Heart says jack it in, head says stick it out

[dowie]

My heart on the other hand, frequently says to me, WTF are you doing here, you have more enjoyment writing posts on OcUK, Discord, writing about sports, gaming, tech, whatever. [...]

So where this leaves me is a crossroads; do I throw away a 15 year career and go for a reset? Take some naff job where I have an opportunity to write prose. Maybe take a huge punt and try to create a youtube channel or something. Either way I'm going to take probably an 80% pay cut.
[...]
Shouldn't I just go all-in, try and force my way into doing something else with all the opportunities the internet opens up, try and get to a position where I can earn 20% money but actually enjoy what I'm doing? And if it doesn't work out, nobody is interested, just fall back on the career experience and go back with my tail between my legs?

No, you shouldn't just go all in especially with no experience. That would be like a would-be x-factor contestant quitting their job purely because Simon Cowell is in town.

Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates both famously quit Harvard but they had already established their ventures by the time they quit. On the other end of the scale, a friend of mine who runs a small business employing <10 people started out by requesting to reduce his hours at work to part-time after already putting in some initial work on weekends and taking holiday.

You don't even need to quit your work to launch a YouTube channel though, how much content do you think you're going to put out initially anyway?

Likewise re: writing - how many articles are you expecting to write? Is that something that really needs you to quit your job for? A friend of mine writes a regular column for a well-known newspaper, she isn't a journalist or writer however she is a specialist in her field and has previously appeared on the news etc... Are you known in your field? Would a journalist contact you for comment? She hasn't quit her job, she's still working in a senior role and the column is written in her spare time.

Alternatively, if you're going to start writing medium or substack articles/blog posts - are you really expecting to earn a living from that? Where is your funnel? Do you have tens of thousands or better still hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers you can direct to your substack/newsletter?

If you're bored at work then change employers and try to find some new challenge, you shouldn't need to cut your earnings to 20% of your current income just to do something interesting.

If you're pinning your hopes on being a YouTuber or earning a living from writing about games, tech etc.. then you might want to test the waters a bit first! Write a couple of articles or make a couple of YouTube videos, see how well that goes and how many views you get etc..

 

[Kenai]

To me this thread reads more like you want to be writing/content creating as a hobby, especially so when you say things like "I get enjoyment from writing not just the reaction to what I've written", rather than as something you need to rely on for income.

Something to set aside some time for, figure out what sort of writing you want to do and start doing as a hobby - set yourself up a website or whatever and start putting stuff on it. Maybe set yourself up on Fiverr or something and see if you can pick up some interesting bits and pieces to do, in a way that'll be a side income that you can take or leave at your leisure and means your enjoyment for it can stay as a simple enjoyable way to spend your time, not something you're desperately trying to churn out to anyone who'll pay for it because need another £100 this week for food

 

[Scougar]

Agree with some of the other posters. I 'enjoy' writing posts on here, playing games, and running a Facebook group etc. I'm not about to throw away a well payed job on a whimsey of "well I enjoy flower picking more than this, so let's give that a shot". Either come to your senses, or come up with a plan. Don't just dump everything when you have nothing to back yourself up. That's not even movie level stuff... they are least normally already have an established passion in movies, or something in the works. You have what, enjoyment of something? Hence, sit down with yourself, and no BS write out some goals, desires etc. Mark that against reality, and what you might also lose etc.

EDIT: Not trying to be snarky, just direct. I apologise if it comes across harsh.

***SNIP**
Then you get to your 40s and it all starts to get a bit "easier" but then suddenly you're all... don't want a new family, don't need a new house, not struggling to pay the bills, don't want my bosses job so now what?

THIS for another 20 years?
***SNIP***

Damn... that's quite to the point (esp since I'm early 40's). Guess that's where I'm at lol.

 

[MikeTimbers]

I have a friend who has had multiple novels published. he attends international conventions as a speaker. Yet he has a day job as an agile coach. Because unless you're Lee Child you're not selling enough books to make an actual living out of it. For simple journalism even harder unless you work for an international newspaper.

