MsPerky

Some of us in this forum have retired, but some of us diehards are still working. I'm still pretty satisfied, even after having been in my current occupation (Information Technology Specialist, used to be termed Computer Specialist) for 30 years. I guess because I haven't always done the same job, but worked in different areas within my field. And I'm in a area now (computer security) that certainly isn't going away anytime soon. So there is still some challenge in coming to work. I do think of retiring or doing something different, but, so far, I'm still at it. How 'bout y'all? Do you still feel challenged at work, or are you counting the days?

You Prevints can chime in, too, if you want.

MsPerky

How 'bout your +1? Working, or not? Mine has been traveling quite a bit lately, which I'm not entirely happy about, but it should calm down before too long. He and his team are trying to keep the construction of these babies moving along - two versions of the Navy's ship of the future, the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). He has a job as long as he wants one.

Conedodger

I've been in the same job for 27 years. I'm thoroughly bored with the work. Expectations and stress levels are going up as we are being pushed to be "meaner and leaner." The company has a policy of letting 10% of the employees go every year, with the expectation that they can be replaced with better talent for less money.

I don't leave because:

I don't think I can get the same pay locally
I currently get 5 weeks of vacation. (Getting approval to take it is another issue. I have 2 weeks carry over from last year.)
I like the people.
They like me enough that I'm secure here for a few years.
I'm hoping I can quit in 5 years.

tof

I'm pretty happy in what I expect will be my last job.

I've worked in IT for a little over 40 years, on everything from PCAM equipment (sorters, colaters, etc) to current generation Intel based servers. I've worked for some very small companies of less than 20 employees and for a large office automation vendor with 35,000 employees (Wang Labs, if you remember them). I really enjoy working in a mid-sized hospital of 400 beds and a couple thousand employees. The move to the health care industry has also been interesting with new challanges almost daily.

I am senior enough that I can do the job the way I see fit, as long as the job gets done well and the department I support (Medical Records/Health Information Management) is happy. My time is somewhat flexible and I can walk down one flight of stairs for my meds at the employee pharmacy, or over to another part of the building to visit my family physician. And of course, most important of all, I work for a good manager and enjoy my coworkers.

Spokes Man

^^ My situation at work WAS very similar to yours. There were some very good times in the 47 years I worked as a Structural Engineering Designer, but it was deteriorating quickly toward the end. I bridged the gap of going from manual drafting to CADD back in 1978, and stayed on the "cutting edge" of CADD for over 30 years. It was becoming increasingly difficult (and frustrating) to stay at the expert level on those systems because the platforms change every year, and not always for the better. To further complicate the mix, clients have their own CADD systems as well, so they expect the project to be delivered in a format friendly to their systems. This was a challenge at first, but soon became a very tedious task to implement in some cases. Jobs are being bid by managers who have no clue what it takes to produce a project on CADD, so cost over-runs are common...especially after preliminary engineering has eaten up most of the budget. Now that everything must be 100% billable, the CADD designer is made the scape goat or the "bad guy," and things deteriorate from there.

Because of the current down-turn in Civil/Structural engineering, I was laid off over a year ago. I haven't missed working at all during that time. I have lunch with former co-workers from time to time, and I am constantly reminded of how stressful that job is/was. The job took a huge toll on my health over the years, and I have the scars on my chest to prove it.

Work doesn't have to be that way, and I admire those who have satisfying and rewarding careers. I think the key lies in whether or not you have some control over your job, you enjoy what you're doing, and what kind of relationship you have with your superiors. My supervisor over the past 20 years was an a$$. However, the stress and pressure of it all finally got to him as well when he dropped dead at 53 yrs old...three months after laying me off.

I congratulate those of you who have the good jobs, and can continue working as long as you want. As long as your health is not compromised by the work, there is time for your personal goals and ambitions, and you have time for your family, there is no reason to quit. And the $$ always comes in handy.

A 2

There are a lot of life's lessons in those lines. Thank you very much for sharing.

boltonblue

First the +1; I suspect if we hit a large lottery, she'd walk out the door tomorrow and never look back with no regrets.

and as for me....
I miss the days of having the knowledge and energy to be able to go do startups.
Tomorrow was absolutely going to be better than today and today is pretty good already.
I really miss the urgency and vitality that come with surrounding yourself with those go-getters.
Some of those folks were just plain brilliant and I really enjoyed being the dumbest guy in the room.

I've always been "driven" ( a nice word for an A-hole) but it meant I was always on the A team when the fecal matter hit the rotary air circulation unit.
This attitude, along with being rather good at what I do, gave me the impact player status and made it worthwhile rather than just going through the motions day in and day out.
I still enjoy what I do but there is a ration of horse sh!t that comes with it that I have no use for whatsoever.
There are times now when I feel like a flea trying to push the elephant.

But the bills get paid and I'm not sitting on the coach wondering how we'll pay the mortgage or college tuition.

Retire? no not likely, I doubt I'll ever be able to afford the lifestyle I style aspire too. Those Mclarens aren't cheap ya know

RedY2KS2k

I quit a blue-collar job in `97, returned to college, got a Computer Science degree, and started in IT in October, 1998. I'm still with the same company, but I've watched the IT world go down the toilet around me. In the first four years, I got the opportunity to play a key role in a couple of interesting projects. There were days when solving the problems was actually fun.

Not any more. The organization is focused on methodology: EVERY problem should be approached the same way. Don't think, just execute the "one size fits all" plan. Works great if you're clueless; less so if you actually understand how to analyze a problem and do the job.

There's one small app that I support part time. I like the users, hate the app. But it has provided the only interesting work I've had in a couple of years.

If I woke up tomorrow, reviewed my finances, and decided that I had enough to live my modest lifestyle for the rest of my life, I'd be really angry that I hadn't given them 30 days notice a month ago.

MsPerky

^ I wonder if that is true of programming in general these days...time was you could be creative in your code. I was not a good programmer and didn't do it for too long. Much better at systems analysis, database mgmt and what I do now in security. Thanks for the stories so far - they've been interesting.

tof

Deb, I don't know about other areas. But local government and healthcare orginizations mostly rely on vendors for real nuts and bolts programming. There isn't a lot of real heavy duty programming done within the orginization. Maybe some dot net and xml stuff.

I do some scripting using something called WinBatch (Wilson Window Ware). It's great stuff for reading and writing flat (text) files and interacting with the Windows OS and Windows applications. And an interpreter version is FREE. The compiler version runs $400 but you can create executables that can be distributed without the need for additional licensing. But I haven't done any serious programming since I worked with COBOL. Just the occasional SQL stored procedure.

Anyway I'm too lazy to learn .net or any other Microsoft "industry standard" scripting.

But back to your point. We have one "programmer" who does a bit of web work and builds xml templates, ten systems analysts, and a dozen or so application analysts. The systems analysts are at the top of the food chain at least in terms of compensation. We each have several vendor provided applications to support. Our efforts revolve around ongoing SQL database administration, server management, infrastructure management, etc. So our skill set is fairly broad but not very deep in some areas. For example, I would not call myself a DBA, although I am regularly working in SQL. A few of us are dual roll. In my case there are several very savvy end users in HIM who perform much of the Application Analyst function (application administration) but some of the heavier app stuff like storage management within the application falls to me. It's an interesting life.

The bad part about all this from a security standpoint is the impact canned applications can have on security. I really can't go into the details on a public forum like this but in broad terms, some of our applications require specific approaches to security that run counter to our internal IT security policies. Thank goodness HIPPA is driving these vendors to tighten things up.