have done unless there were economic rewards.
I recommend starting with some (e-)books about Stoicism (e-books are easy to hide in a window on your work display); there’s ancient wisdom in there that makes it easier to stop giving a shit about the things that don’t matter, in this case the meaninglessness of what you do for a living. It will help you focus on the things you can control; how you view the world being one of them.
This reminds me of prior jobs. The work was good - but the management was bad and led to me hating my job. Maybe changing the team you’re working for would help. Go on interviews and say that - you like problem solving but you’re a one man army in current position and need to be part of a team and given leave to innovate. See if that leads anywhere. At your stage, id find a job you can retire from. You don’t want to be 55 and looking for work. Look into govt it positions or other unionized positions.