If it's the mundanity of your current work try looking for a new job where you can use your current skills in more creative fulfilling ways. Even consider going freelance. That's what I did once I got bored with the routine; now I choose my clients based on what I will learn from the work.

 

[matt100]

Damn... that's quite to the point (esp since I'm early 40's). Guess that's where I'm at lol.

I'd like to claim it but it was in a film or something I watched, can't remember what but the sentiment stuck with me, all of a sudden when you achieve "it" you think "is THIS is?"

At least you sound like you're in a job you can keep doing, I'm in sales. I'm 44. I have no interest in being in sales in my 50s so I really have to come up with a plan of some description. It's quite a shock to realise you don't want to go any further in your current specialism.

I'm incredibly lucky that I earn in a year what some mediocre football players earn in a week but I need an end game. It's either save/invest hard enough to be able to take the foot off the gas in maybe 10 years or have some sort of revelation/invent something or whatever.

Maybe I just need a less intense employer lol. Whilst everyone was going on furlough we just went HARDER.

 

[Hades]

I am in a similar work situation as you OP, although I am in my 50's now and I have far more commitments. I have a wife, mortgage and kids. So I simply can't dramatically change my direction as I need to earn good money. But I am now very dissatisfied with my job and am under a lot of stress. I went to the doctors recently with some issues and they linked them to work and burn out. But I have very few options to change anything or take a break. The IT industry is very ageist so changing roles is also going to be difficult.

Based on this my advice would be to start a side hustle with the aim of growing it and eventually moving over to it full time. I don't think youtube and content creation is likely to be successful. As someone else mentioned most content creators tend to be younger nowadays (who wants to watch a middle aged man moan about things ) and even for them the chances of success are low. But there must be other interests you can start trying to build into a money making scheme longer term?

Keep your costs low so you have options in the future.
Find something that interests you and start building a side hustle.
Save as much money as you can so you continue to have options for the future.



EDIT: A few people have mentioned it being a mid life crisis. Yes this might be what it is. But unlike most people I don't see a MLC as a negative thing. It's your inner self realising you don't want to do what you are currently doing. It's telling you to make changes. But do them gradually rather than a dramatic change.

 

[R.P.L]

I'm 39 and feel somewhat similar. I earn less than OP by the sounds of it, but still enough to be very comfortable. My job (financial services operations) just doesn't stimulate or motivate me. I think that's partly down to working for a large company which means that I'm very constrained in terms of creation and innovation. The right way of doing things is usually overruled by the way that things have to be done to fit in with how everyone else is doing things.
I have very few commitments as I don't have a family or even significant other. Part of my frustration comes from the fact that I never felt comfortable starting a family until I was doing something that I was really passionate about because I didn't want to end up feeling like I was trapped in a job that I hated as I had a family to support, but it turns out that I'm kind of trapped just by the responsibility that I have to keep myself in good financial standing while I have to opportunity to.
I have started working on some hobbies which might become profitable over the longer term on the side, and I think this is the way to do it. But yeah, it's tough to accept spending most of my time grinding away at something that doesn't interest me just to afford to keep myself alive so that I can continue doing the same the next day...

 

[delta0]

I’m in my 30s and have felt some of this so I imagine it will get worse in my 40s.

If it pays well and the job is not that bad then sticking it out (at least in my mind) has been what I would do. I’ve been getting into the FIRE stuff recently. Not necessarily the retire early part but more the financial independence part so I can at least have that choice to make a change without having to worry about finances, like working at a startup or doing something else a bit more risky. I worry about boredom in my career a lot.

 

[d_brennen]

Reduce your hours, work 3 days a week or find a job elsewhere which will allow that. Best of both worlds

 

[nine_tails]

So why not first reduce your hours and then the working week in your day job?

Eventually this will tip the balance of your time more in favour of the side hustle and less in favour of your main job. A part-time role with good pay will likely pro-rata reduce your income less than a basic job that may yet grow to eat up your time, or just be a different sort of grind to begin with.

Then if your hustle works out like a sustainable way to love what you do, you could gradually hand over to a successor and depart on good terms. If not, you can ramp the hours back up or move jobs, which with your experience may even net more pay and better conditions down the line - no need to explain the fugue state of X years doing Y hustle also. It will also give you some more musing time to come up with a plan of attack, research and allocate your extra time and resources towards your goals.

Like a couple of posters above caution, the 'chuck it all in' approach is somewhat distorted in favour of people for whom it worked out spreading the gospel vocally. You will hardly read or enjoy stories of abject failure - hence they are less amplified. I'd lean on the side of only going 100% in behind something that has caught traction and has a potential to scale up for you and your needs. Otherwise you may just be after a hobby.

Since you appear to be working in a popular field, you could test the waters by running a self-reinforcing combination of activities: writing a blog; creating courses to fling online to sell; and having a YouTube channel eventually to feed off the other two and drive traffic between all the three avenues of exposition. Further, you can then get other people involved to help you focus on just the things you enjoy.

This is good advice. That being said , I've made sure i have enough dough to survive 3-5 years and decided to take a break for one year to grind it out.

With 15 years you can always return back to IT. It also depends what kind of a person you are and may be there is no one size fits all answer. If you have financial obligations ex : mortgage/kids etc , hard stop is going to be painful without planning.
Some folks cant just do the side hustle (me) and it is either i give it all or i none of it.

 

[Rids]

I'm not sure reducing your hours is feasible for you given the level of seniority, and a firm's likely objections to have to employ two people at your level to cover the workload if you drop your hours.

Does the field of IT in which you operate lend itself well to contracting? I realise that contracting isn't as lucrative as it used to be now that IR35 is a thing, but it still comes with a healthy premium over perm roles. I was thinking you could do things in shift, work a 3-6 month contract, take a few months to pursue your interests, bounce back to contracting etc.

Then if your side gigs to end up turning into something tangible you can give up the contracting all together, but you'll always have it as something to fall back on as long as you don't spend too much time out of your industry.

 

[randomshenans]

/Incoming randomshenans ego

I don't even know who you are

I wouldn't ever tell anyone 1. anyone wants to watch my **** lol or 2. give up your job to do YT! Christ no!

It's a tough one. I've been doing a lot more balancing of late. Coupled with personal stuff going on, it's made me reassess what's important. I don't mind my job but the company is backwards. I don't think I'll ever find true fulfilment in a role, but I think I'm OK with that. The place I'm at now at least allows me the flexibility to do things I like and I'm doing more and more of it.
I still want to be able to explore the world, travel and take in more for me and the kids, so working and earning decent money is needed with these three! At the same time though, I want to enjoy my life. Not wish the weeks away.
I was thinking about this and I'm very lucky in the position I am that I have that flexibility. At the same time for a lot I work longer hours (average about 50hrs per week) so not crazy, but I get those 10hrs back as holiday. So I am currently off taking some time, using some of the 120hrs I've banked. This is a blessing, really. If I didn't have this I think I'd be in the same position as you.
I was going to suggest contract, but having done that it just adds more stress of finding one and having to be super flexible with location and everything. While it'd give you the financial freedom to take more time off, it's not as good as it was back 10yrs ago with all the law changes.

Might be worth just trying to see if you can get a bit more of a balance in some way. I don't know your role well enough to know how possible this would be within the role/company etc. but I'd definitely try and explore things in what spare time you do have to find out what you actually enjoy and want to do more of. You say writing, but do you do a lot of it? Maybe start with a project around that? Not really sure, it's a real tough one as I feel it too haha and I'm only 35!

 

[HangTime]

I'm not sure reducing your hours is feasible for you given the level of seniority, and a firm's likely objections to have to employ two people at your level to cover the workload if you drop your hours.

Does the field of IT in which you operate lend itself well to contracting? I realise that contracting isn't as lucrative as it used to be now that IR35 is a thing, but it still comes with a healthy premium over perm roles. I was thinking you could do things in shift, work a 3-6 month contract, take a few months to pursue your interests, bounce back to contracting etc.

Then if your side gigs to end up turning into something tangible you can give up the contracting all together, but you'll always have it as something to fall back on as long as you don't spend too much time out of your industry.

I'm contracting at the moment, there are a lot of roles available at a less senior level than when I was perm but they pay well so I figured I may as well do that for a bit. To be honest, I struggle to justify what a lot of IT contractors get paid, less stress and responsibility than perm yet you get paid a lot more, job security doesn't seem to matter because you get extended or just walk into another contract. Worse case scenario you are out of work for a couple of months yet still earn more over the year. In a perverse sort of way I'd quite look forward to having a break between contracts if it transpired that way. And that's having already missed the boat on the glory years of contractors having lower taxes, bigger dividends, outside IR35 etc etc. I still don't really understand why firms have so many contractors for years on end, there is an obsession with keeping a lid on headcount but if you weren't paying a fortune to contractors you could sustain more heads!

I do worry a little that moving back into more junior roles will block me a little in terms of any future aspirations to take a senior perm role but there's an element of challenging myself on whether that's really what I want in any case.

 

[Rroff]

I'm not sure reducing your hours is feasible for you given the level of seniority, and a firm's likely objections to have to employ two people at your level to cover the workload if you drop your hours.

Depends how much they value him - my dad's work has agreed to drop him down to 1-2 days a week plus some consultation type stuff rather than lose him.

While probably not to a massive extent I think this is something a lot of companies might encounter over the next little while - a lot of people seem to be looking at how they can get a better work/life balance even if it means dropping down income a bit.

 

[HangTime]

Part time doesn't appeal to me because most other people will be working to a different cadence. It's like when you take a couple of days holiday, the amount of work you need to do doesn't reduce by two days. Working 3 days a week I reckon I'd be expected to produce at least 80% output for 60% pay.

To use an analogy, if you work in a coffee shop and take two days off work, you don't come back to a queue of people out the door and a backlog of coffees to make, but that's kind of what it's like in some IT jobs.

My last place, there was a lady on 3.5 days a week but aside from obvious things like meetings not being on days she wasn't working, there wasn't really an accommodation for the fact she was part time, if a deadline was given to a group of people including her it wouldn't be extended for her on the basis she was part time.

 

[physichull]

Completely relate to the OP. I feel like I've been through exactly the same.

I've recently moved jobs from one that I mostly enjoyed but was extremely stressful, to the point that I went to the doctors and was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. After a tearful breakdown whilst at work one day, it was at this point where I figured that life couldn't go on like this. I was being paid really well, but something had to change. I wasn't sure what though.

In the end, I took a job that would require me retraining slightly so took a 25% pay cut to go there and start again. This required relocating from Warrington to Derby. We have since sold our house (had to anyway really, as we needed a bigger place) but have had two failed house purchases - sales fell through. As such, we are now moving back in with my parents in Hull and am continuing to work from home with 1 day per week down at the site in Derby.

About 3 months in to the new job, I started having doubts about what I was doing. It was a welcome relief from the pressure and the stress, but the job itself was just not doing it for me. I felt like I had so much more to offer than what I was currently doing, so I started looking around for jobs again. I've already got an interview working for a major company back in the north west that I've worked extensively for as a contractor and I'm confident of getting the job (fingers crossed!).

But whilst the Derby experiment has been a complete pain, and all the house moving stuff has been a nightmare (had to sell really, just to break the chain), its offered me a good period for self-reflection of what I really want from a job and from my life. I honestly feel that if I am successful with this forthcoming interview then I would be taking a significant step closer to what I really want to do. In addition, I'd likely be back on a wage that is at least as much, if not more, than my old job, more than restoring that 25% pay decrease.

Adulting is hard. Life is hard. You don't always know what you want to do with your life until you've made a few mistakes. I feel in a better place now, life turmoil aside, purely because I've been brutally honest with myself and had that time to think.

I've also found that talking about it with more people was so reassuring. What has felt like a mistake, coupled with making myself homeless (yes, still in a fortunate position that I have parents to fall back on), has actually felt quite humiliating. I feel now after this reflection that I actually have a direction in life now (should I get the job I have applied for - not a foregone conclusion). And for that alone, I feel better. I actually feel lucky that my house purchases fell through as if I had completed a move and bought in Derby, that may well have locked me in and chained me to my bad choice! As it happens, I am actually glad that its worked out this way as that time to think was vital. Leaving a job after 6 months doesn't always look great on a CV, but I feel like I've got so many reasons to justify it.

 

[randomshenans]

Adulting is hard. Life is hard. You don't always know what you want to do with your life until you've made a few mistakes. I feel in a better place now, life turmoil aside, purely because I've been brutally honest with myself and had that time to think.

I like this!

 

[fatbatman]

I don't even know who you are

I wouldn't ever tell anyone 1. anyone wants to watch my **** lol or 2. give up your job to do YT! Christ no!

It's a tough one. I've been doing a lot more balancing of late. Coupled with personal stuff going on, it's made me reassess what's important. I don't mind my job but the company is backwards. I don't think I'll ever find true fulfilment in a role, but I think I'm OK with that. The place I'm at now at least allows me the flexibility to do things I like and I'm doing more and more of it.
I still want to be able to explore the world, travel and take in more for me and the kids, so working and earning decent money is needed with these three! At the same time though, I want to enjoy my life. Not wish the weeks away.
I was thinking about this and I'm very lucky in the position I am that I have that flexibility. At the same time for a lot I work longer hours (average about 50hrs per week) so not crazy, but I get those 10hrs back as holiday. So I am currently off taking some time, using some of the 120hrs I've banked. This is a blessing, really. If I didn't have this I think I'd be in the same position as you.
I was going to suggest contract, but having done that it just adds more stress of finding one and having to be super flexible with location and everything. While it'd give you the financial freedom to take more time off, it's not as good as it was back 10yrs ago with all the law changes.

Might be worth just trying to see if you can get a bit more of a balance in some way. I don't know your role well enough to know how possible this would be within the role/company etc. but I'd definitely try and explore things in what spare time you do have to find out what you actually enjoy and want to do more of. You say writing, but do you do a lot of it? Maybe start with a project around that? Not really sure, it's a real tough one as I feel it too haha and I'm only 35!

Lol I was just kidding around, don't worry too much Sir.

 

[Nitefly]

It's a toughie. Work is, ultimately, work.... and work is often hard, sometimes emotionally so just in the sense of logging on and doing donkey work. Many of us dream of waking up to a role where it's 'easy' / no effort.

I'm changing roles at the moment, in a somewhat left-turn move. Current job is just 'OK' and I've had a lingering feeling for years that it wasn't 'enough' for me, but it took a decent out of the blue opportunity for me to make a leap. Maybe you need to open your eyes to other opportunities outside what you have considered so far? You may get a feeling that you should definitely make the jump when the 'right thing' shows up.

Best of luck with it.

 

[HangTime]

I've decided to stick at it a while longer; on balance having low job satisfaction is OK against a backdrop of remote [currently] working, medium stress levels and decent pay compared to a couple of years ago where I had slightly more job satisfaction but a long commute, high stress and worse pay.

I do still get frustrated at the need for brevity in the workplace though, I don't really understand because the time to e.g. read an email is very low. I don't see how an email that takes 2 minutes to read instead of 1 minute is any worse than twiddling your thumbs waiting for people to join a meeting. If you write a short email, people often come back with questions on the bits you haven't covered, so the whole thing is less efficient for others than pre-empting questions and providing more detail up front (with an appropriate TL;DR summary at the top).